Recently, legendary drummer Carmine Appice made waves online in an interview where he claimed that recently retired Mick Mars wasn’t getting along with the rest of Mötley Crüe over their extensive use of live backing tracks.
Appice reckoned that Mick Mars was “not happy” during the hair metal band’s comeback “Stadium Tour” last year. The drummer claimed that Mars told him the whole tour was “on tape; it was all planned out and ultimately a lot of crap.”
He said:
“Mick was pissed off and said, ‘I can play these things. I want to play them. I don’t want to make believe I’m playing them.’ So, I think that’s one of the reasons why he said, ‘I’m done.’ Sure, the disease that he has doesn’t help, and it doesn’t make life easy on tour, but Mick can play all the licks, and he was allowed to.”
Carmine also said that Mars didn’t get along with his bandmates for the tour’s duration, and that “he had his own means of travel and would travel alone on a bus while the other guys flew everywhere.”
Carmine got in trouble for sharing Mick Mars’ accusations that the Crue use backing tracks.
He is now telling Goldmine, “”Oh, it’s been unbelievable. Did you see what came out since then between Mick and the rest of the band? I’m sure you did. It’s all so sad, but it vindicates my story, which I never thought would start an entire viral Internet thing. The response that came out of it was amazing, and his [Nikki Sixx’s] response of calling me a ‘washed-up drummer’ was pretty wild and pretty hurtful.”
“But I got a great response from people through their comments, and a lot of people are behind me, so it’s all good. That said, I did get a cease-and-desist letter from all these lawyers who work for Mötley Crüe, so I can’t go into too much detail. I have to be careful with what I say, but then again, we’re not really talking about details; we’re just talking about what happened.”
“It really was a surprising thing because we were friends. And after the fact, I challenged Nikki Sixx to a jam-off, but I got no response. I’m not surprised, as I could jam circles around all of them. I’m sure of that. But yeah, what he said was sad because we were friends, but I guess we’re not anymore. I got texts from Derek Sherinian saying, ‘Man, what the hell is wrong with Nikki?’ and Stephen Pearcy apparently said to Nikki, ‘Dude, what the hell are you doing here? We’re all friends.'”
“And then I started to see a ton of responses from other musicians who said that they don’t like Nikki, and the rest of those guys too much and that the fans have been getting on Mötley a lot… I read that and was like, ‘Oh, my God. I didn’t know that.’ I really didn’t know about any of that stuff, so I had no way of knowing that this whole thing would get as big as it did.”
Motley Crue frontman Nikki Sixx had then dismissed “washed up” Carmine Appice’s claims about Mick Mars not getting along with Mötley Crüe before retiring from touring.
“A washed up drummer trying to speak for us? And bottom feeder media running with it to make money off of lies? Welcome to the sad new world of LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME.”
Well, it seems that the drummer didn’t seem to take these comments lightly, with a follow-up tweet that read:
“At least this washed-up drummer can play his instrument well who has pioneered heavy rock drumming and can educate others around the world on his instrument !!!”
Appice’s latest press junket dropped with the headline: “Washed Up Drummer” CARMINE APPICE Teams Once Again WITH Guitarist FERNANDO PERDOMO On A New Album Of Instrumental Rock, Releases First Single & Video?”
Not too long after the news of Appice’s latest went live, the veteran drummer reached out to Andrew Daly with an exclusive comment on the heated war of words for Ultimate Guitar, which went a little something like this:
“I want to respond to Nikki Sixx’s comments about me being a ‘washed-up drummer.’ I want to challenge him [Nikki Sixx] to a jam off to see who the better musician on their respective instrument is. Since your article in Ultimate Guitar started this whole brew-ha-ha, I felt we should give this statement to you and let you run with it.”
We will now have to wait and see how this story moves forward.
