Motley Crue recently tried to expand their upcoming reunion tour by approaching other bands from their era. It has come to light on Trunk Nation with Eddie Trunk that several potential collaborators declined the invitation due to conflicts with certain band members.
Motley Crue got rejected
During the interview with Eddie Trunk asked Nikki Sixx about whether Motley Crue had reached out to other bands to potentially broker reunions or collaborations for their tour.
Nikki Sixx talked about the band’s approach to select tour partners, emphasizing the importance of drawing power and audience appeal.
“I mean, you look at who’s available, you know, you look at who’s alive, right? And then you’re like, well, which bands are still drawing?” Sixx said.
“There are a lot of bands that I really like that only have maybe two members, and they’re playing to 200 to 500-seat clubs, and it’s like, I love them, but you’re playing an amphitheater. It can go up to 40,000 people.”
Sixx opened up on the mutual benefits of pairing complementary acts on the tour.
“You want to be sure that you know you got someone that’s pulling in people, and if you’re an Extreme fan or a Tesla fan and you like some Mötley Crüe songs, you may get really turned on to more Mötley Crüe songs or vice versa,” he continued.
“Motley Crue fans may know one or two Tesla songs, and then they go see them live and they become a bigger fan of their bigger catalog.”
Eddie Trunk revealed that Motley Crue’s team tried to recruit more bands from their era for the tour—possibly even pushing some to reunite with former members—to make the lineup bigger.
However, several groups declined because joining would have required reconciling with ex-members they no longer work with. Trunk didn’t name names but hinted that fans could speculate which bands were approached.
“They’ve got Tesla and Extreme, but they were attempting to go and get some other bands of their era to come together and play,” Trunk explained. “But I’ll say this, and I know Nikki can’t get into it and all that, but I’ve heard some stories through my sources that there were several bands approached about coming together or reuniting with certain members or what have you to potentially make this thing even bigger or to build it out even more.”
Trunk added, “But those bands did not accept the invitation because it would have required them to work with or to reconcile with certain members not in those bands anymore. So, I’ll leave that up to you to speculate on who those bands may have been, but you know, they were attempting to, I think, make it an even bigger thing.”
Motley Crue’s plans are part of a larger celebration marking significant milestones in their career. The band is undertaking a major North American tour in 2026 called “The Return of the Carnival of Sins,” as detailed on Tour Setlist. This tour celebrates both the 20th anniversary of their iconic Carnival of Sins tour and the band’s 45th anniversary. The expansive tour will span 33 cities across North America, beginning in July 2026.
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