Chronological Crue - The History of Motley Crue in 1995

30/1/95
Mötley Crüe plays their final show in support of their self-titled album at Club Shelter in Pasadena, California. The event is a benefit show for one of the premier guitar techs in the world, Sammy Sanchez, after he lost his daughter in a tragic accident. The night kicks off with a surprise support set by Billy Idol with Steve Stevens, Matt Sorum and Duff McKagan who play Communication Breakdown, Shakin’ All Over, Paranoid, and Rebel Yell. Mötley takes the stage for a short thirty-minute set, which includes Hammered as the only song from their latest album. Danny Boy from House of Pain sings backups on Live Wire as a special guest, who loses his wallet after stage-diving into the thin crowd. The performance turns out to be John Corabi’s last with the Crüe. 

John moves out of Mick Mars’ house and in with his new girlfriend Robin, who works as a model. After battling cancer for two years, John’s mother passes away; this adds to his stress levels. When her health insurance and social security don’t come through, John sells many of his possessions including his Harley, to pay her bills. He also borrows money from an uncle, expecting to pay him back with his first publishing advance from his next album with the Crüe.

12/2/95
After calling Tommy Lee to set up a date, Pamela Anderson cancels it when she gets called away to Cancun, Mexico to do a calendar photo shoot for the Beach Patrol suntan lotion line. Having broken off his engagement with Bobbie Brown and now determined to win Pamela over at any cost, Tommy takes an American Airlines flight to Cancun the next day with two friends, Bobby Fernandez and Doug. Upon arrival, he calls five hotels in search of her before finding out she is staying at the Ritz-Carlton on his next call. He anxiously waits for her to call him and when she finally does they arrange to meet. Tommy shows up in the hotel lobby in his white singlet top but management feels he is too casually dressed to enter the bar or restaurant, so they catch a taxi to a place called Señor Frog’s. The couple hit it off and they then spend every night together at restaurants, bars, nightclubs and the beach before capping the nights off in Pamela’s penthouse suite.

18/2/95
After completion of her photo shoot obligations, Pamela decides to stay in Cancun with Tommy for another two days. They go to a massive disco called La Boom and Tommy proposes to Pamela by taking a silver ring off his friend Bobby’s pinky finger and putting it on hers. They get blood tests at a hospital at 2am and have a lot of trouble finding a priest available to marry them.

19/2/95
Tommy Lee marries twenty-seven-year-old Pamela Anderson in Cancun, Mexico. This time around there is no white leather tuxedo for Tommy as they get married on the beach in their bathers, alongside the Camino Real Hotel in the late afternoon as the sun sets. They sip local cocktails called chi-chis while celebrant Judge Pedro Solis Rodriguez reads their vows. Tommy carries Pam into the sea to conclude the ceremony. Erotic photos from their wedding night are handed over to Playboy for inclusion in a new home-video titled The Best of Pamela Anderson. The Canadian born model and actress has graced the cover of Playboy an astounding five times – more than any other woman in the magazine’s long history. Instead of traditional wedding rings, the couple chooses to have each other’s names tattooed as a band on their fingers. Tommy’s best man is his friend Bobby Fernandez, drummer of the Electric Love Hogs, who had two songs on their 1991 debut album produced by Tommy. Their wedding party includes bikini competition contestants from La Boom nightclub, while the winner is selected as Pamela’s maid-of-honour. Pamela’s best friend Melanie is horrified that she got married after she had returned to the U.S. from Mexico. Pamela was born of Finnish descent after her grandfather Juho Hyytiainen left Finland for the U.S. in 1908 and changed his name to Anderson.

20/2/95
Tommy and Pam leave Cancun and head back to Los Angeles, deciding on the flight that they will head to Tommy’s Malibu beach home. Upon arrival at LAX, they are swamped by photographers and reporters who follow them to Tommy’s house where more are waiting. Pamela calls her parents to tell them of her marriage and they tell her to get a divorce immediately. Having heard of the wedding on the news, many angry messages from Bobbie Brown are left on Tommy’s answering machine because she feels they are still a couple. Tommy and Pamela have to hire security guards to patrol 24x7 and keep paparazzi off the hills around their residence.

3/95
Tommy and Pam have a second marriage ceremony at Tommy’s rented beach home in Malibu, California. The night has a space theme to it with Tommy wearing a silver cape and best man Bobby Fernandez wearing an Ace Frehley-style cape and matching helmet. Pamela also wears a silver cape and boots, as does her best friend and maid-of-honour Melanie. The couple exchange vows before Reverend Jerry Fike, who even moonwalks for the party.

Just before Tommy met Pamela he found a house nestled in the hills of Malibu that he put in escrow. The estate at 31341 Mulholland Highway is a six-bedroom, six-bathroom Spanish villa built in 1991, and features a two-storey rotunda entrance with Spanish tile floors, a wood-beamed ceiling, and wrought-iron balustrading. Encompassing 7,462-square-feet, the house includes multiple dual-sided fireplaces, and spa-like bathroom as part of the master suite. Outside, there is a huge lagoon-style swimming pool and spa with waterfalls, a koi pond, a grill and multiple patios so they can enjoy their 2.3 acres of land with striking views of Calamigos Ranch, Celio Farms and Rocky Oaks wineries. The couple soon moves in and starts planting many trees on the property and redecorating. They call it their Love Palace.

3/3/95
At a meeting in New York with Doug Morris, the CEO of Elektra’s parent company Warner, Mötley has pressure put on to get Vince Neil back in the band and to get rid of John. New head of Elektra Records, Sylvia Rhone, encourages John to stay, seeing Mötley as a tax write-off and hoping they will break up so she can allocate budgeted funds to other artists she supports. They insist John needs to become more of a star, telling him that he needs to have choreography lessons and vocal training, as well as a stylist.

10/3/95
Vince takes model Christy Turlington to Las Vegas for the opening of the Hard Rock Casino. With Christy sitting on his lap as he teaches her how to play Roulette, Tommy walks by and they exchange a smile and a nod of their heads. An intoxicated Vince later passes out and some friends carry him up to his room.

John is invited to attend the opening with the rest of the Crüe, so he and his girlfriend Robin buy new clothes to wear to the event. The day before, Nikki Sixx calls him and says not to come as the casino has only left passes for the more high profile members of the band. This infuriates John.

28/3/95
Vince comes second in the Toyota Grand Prix celebrity race in Long Beach, California that also features actors Matt Le Blanc, Grant Show, Cameron Diaz and Anthony Edwards. Each participant competes in an identically prepared Toyota Celica GT Liftback over ten laps. After about fourteen minutes of racing, Alfonso Ribeiro takes the chequered flag for the second consecutive year.

Vince’s four-year-old daughter Skylar comes down with flu-like symptoms during the day. Later at night, she doubles over in pain and can’t walk to the bathroom, so her mother Sharise takes her to West Hills Medical Centre where she is rushed into their hospital emergency and opened up. The doctors soon remove a stage four cancerous tumour the size of a softball from an area behind her stomach, after initially thinking her appendix had ruptured. It was the tumour that had exploded, spreading cancer throughout her insides.

Sharise phones Vince at the hotel where the Grand Prix drivers are staying and beginning to celebrate, and in her hysterical state, tells him that Skylar has cancer. Vince arrives at the hospital an hour later, joining Sharise and her mother in the emergency waiting room. After another hour, they are allowed in to see Skylar in intensive care, who is hooked up to life support machines and tubes. They sit by her side together after having not really spoken to each other in the last two years following their separation.

29/3/95
Skylar is transferred to the Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles so they can ensure all the fragments of the tumour, which ruptured around her abdomen, can be removed. Vince rides with her in the ambulance and upon their arrival she is given a CAT scan. Having arrived from Florida, Heidi joins Vince and Sharise in the waiting room for the CAT scan results, which indicates further cancerous tumours on both her kidneys. Later in the week, doctors operate to remove the tumours but when they open her up they are horrified by the size of the growths. They decide to leave everything intact as removing the tumours would most likely be fatal, so they try saving her kidneys and shrinking the tumours to a removable size by using chemo and radiation. Skylar remains in a lot of pain.

4/95
From a balcony of his new Malibu mansion, Tommy loads, pumps and aims his sawn-off shotgun at an American Journal TV crew after noticing them hiding and videoing him and Pam relaxing in their home, as renovations are carried out on their residence. The couple detests the paparazzi and their constant harassment.

Vince’s second solo album, now due for release, changes its name from Pirate Radio to Carved in Stone. The public is told the album’s release has been pushed back to August because the Japanese label wants a simultaneous worldwide release to prevent losses due to importing.

With his daughter so sick in hospital, Vince begins drinking heavily to cope with his depression, anxiety and anger. He spends his time either at the hospital or at Moonshadows restaurant in Malibu. One day Vince is involved in a road rage incident on the Pacific Coast Highway after a guy cuts him off in a BMW. Vince abuses him, so the guy stops and gets out of his car. Vince punches him in the face, splitting his knuckles to the bone, while onlookers call an ambulance for the other guy. Upon arrival at the hospital, the doctors bandage his hand after x-rays reveal he has broken bones in his hand.

At Easter, Vince dresses in a full-size Easter Bunny costume and visits Skylar in the hospital; she doesn’t know it’s him until he starts talking. Another time, Vince has Warner Bros bring in Bugs Bunny and Sylvester to try and cheer her up. 

27/4/95
The Los Angeles Superior Court files a further dissolution judgment on reserved issues for Tommy and Heather’s divorce. The court decides upon the division of assets and liabilities between the couple. Ownership of the home they built at 4970 Summit View Drive, Thousand Oaks, California transfers to Heather.

5/95
Tommy and Pamela make a promotional appearance at the Cannes French film festival as publicity for Pam’s new film to be shot called Barb Wire. On their way back to Los Angeles they stop in London to promote a new soft drink with aphrodisiac qualities called Virgin Energy, created by Virgin Records founder Richard Branson.

Vince records a ballad for Skylar called Never-ending Love, which is planned to be released as a CD single and video with all proceeds to benefit children’s hospitals. He also plans to give a percentage of money he makes on the next tour to children’s hospitals as well.

The aggressive cancerous tumour on Skylar’s right kidney has grown despite the radiation treatments, and now pushes her abdomen against her lungs, making it hard for her to breathe. Vince and Heidi do their best to make her smile by watching Disney videos together and singing children’s songs. Vince also dresses up in an Easter Bunny costume to hand out eggs at Easter.

The doctors decide Skylar can finally go home and have chemotherapy as an outpatient, even though she is getting shots of morphine for the excruciating pain. It’s the first time in more than a month that Skylar is in her own bedroom at Sharise’s house, but her stomach hurts constantly. Four nights later, she is back in hospital and doctors find she has a bowel obstruction from the previous surgery, after some scar tissue formed on her intestines and twisted them. Skylar has her third operation within two months. Following the operation, her condition deteriorates. The large tumour on her right kidney presses against her lungs causing her to pant fast. Three days later, she undergoes a fourth operation to remove the right kidney. When they open her up, they find the cancer has spread to her liver, intestines and the dorsal muscles in her back. The surgeons decide that removing the monstrous tumour will cause too much bleeding and she would probably die on the operating table, so they patch her up and hope for a miracle. 

23/5/95
Nikki’s wife Brandi gives birth to their third child in Tarzana, California and they name him Dekker Nilsson Sixx. The name Decker comes to Brandi in a dream and Nilsson is chosen in remembrance of the late singer Harry Nilsson, who was a friend of Nikki and Brandi’s. Dekker’s weight is 7lb 11oz at birth.

3/6/95
The oncologist in charge of Skylar’s doctors calls Vince and tells him that his daughter has stopped breathing. They put her on a respirator and give her medication that essentially paralyses her so she won’t expend unnecessary energy. Over the next six weeks her body continues to fight. Vince begins to blame himself for her condition because cancer runs on his mother’s side of the family.

5/6/95
Mötley Crüe’s Theatre of Pain and Girls, Girls, Girls albums are both certified four-times Platinum, now having sold over four million copies in the United States alone.

13/6/95
Ugly Kid Joe releases their Menace To Sobriety album through Polygram Records. The second-last track titled Oompa includes a spoof cover of Mötley Crüe’s song In The Beginning.

6/95
Mötley Crüe is recording their ninth album (including the Quaternary EP) with a working title of Personality #9 in the front living room of Tommy’s new house (dubbed Tommyland Studio) with the control room setup in the garage. Due to the construction work at Tommy’s new home, he and Pamela have been spending time at Pamela’s condo, while the band soon moves their recording work to Nikki’s space-age home studio called Butt Cheese West, which is still being wired to full professional standard as they try to figure out how all the new equipment works. Tommy and Nikki are producing the album with Scott Humphrey, who worked as an engineer on their Dr. Feelgood album and has never actually produced a band before. Tommy and Nikki pay for a lot of the album out of their own pockets. After the commercial failure of their previous album, they intend to go back to a Too Fast For Love meets Shout At The Devil sound. However Tommy and Nikki quickly head towards a futuristic sound with Humphrey, a Pro-Tools computer software master. John soon gets frustrated with the daily changing of songs, making it difficult for him to get his vocals down. More new song titles include Let Us Prey, Blackbox, Take Me In Your Wings, Melody, and Wrote My Name In Blood. Nikki and Tommy say they are working on a track with Mötley fans House Of Pain but a tune never eventuates.

Newlyweds Tommy and Pamela announce they are expecting their first baby next February.

7/95
Ten days after the announcement that Pamela Lee is pregnant, she miscarries, collapsing in their Malibu home. The paparazzi chase them to the hospital, even cutting off their ambulance on the road as they attempt to get the best pictures. They leave the hospital via a back exit but see a crowd of paparazzi on a rooftop across the street. They take off down the 405 freeway and are followed by a French man, woman and their dog in another car. When they snap pictures alongside them, Pamela starts smashing her passengers-side door into their car and screaming at them after Tommy runs their car off the road. He cuts them off on a shoulder of the highway, trapping their car from going anywhere, before jumping on their hood and kicking in their windscreen with his boot. They decide not to go back to their Malibu home for fear of more paparazzi, so they book into the Ritz-Carlton in Marina Del Ray instead. They charter a yacht and start to relax.

One evening as they head back through the hotel lobby, just a few days after the miscarriage, Pamela bends over to pick up Tommy’s cigarette packet he had dropped when a drunken businessman walks out of the restaurant with his wife and kids and says “Nice ass” to Pamela. Tommy punches him in the face while holding his Motorola mobile phone, knocking him out. Police soon come to their room and ask Tommy what happened but then say they won’t take him in and the guy won’t press charges. A month later a lawsuit arrives and he forks over a large sum to settle it. Tommy gets depressed for weeks after the miscarriage, as he really wants to have a child of his own.

Vince’s fiancée Heidi Mark is Playboy magazine’s Miss July ‘95. The former model and Hooters employee has had acting roles on The Young and the Restless, Baywatch, Married with Children, and been a guest warrior on American Gladiators.

26/7/95
Vince’s daughter Skylar undergoes an extremely risky eight-hour operation, as a final chance to remove the tumour that has overtaken her body. Her fifth operation is the family’s final bid for her recovery. A six-and-a-half-pound tumour the size of a football is removed, along with her right kidney, half her liver, part of her diaphragm, a piece of back muscle and the tumour from inside her left kidney. Vince asks to view the large tumour and he’s sickened by the sight and size of it when taken to the pathology labs. She recovers day by day after her fifth operation, until she can speak and smile. Vince stops drinking at Moonshadows and prepares his house for Skylar’s return.

1/8/95
Six days after her operation, Vince is greeted at the hospital by doctors as he brings in a giant panda for Skylar. They tell him that it seems an infection has developed around her remaining left kidney and they need to operate on her to clean the area. Skylar undergoes a sixth operation in an attempt to cleanup infection from her left kidney. Her condition deteriorates afterwards as her remaining kidney isn’t working well and her lungs fail regularly. She falls in and out of a comatose state.

8/8/95
Vince’s Carved in Stone album is finally released. The track Skylar’s Song – previously called Never-ending Love – is included as a loving tribute to his daughter. The Japanese release includes a cover of Chicago’s 1970 hit 25 Or 6 To 4. The album sells less than one-hundred-thousand copies.

Vince drinks extremely heavily at Moonshadows again, knowing his daughter is slipping away. The oncologist advises it is best for her family to visit and say their goodbyes.

12/8/95
Vince completes work on a video clip for Skylar’s Song. It features his home-video footage of Skylar from over the years, as well as footage of Vince at his Malibu beach home, Sea Manor.

15/8/95
On painkillers and still unconscious, Vince tells Skylar that he loves her before he leaves the hospital with Heidi to get some dinner at Moonshadows, while Sharise and her parents sit with Skylar. Just as they sit down at a table, Sharise calls and says he needs to return to the hospital because her vital signs are dropping fast. Sharise sits by her side as Skylar’s Song plays in the background. Sharise tells her, “Don’t be scared, sweetie. Go to sleep now. It’s alright.” Minutes later, Skylar passes away peacefully. Caught in traffic on Pacific Coast Highway, Vince arrives ten minutes later. Later, he drives back to Moonshadows after leaving the hospital and inebriates himself with alcohol and Valium pills in an effort to cope with his loss.

18/8/95
Skylar Lynnae Neil is buried in a small pink casket at Forest Lawn Cemetery in the Hollywood hills. At the service arranged by Heidi and Vince’s friend Bob Procop, her life is celebrated. In his poor condition, Vince does not attend. Tommy and Pamela send a large flower arrangement to the funeral, since they are currently in Europe. Tommy speaks with Vince on the phone for over an hour after learning of Skylar’s passing.

Immediately following the funeral, Vince is put in a limousine and driven to Anacapa rehabilitation facility in Oxnard, after Heidi had been liaising with rehab specialist Bob Timmons. Vince escapes and heads back to his Malibu home where he swallows as many pills as he can from his medicine cabinet before passing out. He then checks himself into the Universal City Sheraton Hotel. Vince sleeps under the hospital blanket Skylar died in because it still smells like her and makes him think she is still alive. He wakes up screaming every night from nightmares, often seeing evilly distorted images of her tumour that he viewed in the lab.

19/8/95
Ringside seats at the World Heavyweight boxing title fight at the MGM Grand Garden in Las Vegas between Peter McNeeley and Mike Tyson are occupied by Tommy and Pam. While they kiss, they miss Tyson’s eighty-nine-second victory.

25/8/95
Vince is coaxed by Heidi and Bob Timmons to check into the Betty Ford Center, but he flies to Palm Desert for a week to play golf as a preferred way of escaping. After drinking heavily every day at the Marriott hotel, he soon takes a taxi to the Betty Ford Center and checks in.

8/95
A new Mötley tune titled The Xmas Song is to be included on the Broken Arrow movie soundtrack around Christmas time, but it never eventuates. Pamela comes to Nikki’s home recording studio every Friday with a bottle of vodka and insists that everyone gets drunk with her. X-rated porno photos of Tommy and Pam adorn the pages of magazines worldwide. Pamela begins work on her Barb Wire movie, as Tommy works on some music for its soundtrack.

4/9/95
After three days of rehab at the Betty Ford Center, Vince finds the therapists to be too much, so he leaves and catches a taxi back to the Marriott in Palm Desert where he plays golf, drinks and passes out every day during the month.

3/10/95
Pamela throws a three-hundred-thousand-dollar surprise party for husband Tommy on his thirty-third birthday. When he arrives home, she dresses him in a white fur-collared, purple king’s robe and crown before having his face covered with white face paint. Pamela dresses as the ringleader in a top hat and a tour bus picks them up from their home. Upon boarding, nine little-people sing Happy Birthday to Tommy while champagne flows amongst his friends dressed in drag. The bus takes them to a remote field out in the middle of nowhere called Semler Ranch and two rows of flames line the entrance for hundreds of feet. More midgets appear and welcome them to Tommyland before rolling out red carpet between the fires.

Inside Tommyland is a world of midgets, confetti and bubble machines, torches, a Ferris wheel and rollercoaster amusement rides, lions and tigers in cages, contortionists and acrobats, fire-eaters and jugglers, a balloon blower on stilts, and even a couple of dancers flown in from Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas. They walk into a large Arabian tent where a concert stage awaits them, with pillows to sit on in the audience. Tommy’s baby grand piano also sits on the stage, after Pamela had its wrought iron legs redone with silver and gold leafing of his koi tattoos and favourite ring art.

All of Mötley Crüe jams onstage throughout the night, as does Slash and other members of Guns ‘N Roses, and also the Electric Love Hogs, following a rock set by a band named Crown. They feast on gourmet food before a guy dressed as Mighty Mouse brings out the birthday cake at 3am, followed by everyone playing midget football on their knees with Tommy as the Quarterback. The party ends at about 7am when everyone gets taken home on stretchers by hired ambulances. A film crew captures the night’s events on 35mm for a future video release.

Pamela thought up the concert over an hour in the bath tub with a note pad and then spent a month organising it all, while Tommy thought she may be cheating on him as she was being secretive and devious.

8/10/95
Redemption is to be the new label that official Pamela Lee merchandise will be sold under in the near future. Redemption is to market exclusive videos, short films, swim-wear, lingerie and furniture that Pamela and Tommy are designing. Pamela’s newest line is rubber clothing.

13/10/95
Tommy and Pam have an argument and Pam leaves to spend the night in her Malibu condo. She calls a friend to come over and console her, who finds her in an unconscious state having overdosed on almost three-hundred Ibuprofen painkillers and some sleeping pills that she washed down with champagne. She also tests positive to cocaine and amphetamines from a hospital urine sample. Hours later, a doctor from Westlake Medical Center calls Tommy to advise of her emergency admission, under the name of Barbara Happy. The press is told she was taken to hospital complaining of flu-like symptoms. She is released two days later with confirmation that she is four-weeks pregnant. Tommy and Pam’s first child is due to be born in the middle of next year.

11/95
Vince leaves Palm Desert and checks back into Anacapa in Oxnard, primarily for treatment and counselling of his grief, as well as his abuse of alcohol and pills. He starts to come to terms with his daughter’s death more, and pledges to commit more of his time to charity work to assist other children and parents who are suffering. While in rehab, his divorce with Sharise is finalised and he realises their bond through Skylar’s illness ended when Skylar passed away.  Between the financial impact of his divorce, and Skylar’s medical bills that totaled about two-and-a-half-million dollars, he is under some financial strain. However, he is happy that his fiancée Heidi moves in to his Malibu home.

Nikki’s relationship with wife Brandi struggles. Now a father of three, Nikki feels it’s perhaps time to track down his father to let him know he is a granddad, after last speaking with him in 1981. He calls a pool construction company in San Jose where he last knew Frank Feranna worked, but he is told that his father is dead and is asked if he is Randy when telling them that he is Frank’s son. He calls his mother to see what she knows and she insists he is alive. Nikki is still unaware of his father’s actual death on Christmas Day in 1987.

The next day Brandi takes a vacation to Hawaii without Nikki and their kids, so he hires a private investigator to follow her after being suspicious of her. Photographs are taken of her with another guy Adonis, the cousin of a concert promoter that had been to Nikki’s house many times before. Nikki confronts her and says he wants a divorce. Brandi threatens to take everything from Nikki, including his children.

2/12/95
John participates in Counter AID, a week-long fund-raising event to help promote LIFEbeat. LIFEbeat grants money to AIDS organisations throughout the U.S. and supports people within the music industry who are living with AIDS. Other celebrities participating include hip-hop artist Warren G, Alice in Chain’s Mike Inez, and the Lakers’ basketballer Cedric Ceballos. John guests in-store at Tower Records on Sunset Strip for two hours to autograph t-shirts and take Polaroid pictures while fans make donations to the cause.

12/95
Tommy and Pamela spend the Christmas season in Europe in search of snow, while major renovations are still being carried out on their Malibu home. Harrod’s in London allows the couple to shop for an hour and a half before the doors open to the public, previously only privileged to the Queen and Princess Diana.

On with the show