Mötley Crüe guitarist Mick Mars sues the band
It has been reported that Mötley Crüe guitarist Mick Mars has filed a lawsuit against his bandmates after claiming they were trying to swindle him out of revenue. The guitarist, whose real name is Robert Alan Deal, announced last October that he would retire as a touring band member due to his ongoing struggle with Ankylosing spondylitis, a form of spinal arthritis.
In his newly filed lawsuit, Mars clarifies that he could still record in the studio with the group but just couldn’t face the road with such a debilitating condition. The suit claims that Mötley Crüe have cut his percentage of profits from 25% to 5% following his announcement last October. The 71-year-old added that the band’s lawyers made him feel like he should be grateful to receive anything at all as they had conspired to “unilaterally” expel him altogether.
The guitarist also accused the band’s bassist Nikki Sixx of “gaslighting” him about his deteriorating guitar skills, alleging in return that Sixx didn’t “play a single note on bass” during a recent tour. He claimed that all of Nikki’s parts were pre-recorded.
These new developments arrive less than a month after the iconic drummer Carmine Appice revealed that he had been talking to Mars about his Mötley Crüe departure: “[Mars told me, ‘When I was on ‘The Stadium Tour’, I was not happy,'” Appice told Andrew Daly of Ultimate Guitar.
Adding: “Basically, everything was on tape; it was all planned out and ultimately a lot of crap. And Mick is a pretty good player, and so to now let him loose and play the way he wants, that was never going to work for him. The truth is that everything has been weird for a while with Mötley Crüe, and Mick didn’t like that everything was on tape. Mick told me that people that came to see it could tell that it was all pre-recorded and that everything was on tape.”
Continuing: “When you play in a stadium like that, you can hear a lot of things come to the monitors or what doesn’t. And with Vince’s [Neil] vocals, bass, drums, guitars, and all the other stuff, it was obvious that it was all on tape. And Mick was pissed off and said, ‘I can play these things. I want to play them. I don’t want to make believe I’m playing them.’ So, I think that’s one of the reasons why he said, ‘I’m done.’ Sure, the disease that he has doesn’t help, and it doesn’t make life easy on tour, but Mick can play all the licks, and he was allowed to.”
When Daly asked Appice if “Mick wasn’t getting along with the rest of” Mötley Crüe, Carmine replied: “No, he wasn’t. He had his own means of travel and would travel alone on a bus while the other guys flew everywhere. He said, ‘Man, these guys are pissing their money away, flying to every gig.’ They were all busy still trying to be rock stars, and Mick just wanted to play the music. Mick wasn’t interested in wasting time and money flying everywhere, so he travelled by bus. Their lifestyles are different than his, and so there were a lot of disagreements. I think he was just done. They were supposed to have done their last tour, and then they came back. Then they did ‘The Stadium Tour’, and that was apparently supposed to be the last. So, when they came back again, he said, ‘You can do it. I’m not going out with you for this.'”
On March 15th, Sixx tweeted a response to Appice’s claims. “Love how people talk FOR us without talking TO us,” he wrote. “This is why the media has lost credibility. Obviously by printing BS they make money off of advertising and we’re not into that clickbait game. When the truth comes out it will be FROM üs.”
Adding later that day: “A washed up drummer trying to speak for us? And bottom feeder media running with it to make money off of lies? Welcome to the sad new world of LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME.”
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