I’d like to start off this piece by wishing Motley Crue lead singer Vince Neil a big fat happy 50th birthday. With people living longer, it’s like 50 is the new 30, which means when rock stars used to profess a desire to retire at 30, the lucky few can stretch their careers another twenty years.
Vince, your band Mötley Crüe was one of the defining acts of 1980s Los Angeles when the Sunset Strip was king. With them your popularity entered a new stratosphere for decades to come as younger generations picked up on your debauchery at first through their parent’s record collection (my father played me ‘Dr. Feelgood’ for the first time in 1989 when I was seven years old) and later in one of the most successful rock ‘n’ roll autobiographies of all time - ‘The Dirt’.
Mötley Crüe epitomised the prodigious excesses of 1980s Los Angeles with a never ending supply of chemicals both enhancing and inhibiting their daily ritual of consciousness, which made their hedonistic songs like ‘Girls Girls Girls’ seem believable, and more importantly accessible to John Everyteen trying to break out of the depressing reality of everyday suburban teenage life.
All of these traits that made Mötley Crüe so great in the 80s was inspired by the recklessness of youth. Can you do that when you’re 50? Well, no, not really. Mötley Crüe’s recent reformations haven’t had the hammer that shattered bored teenager’s shackles holding them to their mind-numbing lives, entertaining though they may be, but their softening global nostalgia tours still manage to inject an illicit excitement into their fans - young and old - that Justin Beiber’s wailing groupies could only dream of.
So one last time, happy 50th Vince Neil! May I be writing something similar on your 100th.
Mötley Crüe have five shows planned for 2011. Check them out at:
MAY
1 - The Bamboozle Festival, New Meadowlands Sports Complex, East Rutherford, NJ
24 - Palacio de los Deportes, Mexico City, Mexico
26 - Teatro Banamex, Monterrey, Mexico
27 - Arena VFG, Guadalajara, Mexico
JUNE
27 - Cheyenne Frontier Days
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