The American Rock Civil War: Inside the battle of Guns N’ Roses and Mötley Crüe
The lights are glaring, the crowds are roaring, the stage is set – ding ding, round one: it’s time for the great American rock battle between Guns N’ Roses and Mötley Crüe.
Feuds within the rock and roll business are, of course, no new phenomenon; you can look to almost any moment in its storied history to find at least one example, but amid the sunshine and the glamour of the LA scene, that tension never reached its bigger boiling point than when Guns N’ Roses and Mötley Crüe came to blows.
Don’t be fooled: that’s not just a manner of speaking. The two bands famously did have a physical bust-up of epic proportions at the MTV Awards in 1989, with Vince Neil catastrophically ending the night by planting a punch straight into the face of Izzy Stradlin. This may have been the headline moment, but there was a lot more that built up in this battle of the bands.
The relationship between the rivals had begun in earnest two years prior, when they went on the road together as part of Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction tour. Being two of the most exciting talents on the glam metal circuit at the time, there was obviously some level of mutual appreciation. But as with most things where hedonism and decadence are involved, it soon turned ugly.
There were reports of over-indulgence, bravado, and trying to outshine each other – but with one equally as bad as the other, it was difficult to tell what was really fact or fiction. The one thing nobody could deny, however, were the circumstances leading up to the fateful punch, because neither side came out of it looking pretty.
It was a few months before the MTV Awards in 1989 when a night out on the Sunset Strip turned truly sour, with an altercation between Neil’s then-wife, Sharise Ruddell, and Stradlin. As Ruddell later recalled: “I was at The Cathouse, and Izzy was hitting on me. He was all fucked up. I told him to get his hands off me because I was [Vince’s] wife, then he grabbed my shirt and pulled it down, I slapped him across the face, and he karate kicked me as hard as he could in the stomach… He knocked the wind out of me, and everyone saw it.”
This shocking act of violence was one that nobody in their right mind would leave to pass, but it was Neil’s decision to literally take matters into his own hands that made even more heads turn. The irony was, Mötley Crüe presented Guns N’ Roses with their award for ‘Best Heavy Metal Music Video’, but through the smiles and platitudes, a storm was brewing.
Sounding like the ultimate comic book villain, Neil later recalled: “When Izzy walked off stage, looking like a cross between Eric Stoltz in [the movie] Mask and Neil Young, I was waiting for him… All the blood rushed into my fist, and I decked him, he fell to the ground like a tipped cow,” you can really tell this came from a wordsmith, can’t you?
It also didn’t help that, in the years afterwards, Neil didn’t exactly simmer down. He even challenged frontman Axl Rose to a public brawl for all the world to see, sending the heavy metal diehards into a tailspin and the PR managers into a nervous breakdown. Naturally, it was all bluster and nothing ever happened – but the wrestling ring was perilously close to being set up.
To be fair, there’s not many people who would be able to reconcile a relationship after an incident like that, but after many years, and, ahem, a few line-up changes, the bands have managed to get back on decent enough terms. Will they ever get back on stage together, though? That might just be taking things a step too far.
