Cornerstone: Mötley Crüe Seeks an End

Amongst the 50th anniversary of the Beatles arrival and discussion of the 10th anniversary of Janet Jackson’s Nipplegate this week, Mötley Crüe decided that they want to “bow out with dignity.”

Accordingly, the band will embark upon its final tour this summer with Alice Cooper playing the supporting role, and the tour is scheduled to continue through next year.

This is noteworthy, not in the least because apparently Mötley Crüe has some “dignity” to bow out with.  Am I the only one that finds it ironic that a band whose goal was to be the biggest sleazeballs in a rather sleazy subgenre of rock n’ roll wants to “bow out with dignity”?

Am I missing something here?

This is a band that celebrated being a grown-up teenager, and a poorly behaved one at that.

In the band’s interview with Rolling Stone, the band’s primary songwriter, Nikki Sixx, said it was “frustrating” that so much attention was paid to the fact that “we have lived right on the edge of destruction.”  “What about the music?” he asked.

Kids, this is why acting like an idiot is not a good idea: you’ll never live it down.  Furthermore, the Internet has a memory like a herd of elephants.  Anything you do can and will be held against you; of that, you can be certain.

So Sixx wants us to look at the music.  Well what about it?

All in all, it’s pretty good for what it is, at least the first decade anyway.

Their first couple of albums, “Too Fast For Love” and “Shout at the Devil,” have some really catchy songs with loud, biting guitars and juvenile lyrics that are perfect for playing at top volume in a primered Camaro.  It’s not great art, but it’s fun to listen to.

The next three albums weren’t so bad, either.

After their fourth album, “Girls, Girls, Girls,” and a host of near-death experiences that were all drug or alcohol related, most of the band got sober and carried on.

The album that followed their introduction to sobriety, “Dr. Feelgood,” was the band’s best-selling effort, and in 1989, it was all over radio and MTV.

A good friend of mine left that tape in the stereo of his jacked-up 1970 Monte Carlo for several months, and to this day, I not only have every note of the album memorized, but I can’t hear it without thinking about Dave and his Monte in the hills of Peru (Nebraska, that is).

Dave also liked the band Chicago for some reason, and I have been ever afterwards thankful he didn’t make any of us endure that; I suppose my other friends and I would have found another old car to ride around in if he had.

But what about after “Dr. Feelgood”?

Well, they proceeded to continue behaving badly (they had an image to maintain, after all), but didn’t put out anything that left much of an impact.

In the last twenty years, they’ve put out four studio albums that didn’t sell very well, two live albums, and six(!) best-of collections.

So now they’re bringing the band to a close and giving everyone an opportunity to see them live just one more time, and more than one writer has questioned if they really mean it since so many farewell tours aren’t really farewell tours.

Cher, for example, embarked on her farewell tour a decade ago, and she still won’t go away.

So if they mean it (and it appears they do), Mötley Crüe should be given some credit for the mercy they’re now giving the dead horse they’ve been beating for the last twenty years or so; the poor thing needs some peace.

Let’s plant it already.