Chronological Crue - The History of Motley Crue in 1994

early ‘94
The public is advised that Vince Neil has developed throat problems that force an end to his solo touring for now. However, he plays Tuesday nights at his Bar One club in Hollywood. Called Vince Neil’s Ruby Tuesdays, the Vince Neil All-Stars jam with local musicians.

Mick Mars has three guitars stolen from A&M Studios in Los Angeles late at night by a guy who tells security he is Tommy Lee’s brother (Tommy has no brother). One of the guitars was a gift from producer Bob Rock.

Mötley Crüe decides to change the name of their new album from ‘Til Death Do Us Part to just Mötley Crüe, as they feel it doesn’t seem like a new record anymore since the name has been out there for so long.

Bill Kennedy, who records Mötley’s demos, plays Nikki Sixx and Tommy some songs by an industrial-style Seattle band he works with called War Babies. They say they would like to do something together but can’t fit it into their schedules.

17/1/94
Tommy dates Bobbie Brown for the first time; a model and former wife of Warrant singer Janie Lane with whom she has a young daughter Taylar. Sleeping at her Reseda home, they are awoken at 4:30am by the Northridge Earthquake. When her TV set smashes on the ground, they crawl to Taylar’s bedroom as half the house then falls away behind them. Tommy grabs Taylar and they run outside into the street, looking at the remains of their homes with other neighbours as the earthquake subsides. Bobbie and Taylar then move into Tommy’s Malibu house.

4/2/94
Vince is among more than seventy two celebrities playing golf in the sixth annual Frank Sinatra Celebrity Invitational tournament at the Marriott’s Desert Springs Resort in Palm Desert, California. The event benefits the Barbara Sinatra Children’s Center at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, and the Desert Hospital in Palm Springs. Vince is thrilled to get invited to Sinatra's home for a party under a big tent in his backyard, with the likes of Sammy Davis Jr., Robert Wagner, Telly Savalas and Frankie Avalon.

2/94
Vince holidays at Hurricane Hole Marina on Paradise Island in the Bahamas with his strip club entrepreneur friend Michael Peters, and over a dozen girls, some of which smuggle bags of cocaine on them for the flight there in two Learjets. A film crew is hired to document the nude partying onboard a ninety-foot yacht called Solid Gold anchored off shore. Vince’s girlfriend Heidi arrives on the third day, so the couple decides to stay in a beach house on their own as they try to establish their relationship. A few days later, a drunk Vince runs his Jet Ski into a coral reef, throwing him over the top and cracking a couple of ribs when he lands on the reef. The last time he cracked his ribs was in his fateful car accident now almost a decade ago.

3/94
Elektra Records hosts a listening party for the new self-titled Mötley Crüe album at London’s Hard Rock Café as part of a promotional press tour leading up to its release. In Milan, Italy, fans tears pieces off John Corabi’s clothing to keep as souvenirs, while a female Italian journalist tries to make out with Nikki the morning after their press conference. There are also two U.S. listening parties held; one on the west coast in Los Angeles and the other on the east coast at The Rebar in New York City, where members of Anthrax, Pantera, Danger Danger, Skid Row and the press are treated to free cocktails and Japanese finger food as they listen to the new album. They then party at a go-go bar until the small hours of the morning.

14/3/94
The self-titled Mötley Crüe album is released and enters the charts at number seven, after costing a massive two million dollars to produce. The original album artwork showed a picture of Nikki wearing a Nazi uniform but Elektra order the five hundred thousand copies printed to be destroyed and for it to be released with a new cover, which is designed by Steve Gerdes. It is also released with two different coloured logo covers and booklets; one red and the other yellow. Mötley uses feedback from a radio contest to choose Hooligan’s Holiday as the first single, with Hypnotized on the flipside – a previously unreleased demo that also appears as a bonus track on the Japanese version of the album. The eleven-minutes-plus Extended Holiday Version of Hooligan’s Holiday is remixed by the guys in Skinny Puppy. Tommy’s drum track on the single was one-take, with producer Bob Rock later saying it was the best drum track he’s ever heard. The song was originally written by Nikki and John in double-time like Live Wire or Deep Purple’s Highway Star, before Tommy and Bob Rock slowed it down. The video for the song is directed by Nick Egan and themed on Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 cult movie A Clockwork Orange.

The song Loveshine features mandolin guitar played by Bob Rock, while Power To The Music features Hook Herrera, a harmonica player they found in a club and invited to jam with them. Mick plays bass on the verses of Welcome To The Numb, a song originally called Dancing in the Hole and then renamed Chip On My Shoulder before they settled on the final title. John wrote Driftaway right before he joined Mötley and it lyrically deals with a lot of the things happening towards the end of his days in The Scream, where he wasn’t prepared for a lot of the turmoil, conflict and bullshit within the music industry.

The proposed Mötley Crüe EP featuring one song from each member titled Leftovers changes its name to Quaternary, and a limited edition run of twenty thousand copies are made available in Canada and the U.S. The mail order details are only initially found inside the first million copies of the new Mötley Crüe CD. The solo songs were worked on at the suggestion of producer Bob Rock.

31/3/94
John’s contract is amended to provide him with twenty five percent of all net income, except for merchandising and touring income of which his share is fifteen percent, in lieu of the weekly payments he has been receiving since joining the band.

14/4/94
Storm Brieanne Sixx is born as the second child for Nikki and Brandi.

17/4/94
Tommy and his girlfriend Bobbie attend the 1st Annual Eddie Van Halen Charity Golf Tournament Party at the Hard Rock Cafe in West Hollywood. Other guests to play in the tournament with Tommy earlier in the day include Neil Young, Rob Lowe, Bret Michaels, and Joe Pesci.

4/94
Vince’s girlfriend Heidi Mark graces the cover of this month’s issue of Playboy magazine. The couple spends a lot of their time at one of Malibu’s best restaurants called Moonshadows that's walking distance from home, after Vince ends his ownership in Bar One. Vince gets rid of his cocaine stash after Heidi’s jealous ex-fiancé and former vice cop sends them pictures once a week from the DEA helicopters he organises to spy on them.

MTV News interviews Mötley Crüe about the new album but focuses on the falling out with Vince and sarcastically asks about previous videos showing women, hairspray and fire. Nikki cuts the interview short in disgust and walks out with the band following.

3/5/94
Mötley Crüe’s self titled album achieves Gold status having sold half-a-million copies in the U.S.

29/5/94
The new Nine Inch Nails album titled The Downward Spiral is released. As a good friend of front-man Trent Reznor, Tommy is given special thanks on the song Big Man With A Gun after bringing some strippers into their neighbouring A&M studio and recording one of them having an orgasm and using it as a sample at the beginning of the track. He also drums on two mixes of Closer, even though he’s not mentioned for credit. Tommy is a fan of the underground techno/industrial scene; an influence that shows through on his track Planet Boom on Mötley’s Quaternary EP.

6/94
Proposals for a lengthy Mötley Crüe U.S. arena headlining tour are scaled down, due to poor album and concert ticket sales. MTV refuses to play the video for Misunderstood as a result of the interview walk-out a couple of months earlier. Mike Amato, the Crüe’s tour manager, organises smaller-sized venues, but they still have trouble selling tickets.

Vince begins recording his second album at NRG Studios in North Hollywood with The Dust Brothers producing, whose previous work includes the Beastie Boys. Its tentative title is Pirate Radio. Steve Stevens is replaced by guitarist Brent Woods, formerly of Wildside – a band named after the Mötley Crüe song. Another change sees Dave Marshall replaced by Marti Frederiksen. Included in the new songs is a cover of Lust For Life from Iggy Pop’s 1977 album Suck On This, which is intended for inclusion on the Showgirls movie soundtrack. Vince plays bass on the track that unfortunately doesn’t get selected in the final soundtrack listing.

9/6/94
Mötley Crüe’s Anywhere There’s Electricity Tour kicks off at the Tucson Community Center in Arizona with only five thousand people in the fifteen-thousand-seat venue. Type O Negative and Kings X are the support acts for the tour, but Brother Cane play the first few shows until Type O can join the tour. During a radio interview before the show, Nikki invites fans to come to the station and he promises to put each and every one of them on the guest list. Two fans show up (brothers Emm & Ray Reyes), signalling to him the end of any chance the new album will top the previous Dr. Feelgood release. Mick’s son Les Deal works as the set carpenter on the tour. The set list winds up with acoustic versions of Home Sweet Home (complete with an intro played on harmonica), a cover of The Beatles’ classic song Revolution, Don’t Go Away Mad and Loveshine. An order form for the band’s limited edition Quaternary EP is included in the tour book.

15/6/94
After playing in front of twenty thousand fans in Mexico City, Mötley’s accountant Chuck Shapiro advises the band that the tour is not financially viable and it needs to come to an end. A band meeting is held the following day and Tommy and Nikki each write a cheque for seventy five thousand dollars to keep the show on the road. Mick is unable to contribute due to a lack of funds as a result of his recent divorce from Emi, and John has recently forfeited his salary of ten thousand dollars per week.

25/6/94
In Texas, Tommy, John and Dimebag from Pantera go to Benihana’s and drink Hulk Blood cocktails (a mixture of Midori and sake). They decide to go to a tattoo parlor where Dimebag has the words ‘Hulk Blood’ inked on his leg. Tommy gets ‘kill’ and ‘reset’ buttons tattooed on the inside of his left elbow, while John gets the same buttons on the outside of his left arm. In their drunken state, they then meet Pantera’s bass player Rex at a lake to go waterskiing for relief from the extreme summer heat. John passes out on a bench in his leather pants while the others ski, and he gets bad sunburn after taking his t-shirt off.

26/6/94
On tour in Tulsa, Oklahoma, local authorities try to arrest Nikki for inciting a riot after he tells fans to rip down the cyclone fence erected between them and the Crüe on stage, four songs into the band’s set. No charges are pressed.

11/7/94
Vince’s former girlfriend, porn star Savannah, is found by her manager in her garage having shot herself in the head with a Beretta 9mm automatic pistol, after she totalled her Corvette earlier in the night, breaking her nose and causing disfiguration to her face. Just a few days prior, she asked Vince to be her date at the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas, but he cancelled on her at the last minute after previously having said he would.

19/7/94
Mick becomes a grandfather when his daughter Stormy gives birth to a baby girl Shandi, named after the Kiss song on their Unmasked album released in 1980.

mid ‘94
In a Los Angeles court, Tommy is put on probation and fined two hundred dollars, after being convicted of illegal possession of a weapon, following his arrest earlier in the year when his baggage was x-rayed at Los Angeles International Airport showing a 0.40 calibre semi-automatic pistol inside. The gun was loaded with ten hollow point bullets designed to break open and spray metal fragments into the body after firing.

Misunderstood is released as a single backed with Smoke The Sky and a demo version of Hammered. Mick’s friend and former Deep Purple bassist Glenn Hughes provided backing vocals on the song. The video for Misunderstood is directed by Brian Lockwood and features a sepia-toned Crüe playing on a house porch, while the storyline follows the lyrical content.

Mötley is negotiating to play Donnington Festival for the third time, taking the stage second on the bill behind Aerosmith. Extreme are then mooted to play second so the Crüe pulls out, refusing to play before Extreme.

Tommy gets a large tribal tattoo back job, laid on freehand by Leo Zulueta at Black Wave Tattoo in Los Angeles; something that his former wife Heather Locklear would never allow him to have done. After six months of dating Bobbie Brown, Tommy proposes to her by getting on his knees and giving her a fifteen-thousand-dollar engagement ring.

2/8/94
In Chicago, Tommy lets off a firecracker from the band’s tour bus. A piece of bitumen from the ground flies through the air and leaves a hole in the bus driver’s arm, who is standing quite some distance away next to John.

12/8/94
Performing at the Harley Bike Rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, each member of Mötley Crüe rides their motorbike into the Buffalo Chip Camp Ground.

8/94
Rock Out Censorship’s Anti-Censorship Campaign kicks off at the Mötley Crüe concert at the Star Lake Amphitheatre near Pittsburgh. T.J. Rooney, a State Representative from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania plans to introduce legislation that would make selling or buying stickered recordings in Pennsylvania to/for anyone under eighteen a state crime. The bill, titled H.B. 2982, is to be proposed to the Pennsylvania State Senate’s Judiciary Committee on September 12, with seventeen other state legislatures sitting on similar proposals. The Crüe invites John Woods from ROC to say a few words about H.B. 2982 from the stage during their set, which is well received by the crowd. Pittsburgh TV station WPXI-11 features the story live from the concert, talking about the bill and interviewing both John Woods and Crüe members.

29/8/94
Mötley Crüe’s Anywhere There’s Electricity Tour comes to a premature close due to poor ticket sales, with the final U.S. show taking place at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. Before the show on their bus drive from San Francisco back to LA, Tommy's drum tech Clyde Duncan is unhappy with John being in the band, the new music and budget cuts affecting him, so he decides to quit. He makes the bus driver pull over, where he gets out and goes his own way.

9/94
Mötley Crüe advises Doug Thaler that they no longer have confidence in his management and they part ways, eventually finding a new manager in Allen Kovac from Left Bank Management, whose resurrections of Duran Duran and Meat Loaf impressed the band. Mötley’s business accountant Chuck Shapiro is also sacked.

The one time in the year that Nikki has sex with his wife Brandi, she falls pregnant. As much as his marriage is on the rocks, he tries to keep it together for the sake of his family since he never had one.

1/10/94
The Japanese leg of the Anywhere There’s Electricity Tour begins as a very keen Mötley and their crew arrives at Kansai New International Airport in Osaka. Also arriving is Tommy’s fiancée Bobbie Brown and while her name is now tattooed on his neck, he becomes increasingly annoyed by her drug habit that fuels many arguments between them.

2/10/94
Nikki, Tommy and Bobbie go downtown in Osaka, shopping and feasting on sushi, tempura and crab. At a place called American Village, tons of kids start to follow them around, very excited to witness the Crüe, and Tommy and Bobbie kiss many times.

3/10/94
In the morning, Nikki buys software from a shop called Nihon Bashi for himself and as a present for Tommy’s birthday today. During the first show of the tour later at night, Tommy receives another birthday present: a spanking onstage from Bobbie Brown.

4/10/94
Mötley performs a sell-out show in Hiroshima. Tommy thinks he’s funny by deciding to play the Gap Band’s song You Dropped The Bomb On Me as the intro music. At the end of the show when the house lights go back on, John’s song from Quaternary titled Friends plays over the speakers. Due to a lack of hotel accommodation because of the Asian Games they fly out after the concert to stay in Fukuoka, where they play the next night.

6/10/94
The rest of the Sixx family, including their babysitter, flies in to Tokyo to meet Nikki and the Crüe. The Sixx family shops in a toy store called Kiddyland the next day. Gunner leaves with a new toy samurai sword.

8/10/94
Coming out of the Tokyo Hilton elevator on his way to attend a radio interview in the hotel, Tommy greets many invited guests waiting to attend a wedding ceremony on the same floor, dressed only in a bathrobe. After the Tokyo show that night, they go out to dinner at a Yaki Niku beef restaurant with members of their record company, dining on beef tongue and seafood. On the way, Nikki buys Brandi a bunch of her favourite flowers – Lilies.

11/10/94
After playing in Sendai the previous night, the Crüe plays their final show of the tour in front of fourteen thousand fans at the Budokan in Tokyo. Half an hour prior to going on stage, John decides he wants to walk on wearing a Japanese Kabuki mask, so the staff goes through pouring rain to find and buy the mask he wants. Nikki brings his son Gunner on stage during the show when he introduces the band, and during his drum solo, Tommy stops to take a picture of the crowd. Backstage after the show, Mötley is presented with Gold albums for sales of their self-titled Mötley Crüe album in Japan.

John heads to The Lexington Queen club and gets drunk. He sees a sign saying that the Vince Neil Band will be playing next week. The Polish model he’s with, whom he met earlier in the night, says she is going to the show so John mentions she can say hello to Vince from him. At 3am he heads back to her three-room place for a raucous party of her drunk and naked eleven housemates; he stays the night before the flight home in the morning.

12/10/94
Nikki and his family fly out of Japan for a holiday in Phuket, Thailand while Tommy and Bobbie fly to Fiji. Mick heads back to Los Angeles with John, keen on writing songs in his studio.

18/10/94
The Vince Neil Band plays a show in Tokyo. Vince heads to The Lexington Queen club afterwards, where the Polish model that John was with a week earlier passes on a hello to him. Enraged, Vince flips over a table, before throwing a beer bottle at her and cutting his hand open in the process, as he abuses her. She phones John to tell him of the incident.

late ‘94
Smoke the Sky is released as a single. MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball won’t show the video due to its lyrical content. The guerilla-style video clip is again directed by Brian Lockwood and is filmed with one camera in rehearsals, funded by the band themselves as times get tough.

Having completed work on his new album, Vince spends a lot of time in Florida – home state of his girlfriend Heidi – where he often visits The Dollhouse strip club in Fort Lauderdale. As Warner Brothers’ executives decide the best approach to marketing his album that innovatively mixes rap beats with rock, a power struggle causes large-scale firings at the label. This leaves Vince without his main contact in Michael Ostin, which pushes the release of his new album further back. Subsequently, Vince delves further into his motor racing interests and drives for the P.I.G. Indy Lights racing team owned by a Long Beach Police sergeant. His pit crew consists of guys from the sergeant’s SWAT team, until the racing team’s possessions are seized following the sergeant being busted selling cocaine from the police evidence locker.

12/94
Mötley starts working on their next album with a plan of returning more to their roots with a straight-ahead rock’n’roll style, instead of the darkness that their last album consisted of. They write new songs at A&M Studios with Bob Rock producing called The Year I Lived In A Day and La Dolce Vita that they are very happy with. However, they soon decide they will no longer work with Bob because they feel he is too expensive and will over-produce the album. Bob Rock is the next to be fired, following the band’s previous firings of their manager Doug Thaler and accountant. The Crüe is angry with Elektra not being behind their self-titled album released earlier in the year, so they want to leave the label and do it alone.

16/12/94
Mötley plays a Christmas benefit acoustic jam with the Boxing Ghandis at the Troubadour with an entry fee of two dollars plus two cans of food. Towards the end of the night when they play Loveshine, the Ghandis come on stage with Teddy Andreadis from Guns N’ Roses on piano and Glenn Hughes on lead vocals. They finish the night with Don’t Go Away Mad.

21/12/94
Tired of the constant fighting with his fiancée and seeing no chance of their relationship working, Tommy asks Bobbie Brown to leave his home. Tommy tells her that she can have her possessions back when she returns the fifteen-thousand-dollar engagement ring he gave her. When she refuses, he leads her to the door. An hour later the police arrive and allow her to take some of her possessions. Tommy protests but he is handcuffed and arrested for spousal abuse, after Bobbie claims he choked her. When Tommy is released from his cell a couple of days later on fifty thousand dollars bail, he finds that Bobbie has taken every item in his home, including his chairs, tables and bed, only leaving him with one fork in the dishwasher.

29/12/94
Tommy and Bobbie see each other a few times after their separation and have sex, but they still find themselves arguing. After getting angry at Tommy because Bobbie thinks he likes one of her friends, Tommy picks up a vase and smashes it on her apartment floor before leaving. He heads to the house of his junkie friend Sedge who shoots Tommy up with two cc’s to escape his issues with her. The quantity is too much for Tommy though and he is soon rushed to Cedar Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles after overdosing. Later in the night, Sedge and another friend Doug come to the hospital and take the tubes out of Tommy’s arms and the wires that connect him to machines, and they escape from the hospital with Tommy before the media finds out about the overdose.

Tommy later says the first time he took heroin was at Nikki’s place at Valley Vista Boulevard back in 1986. He would always shoot up in the rose tattoo in the crook of his arm.

31/12/94
Tommy and some friends go to the Sanctuary club on New Years Eve and Bobbie Brown meets him there. The friends sit in a booth drinking Cristal champagne and taking ecstasy, when a waitress comes over and gives Tommy a shot of Goldschlager cinnamon schnapps liqueur from Pamela Anderson who is one of the owners of the club. Tommy doesn’t realise that she had sent shots to everyone in the club, and thinks it was just for him. He walks over to her table and squeezes in between her and her friends before licking her up the side of her face. Pamela then laughs and turns away, licking the face of the girl next to her. Tommy slams his shot then throws the glass at the bar, breaking all kinds of glasses and bottles, blaming his outburst on his Greek heritage. They talk for most of the night while Bobbie gives them dirty looks from the bar. Tommy walks Pamela to the car of her girlfriend Melanie as they leave at around 2am, and after asking her several times for her phone number she gives it to him. Tommy calls Pamela over and over again during the next six weeks, trying to arrange a date between their busy schedules. During one message he sings her a version of the Oscar Mayer theme song about his penis, which grabs Pamela’s attention.

On with the show