Posted by Mod Lang (@modlang) on May 6, 2026, 4:58 p.m.
I just finished this last night and I have to say this is the trashiest, sleaziest, most revolting and possibly entertaining rock bio I’ve ever read - book, period? Several of the more infamous anecdotes have become enshrined in rock lore: Ozzy snorting ants when running out of coke, the guys rubbing their dicks in breakfast burritos to cover up the smell of groupies, but did you know about the girl who they made sit on a champagne bottle (inserted you know where) until they finished a concert for the privilege of sex with them? The girl they had call her mother long distance with the receiver inserted into her pussy while the entire band stood by giggling? (“We not only lost respect for the girls, but also for ourselves.”) The poor punk that a drunken Nikki yells at, “Punk? I’ll show you punk!” and nails his earlobe to the bar? And every. Single. Page. Is. Like. That. It’s a non-stop barrage of rock’n’roll excess taken way beyond excessive as never seen before the 80s and thankfully we’ll never see again in these more woke and sober times. The band openly admit (brag, even) about getting away with rape and murder. (Yes, we all know that even Vince Neil admits that he deserved to serve hard time for his drunk driving manslaughter, but you probably didn’t know about Nikki admitting that he’s a rapist for switching himself out with Tommy on an unsuspecting groupie in a closet). Way too late, near the very end of the book (published in 2001) the guys mature a little, get married, have kids, sober up, and settle down, for a suitable Hollywood ending (which events since 2001 have since upset).
These two pages from Vince’s first chapter set the tone:
The only member who comes across as sympathetic is Mick Mars, who as a decade (at least!) older always looked like a pale, reanimated corpse even in the band’s prime, was just too old and frail to participate in the rest of the band’s antics. He suffers from a rare genetic spine/bone disorder that only grew progressively worse with age, and seemingly spent the band’s entire career drinking alone in his hotel room to cope with the physical pain. He’s a sad, lonely old man, in fact a rather pathetic figure who’d already been through two failed marriages with kids to support by the time he joined, and he knew that the Crue’s success was his last rope. He winds up broke from an ill advised marriage to a much younger backup singer and can barely play guitar due to the advancing illness. He’s also a serious space cadet who goes on tangents about UFOs, dinosaurs, and hallucinating grey ghosts from all his pysch meds.
Vince - The Slut. A good looking blonde SoCal surfer dude only in it for the money and pussy, his career ambition is to be a cross between David Lee Roth and his role model, Hugh Hefner. Eventually it gets to the point that he no longer bothers to pretend to care about the music and keeps showing up hours late to rehearsals after partying to 3 A.M. in his Playboy mansion, so the band fire him for laziness. While he seems to feel a little bad about the manslaughter that killed Razzle and leaves the passengers in the car he hit with severe injuries, he jumps right back off the wagon as soon as his court mandated sobriety ends. And while his chapter on losing his 4 year old daughter to cancer is gut wrenchingly painful to get through and makes me feel sympathetic for the guy....he’s still a worthless asshole. And a murderer.
Tommy Lee - The Puppy, and like all big, dumb dogs, should’ve been muzzled and neutered before he grew up to do any damage to others around him. He discovers his vocation at 5 years old banging the pots and pans in the kitchen and never grows out of it. He’s not exactly ight-bray even by rock star drummer standards and his favorite word is “dude”. His mean, violent streak renders any potential likeability moot. We all know too much about Pam Anderson’s ex, anyway. Moving on....
“Duuuuuude. Fuck yeah. Finally. How much room is Nikki going to get, bro? Fuck. The dude tried to put his own mother in jail. I love him; we’ve practically been married for twenty years. But sometimes it’s dysfunction junction over there. I’m not like that. I’m a hopeless fucking romantic.” - Tommy
Nikki - The Junkie. The nicest thing you could say about the other guys is that they’re dumb, careless, selfish hedonists who don’t give a fuck about anyone else or who they harm except themselves. This guy is fucking Evil. As the smartest (look, these are Motley Crue standards) and hippest member, he’s the defacto ringleader, writing all the songs and setting the musical direction. He’s by far the most (only!) interesting member of this gang of dirtbags, and the only one who seems to care about, you know, music . He has the most dysfunctional family backstory and winds up a homeless teen on the streets in L.A. where this glam-rock obsessed kid gets into punk, dates Lita Ford of the Runaways, and tries his hand at various up and coming metal bands. He carries an intense load of anger and bad attitude from his childhood trauma, and misdirects his punk rage at every person unfortunately caught in his direction. Bad enough, but he gets the bright idea to model himself after Johnny Thunders as this glamorous strung out rebel junkie rock star. He holds it (barely) together in the early days but after the first flush of success with all the drugs he wants available 24/7, the expected results occur. He admits that two of their albums were crap because he was too strung out to come up with more than 2 good songs for each. After the group’s world tour ends in Japan in 1986, he announces to his manager that he’s going on a solo tour. By which he doesn’t mean a musical tour. No, he plans on traveling up and down Asia & Europe on a sex and drugs tour. He gets as far as Hong Kong, where he orders up 100 prostitutes for room service (thoughtfully providing his entourage with a few each), at which point his handlers sit him down and march him back to the States. Then he dies. And comes back to life again from his OD. Which you probably already knew.
And for the coup de grace? This book almost never talks about the actual music. Seriously, there’s less than 1% of the words talking about the band’s songs, albums, musicianship, concert performances, or writing process. Rock’n’roll would be too much of a distraction from the sex and drugs!