heavy metal rock group

Mötley Crüe's loud, irreverent, and hard-driving heavy metal music has drawn sneers from rock critics and nothing short of adulation from millions of teenaged fans. The songs, both in sound and substance, are precisely calculated to echo the aggressions and sexual fantasies of alienated younger Americans—and are just as precisely calculated to disturb parents and other adult authority figures. The members of Motley Crue do more than just preach a musical ethic of parties, fast women, and immediate self-satisfaction, they live those values from day to day, a phenomenon that is no small part of their appeal.

As David Handelman noted in Rolling Stone, heavy metal of the Motley Crue variety "has caught on as a sort of Lite punk: it smells and tastes like rebellion but without that political aftertaste. Its main selling points are that adults find it unlistenable, preachers call it blasphemous, and Tipper Gore blushes reading the lyrics. Fans at Crue concerts say they like the group because the music is hard and fast, but they also like the band's reckless hedonism, which they read about in the metal fanzines."

That hedonism has become legend in less than six years: two Crue members, Tommy Lee and Nikki Sixx have married starlets, singer Vince Neil was convicted of felony manslaughter for a drunk driving accident, and Sixx was a heroin addict during much of the band's early days. Handelman claims that the four rockers in Motley Crue "have continued to indulge in every conceivable rock & roll vice," and have celebrated their lifestyles in ear-splitting concerts with fireworks and other dazzling pyrotechnics. "I've always thought of us as the psychiatrists of rock & roll," Sixx told Rolling Stone, "because the kids come to see us get all this anxiety and pent-up aggression out. That hour and a half is theirs. No one can take it away. No parent can tell them to turn it down."

All four members of Motley Crue are high school drop-outs who displayed rebellious tendencies in early youth. They met in California in the early 1980s after each had worked some time in various heavy metal club bands. Nikki Sixx was the founder of the group, originally called Christmas, but the band's name comes from the imagination of guitarist Mick Mars. Handelman recounts that Sixx and Tommy Lee recruited Mars after seeing his ad: "LOUD, RUDE, AGGRESSIVE GUITARIST AVAILABLE." Handelman quotes Lee as saying, "We didn't even have to hear him play. We went, This is the guy—he's disgusting.'" The band was rounded out with singer Vince Neil, whose onstage theatrics were more valuable than his vocal prowess.

By 1983 Mötley Crüe was a favorite new band among the heavy metal aficionados. Handelman notes that Crüe "has consumed more than 750 bottles of Jack Daniel's in its quest for musical excellence." In 1983 Sixx was quoted as saying: "We could just fall apart tomorrow or go straight to the top, because we're such extremists as personalities. It's like riding a roller coaster twenty-four hours a day. Every time you turn around, somebody's in jail or 100,000 kids are buying our album."

As with many heavy metal bands of the 1980s, Motley Crüe was helped immensely by the advent of MTV (Music Television). The band's graphic music videos delighted teens and enraged would-be adult censors such as Tipper Gore, wife of congressman Albert Gore. The adult antipathy to Crüe's style only intensified the appeal for some teens; what surprised Crüe, and many other observers, was the age of the audience. Fan letters from ten- and eleven-year-olds were not uncommon, and the average age of a Motley Crüe fan was fifteen—albeit a rather sophisticated fifteen.

"We play and write for the kids," Sixx told Rolling Stone.

"We've never had peer acceptance. They couldn't see past the costumes. . . . Kid's don't buy Whitney Houston. People that buy one record a year buy that. In the golden age of rock it was all kids playing for kids. Now it's that again." Neil added: "We don't write songs to be messages. . . . When I was younger, even now, I don't listen to the words. If I like the melody, I like the song." Sixx claimed: "I'm not a parent. I don't want to tell kids what to do."

Admittedly, Mötley Crüe music is not strong on lyrics. Most songs deal with the band, touring, male exploits with buddies or women, and parties. The tunes are classic hard rock, with insistent drum beat and catchy guitar riffs. What has made Mötley Crüe famous, however, is its road show—ninety minutes of special effects, racy leather clothing, and macho antics, all delivered at the peak of amplification. "We try to go overboard with the stage show," Neil told Rolling Stone, "so the kids get their money's worth. I'd be bummed if I went to a concert and they just stood there and played. That's not my idea of show business." Handelman comments that the music "stirs the kids up only to dump them back in the malls, as exhausted and aimless as ever."

Motley Crue has managed to maintain its original personnel despite occasional run-ins with the law and infrequent stays in substance abuse rehabilitation clinics. Marriages and drinking or drug problems are kept somewhat quiet, as they're seen to conflict with the band's wild and hedonistic image. In Esquire magazine, Bob Greene polled some Crue fans for ideas on the source of the group's attraction. One nineteen-year-old girl replied: "I think they're all gorgeous. When I see them, I just naturally think of leather and whips and chains. I think that means that they're aggressive. I happen to love that image; it's a neat image. I think it's that kind of aggressiveness that a woman is always looking for." A thirteen-year-old female fan put it even more succinctly. "They're really good-looking," she said. "Good and mean. They just look like guys who are out to party and have a good time."

From enotes.com