Rightly regarded as their finest album, it shifted six million in the US alone. The quest for the top spot came with 1989s Dr Feelgood. But only for America’s darling Whitney Houston, the band would have scored their first number-one album. A sturdy supporting cast of You’re All I Need, Dancing On Glass, and a boisterous live version of Jailhouse Rock still didn’t give the album proper muscle. Then there was Wild Side, where we saw Tommy Lee harnessed into his seat and taking flight in a rotating drum kit. How can we forget the promo video for the title track with the guys recklessly riding up the Sunset Strip on Harley Davidsons, then causing mayhem at a strip club, slapping bald men on the head and slipping 20 dollar bills down young lady’s undergarments? The much anticipated fourth album Girls Girls Girls, was a case of a fur coat and no knickers, but it still produced two of their biggest hits that were lapped up by the MTV generation. Even protests from parent activist group PMRC who got hysterical over the band’s video for Smokin’ In The Boys Room couldn’t quench the band’s relentless fire. But the Mötley Crüe juggernaut of sin just kept on rolling. With Vince Neil facing a prison stretch following a car accident which claimed the life of Hanoi Rocks drummer Razzle and Nikki Sixx falling under the spell of heroin addiction, a dark cloud was hovering precariously over the band. But the troubles that hit the band in the lead-up to the album’s recording didn’t help matters much. It did spawn two of their big guns in Smokin’ In The Boys Room and the power ballad Home Sweet Home. While hugely successful, the follow-up Theatre Of Pain was, in comparison, all bark and no bite. And the hilarious reaction from Christian groups surrounding the use of the pentagram on the album cover just enhanced the band’s selling power as Shout At The Devil went on to hit four million plus sales. Mammoth tuneage like Looks That Kill, Too Young To Fall In Love and, of course, the ritualistic title track propelled the album to a healthy No 17 peak position on the US Billboard Top 200. With 200,000 copies shifted within its first month, Crüe were now after a bigger slice of the pie. Two years later, they went up another level and backed up their reputation with the scorching Shout At The Devil. They had unleashed a shin kicker of a record that marked everyone’s card. Visually, they looked like bargain bin drag queens, but they didn’t care. 1981 saw them burst out of their vermin-infested lodgings, hot-headed and horny, setting the Sunset Strip ablaze with their cocky debut album Too Fast For Love.Ĭontaining one of their live staples Live Wire, other standout tracks like Piece Of Your Action, Public Enemy #1 and the ageless title track helped lay the foundations of the ’80s Hair Metal genre. This five-album collection takes us right into the heart of one of the most explosive acts in music. You have the resurrected Nikki Sixx, knuckleduster Vince Neil, the wise council of Mick Mars and, of course, the weapon of mass destruction himself, Tommy Lee.Īnd the noise they made was sensational. Mötley Crüe – Crücial Crüe: The Studio Albums 1981-1989 (BMG) And it was that attitude that heralded an avalanche of commercial success in the ’80s. Quite simply, this is a band that wrote their own rule book, and if you didn’t like its contents, you most likely had it wedged up a dark orifice. Copious amounts of drugs, overdose, death, reincarnation, vehicular manslaughter, sex videos, swallowing lightbulbs, watersports with Ozzy Osbourne and, of course, that press conference. The notorious foursome who would become ’80s rock biggest incendiary device let off bombs of controversy with every move they made. It’s probably the understatement of the century to say there’s never been a dull moment with Mötley Crüe.
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