Chronological Crue - The History of Motley Crue in 1988

1/88
Tommy Lee is the first band member to check into rehab as he enters a facility in Tucson called Cottonwood. On his second day, a doctor brings the demons of his addiction to the surface and Tommy breaks down when he realises how powerful the force of his addiction is, which has been controlling him for years. When he sees a sign saying Silence = Death, he thinks back to his childhood and being punished by being sent to his room and not spoken to.

After a week, the other band members fly to Cottonwood to be together, at the suggestion of Bob Timmons, and they are soon standing in a circle with their arms around each other singing The Rolling Stones song You Can’t Always Get What You Want as part of their therapy. After the song, Nikki Sixx’s resentment towards his parents kept bottled inside causes him to break down when the counsellor asks them to visualise themselves as little boys.

Pennsylvanian resident Matthew John Trippe claims Crüe managers Doc McGhee and Doug Thaler decided to bring him in as a new Nikki after he was unable to continue after his serious car crash in mid-1983. He files a lawsuit against McGhee Enterprises, Inc. citing civil theft and other relief, claiming royalties that were never paid for songs he claims he wrote. These include Danger, Knock ‘Em Dead Kid, Girls Girls Girls, You’re All I Need, Dancing On Glass, and Wild Side. Trippe has a criminal history of drugs and has been in and out of mental institutions for some time.

Doc McGhee is arrested on a charge of assisting to smuggle twenty nine thousand pounds of marijuana into North Carolina from Colombia on July 7, 1982 via a shrimp boat, prior to his association with the Crüe. He has previously been busted for bringing a shipment of cocaine into the state of Louisiana, so this is his second drug trafficking charge. After pleading guilty, McGhee receives a five-year suspended prison sentence, a fine of $15,000, and is ordered to set up an anti-drugs foundation. McGhee calls it the Make A Difference Foundation.

Vince Neil finally completes his two hundred hours of community service and probation period, stemming from his vehicular manslaughter charge after his December 1984 car crash.

21/1/88
Vince joins Guns N' Roses on stage at The Cathouse in Hollywood to sing the night's final song - the AC/DC classic Whole Lotta Rosie. The concert is the first for drummer Steven Adler since breaking his arm.

17/2/88
A twelve-year-old fan from Hollywood, Florida sets his legs on fire while trying to imitate the shot in Mötley’s Live Wire video clip, where Nikki plays guitar with his high heeled leather boots alight. The boy suffers burns over ten percent of his body. Mötley Crüe issues a statement saying the band’s stunts should not be tried at home.

2/88
Although Mick Mars goes along with the group meetings and therapy in the early stages, he finds his own form of quitting works better and is a lot cheaper than rehab. He loses twenty pounds and many wrinkles in the first few weeks just by being strong minded and not wanting to drink any more, after becoming so disgusted by the way he looked, how close Nikki came to dying, and the general state of the band.

22/3/88
Nikki, Tommy and Vince continually check into and out of expensive rehab facilities as they try and stay away from drugs and alcohol. Nikki sells his house on Valley Vista Blvd, Sherman Oaks for $500,000 and moves into a new place in Hidden Hills, where he writes lots of songs, feels disconnected from reality, and doesn’t go out for months at a time.

30/4/88
In a badly hungover state, Vince marries his twenty-three-year-old girlfriend Sharise Lee Ann Ruddell at the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles, by a lake with white swans. Wedding garments are made by Mötley's clothing designer Ray Brown. Sharise grew up in Huntington Beach, California and loved everything about the surf culture, always wearing her bikinis. She met Vince through the Tropicana strip club, where she began working as a round girl holding up signs between bouts, before becoming a mud wrestler there - she was never a stripper. Their first date was a dinner at L'Orangerie then the Comedy Club. Vince reportedly offers to give Sharise $3,000 per month to quit mud wrestling. Pictures of her posing in the pool with Bret Michaels can be seen on the inside sleeve of Poison’s Open Up and Say… Ahhh! album. Meanwhile Nikki’s former fiancée Vanity graces the cover of this month’s issue of Playboy magazine.

Vince and Sharise live in a huge house within the Bell Canyon gated community, near Chatsworth, California. Situated on a five-acre block just forty minutes drive from Los Angeles, the house has a church steeple, its own moat, waterfalls, a stream running through the backyard, a nine-hundred-year-old front door, and a train track that runs big electric trains around the ceilings insides. The problem is that it is haunted, with weird activity taking place particularly in the bedrooms. They get out of there and buy a better place on S Summit Ridge Circle in Chatsworth that overlooks San Fernando Valley. Vince has a car stacking lift system in his three-car garage so he can house six of the thirty-five exotic cars in his collection there.

5/88
Almost three years after Mötley's 1985 concert in Huntsville, Alabama, a $1.3 million lawsuit on behalf of Robby Miller and another young fan injured at the show is lodged at the Limestone County Courthouse in Athens, naming Mötley Crüe, the City of Huntsville, Von Braun Civic Center and concert promoter Sound Seventy Productions as defendants. Nikki testifies and represents the band at the seven-day trial, working with lawyer Patrick Lamar from Lanier Ford Shaver and Payne, who is retained by the band's insurer. Now 17, Miller was a big fan of the group sitting in the audience when he got hit in the face by an object believed to have come from the stage, causing him to lose an eye and have his lip disfigured. Defense attorneys have a table-top sized model of the Theatre of Pain tour stage built by a company in California to use during the trial but the model is heavily damaged during shipment and is glued back together by their lawyer. After a five-male, seven-female jury is unable to reach a decision based on evidence presented, a mistrial is declared. Mötley Crüe reaches an out-of-court financial settlement for an amount that has never been made public.

21/5/88
Vince is one of many hard rock stars who participate in the Rock ’n’ Roller Charity Softball game.

7/88
Vince and Sharise are rumoured to be separated, after being married for only three months. The couple find themselves constantly fighting after Sharise gives up her dancing and wrestling work at the Tropicana.

late 88
Vince and Tommy were said to have teamed up with Axl Rose and Slash from Guns N’ Roses to collaborate with a band Black & White on their rap song called Rainbow Bar and Girls that was released by Atlantic Records on both cassette-single and 12” maxi single formats. It is actually the band London though, and Lizzie Grey, who co-wrote Public Enemy #1 on Mötley’s first album, receives a song writing credit for the track that goes Gold, selling over half a million copies in the U.S. alone, before Atlantic pulls it from sale.

9/88
Finally off heroin, Nikki finds his sobriety to be a terrifying reality. He sees a psychiatrist after becoming very confused and agoraphobic. All his rehab and therapy makes him feel like he’s not Nikki Sixx anymore. His therapist suggests he tries a new experimental drug called Prozac to correct his clinical depression and a chemical imbalance in his body, which helps him to start socialising again. He goes on a date with actress Lisa Hartman but it doesn’t work out. Nikki invites Eric Stacy from the band Faster Pussycat to move in with him, as he has also been through rehab recently.

10/88
Mötley records a song called Powerful Stuff for the soundtrack of the new Tom Cruise film Cocktail. Production with Tom Werman isn’t working out, so they scrap the song, which is then picked up and re-worked by The Fabulous Thunderbirds. The song is included on the soundtrack, and is then released by The Fabulous Thunderbirds a year later and reaches number sixty five on the charts. It features the lead-guitar work of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s brother Jimmie.

Now sporting red locks and a large new tattoo of a leopard down his right arm, Tommy features in Sam Kinison’s singing debut remake of The Troggs classic, Wild Thing, from his Warner Bros. album Have You Seen Me Lately? The video also features Jon Bon Jovi and Ritchie Sambora of Bon Jovi, Poison’s C.C. DeVille, Billy Idol, Rudy Sarzo of Whitesnake, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith, Slash and Steve Adler from Guns N’ Roses, various members of Ratt, and a special appearance by fellow comedian Rodney Dangerfield. It also stars Jessica Hahn, a former girlfriend of Playboy guru Hugh Hefner, as the Wild Thing. Heather forbids Tommy from being anywhere near her after the shoot, due to the shameless way she goes after Tommy on the video set, knowing full well who he is and who he is married to.

8/10/88
Nikki picks up Slash and heads to Imperial Gardens for dinner before they go to Duff’s place. They then go to a club called Flaming Colossus and Scream club, before Slash crashes at Nikki’s. They head to a shooting range the next day with Nikki’s Baretta .380 and a .357.

22/10/88
Nikki visits Mick’s house and they write songs including one called Mötley Christmas and a Happy Crüe Year for a hopeful Xmas single. A Rod Stewart-ish type song called Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away) and an upbeat strutter called Rattlesnake Shake are also written. They start working on another but get tired, opting to play the blues instead.

11/88
The band and management are unhappy with the working relationship with Tom Werman and feel they now need some fresh blood to get the best out of the band. Quincy Jones is approached but he’s busy working on his own project and the next Michael Jackson album. They then meet up with producer Bob Rock, whose influences, thoughts and style are more aligned with the Crüe’s. They like his previous work with The Cult, Ted Nugent and particularly Kingdom Come, and decide to work with him on the next Mötley Crüe album, which is to be recorded in his Little Mountain Studios in Vancouver, Canada. It turns out he had always wanted to work on a Mötley record.

12/88
Vince buys Tommy an AK-47 gun for Christmas. All of Mötley, except Mick, boasts large firearms collections, including Berretta semi-automatics, magnums, 12-gauge shotguns, pistols, assault rifles and Uzi’s. As a child, Nikki used to hunt with his grandfather using a 30.06 that he made for him.

The Mötley Crüe fan club Safety In Numbers (S.I.N.) ceases its operations.

On with the show