The Dirt (46 page)

Because we had all driven through the storm just to go to rehearsal that day, the longer we had to wait for Vince—who only lived half the distance away that we did—the more pissed we became. This was a crucial album—the follow-up to the biggest success we had ever had—and he didn’t seem to be taking it seriously. He had started taking Thursdays and Fridays off to go to the races, and would usually return late on Mondays. So every week, we’d only get at most two and a half days of studio time because he was never there.

Finally, we had Mike Amato, who had replaced Rich Fisher as our tour manager, send Vince a fax telling him to get his ass to rehearsal. Fifteen minutes later, the studio phone rang.

“Man, I’m sorry,” he said.

“Where were you?” I asked. “We’ve been trying to call you for four hours. This is bullshit.”

“I know. The phone lines were down.”

That set me off. “The phone lines were down? Then how the fuck did the fax go through? You had the phone off the hook because you didn’t want to fucking come in! All of us drove through floods to get here, and you couldn’t even be bothered!”

“Dude, take it easy. I thought rehearsal was canceled anyway with the flooding and everything.”

“Well, it wasn’t. Get your ass down here before we really get pissed.”

As we waited for him to come, someone in the studio said that he had seen Vince out completely wasted at 3
A.M.
the previous night. Whether it was true or not, it didn’t matter. The conversation had already taken on a mutinous tone. Except for Mick, we were all slipping off the wagon, but Vince was the only one who was letting it affect his work, who was getting caught all the time, and who was constantly lying about it. By the time he arrived, the seed was already planted in our minds that he was holding us back.

Maybe if Vince had walked in and apologized for staying out so late the night before and sleeping through rehearsal, everything would have been fine. But he didn’t.

“What the fuck’s going on!?!” Vince raged as the lounge door flew open and he stood there soaked and sulking.

“You know what?” I said. “We are having new-lead-singer talks again. We are down here working, and we want to be here. This isn’t going to happen if you don’t want to be here and we have to force you out of bed every afternoon because you’ve been out all night drinking.”

“Maybe I would come in more if I liked the material.”

“Well, you could have told somebody.”

Tommy couldn’t keep quiet any longer: “Maybe you’d like the material better if you had come to the studio a few times to be part of making it. Every time you fucking come in, dude, you’re staring at your watch the whole time because you need to go to a fucking golf tournament or racing school. What the fuck’s up with that?”

“I’m looking at my watch because I can’t stand being here. The album is stupid. The keyboards you’re putting on the album make us sound like pussies.”

“Vince, we’ve been using keyboards since ’83,” I shot back.

The bullshit flew back and forth like a game of tennis until he finally threw his racket into the net. “I’m not going to stay here and listen to this bullshit!” he yelled at us. “I’m fucking out of here! I quit!”

He stormed off toward the door, and looked back. “Call me if you ever change your fucking mind!”

He says he was fired, I say he quit. Either way, his head was on the chopping block and he gave us a good excuse to lower the ax.

Now that I look back on it, we were fried. We had toured nonstop behind
Feelgood
and
Decade of Decadence
, and then we were thrown back in the studio without a single break. I don’t know if it was management or the record label or our own insecurity, but we were being pushed way too hard. Somebody should have just stepped in, realized we were under too much pressure, and given us a month to dry out under the sun in the Bahamas. Vince wasn’t the problem: He was just the scapegoat. But the thing about Mötley Crüe is that we’re so full-on dragster-fuel-driven that as soon as we saw the green light, we put the pedal to the floor and shot through the gate so fast there was no time to look back. Until it was too late.

A
meeting was called at Nikki’s house for Wednesday morning, February 12, 1992. Chuck Shapiro, David Rudich, and Mick, Nikki, and Tommy were there. Vince hadn’t called anyone that night, and he hadn’t been invited. Maybe I should have called him, but I didn’t know what to say to him because I hadn’t been filled in yet on exactly what was going on.

We tried to discourage the band from getting rid of Vince. They had just been given their twenty-five-million-dollar contract and, if Elektra chose to, it could exercise one of its options and renege on the deal if Vince left. And that would screw up all of their careers.

But Tommy and Nikki insisted: they were sick of Vince and couldn’t take it anymore. They took a vote and it was unanimous: Vince was gone.

I drove to the office, told the staff what had happened, and sat down at my desk. A few minutes later, the phone rang. A guy named Tony introduced himself and said he was a prominent attorney and co-owner of the Roxy.

“Your client, Vince Neil, was in my nightclub on Saturday night for his birthday,” Tony began, upset. He went on to explain that Vince had been with Robert Patrick, the actor who plays the half-man, half-mercury villain in
Terminator 2
, and a fight had broken out that looked like something out of a western. Tables went flying, glasses were broken, and Vince was in the middle of it, breaking a bottle and slicing the manager of the Roxy in the face. He was thrown out of the club screaming that they couldn’t do this to him.

“So you see my problem,” Tony continued. “There’s a lot of damage here. It’s going to take at least fifty thousand dollars to get this place up and running again, and I’d hate to press any drunk and disorderly charges or vandalism charges against your client.”

I listened to all this, and then answered. “I don’t know how to tell you this. But as of a couple hours ago, this is no longer my problem.”

I hung up the phone. And for a short while, I felt the weight of the world lift off my shoulders.

I
forget what happened. I think Nikki got mad at Vince for being late and sent him a fax or something like that. The tension was bad, and it had been building for years. Every person in the world has good qualities and shortcomings. And I guess we started making the mistake of focusing on the shortcomings of each person instead of looking at what their best asset was and what they contributed to the band.

When Vince came to rehearsal, he was prissy mad. And Nikki was prissy mad. Though I hadn’t been that happy with Vince’s attitude lately either, it didn’t matter whether he was at rehearsal or not. I was working on the music, and you have to get the music finished before you even think about adding the vocals.

S
teven Tyler told me I was the guy in a circus who’s about to be shot out of a cannon. And that’s what it felt like. I put on my crash helmet, tied my superhero cape around my neck, climbed into the barrel, and waited while three ringmasters ran around behind me and lit the fuse. While I flew through the air, there was no sensation to compare it to. It was the happiest moment of my life. But when I landed, it hurt like no pain I’d ever experienced.

It began in
Spin
magazine. Nikki Sixx told the interviewer that he was a big fan of the first record,
Let It Scream
, by my band the Scream. I was never a big Mötley Crüe fan—I didn’t own any albums and hadn’t seen any concerts—but I wanted to call him and thank him for mentioning my band. I also had an ulterior motive: to see if he wanted to write some songs with me for the next Scream record.

My manager gave me the number of Doug Thaler’s office. I called and his secretary, Stephanie, answered. I introduced myself and told her I wanted to tell Nikki I appreciated the plug. I expected her to brush me off like an obsessive fan, but instead there was an awkward pause, as if she was excited that I had called. “Um, let me get the number where you are,” she stammered. “And I’ll make sure he gets the message.”

I hung up and started getting ready for our show that night in Orange County, the last on our tour with the Dangerous Toys. I left a note and flowers for my wife, Valerie, because it was Valentine’s Day, and grabbed the keys to my Ford Taurus, which I still had two years left of payments on. As I closed the door behind me, the phone rang. I locked the door, then changed my mind, unlocked it, and raced for the receiver.

“Hey, what’s up man, it’s Nikki Sixx.”

“And Tommy, dude!”

I hadn’t expected him to call back at all, let alone so soon. “Um, hey, what’s up?” I asked, unsure if this was a joke or not.

We made small talk for a while about the
Spin
article, and then Nikki cut me off. “Here’s the deal. You have to promise not to tell anybody this because we haven’t made an announcement yet, but Vince left the band. So Tommy and I were wondering if you’d like to come down and jam with us one day.”

“You mean audition for you guys?”

“Yeah, audition. Whatever.”

“Okay, man. Sure. No problem. Um, thanks.”

I called my manager and asked him what I should do. He said to just play the Scream show that night and keep everything quiet until I knew what was happening. I met the band at the club, sound-checked, and told them I had talked to Nikki and thanked him for mentioning the album. That was all I said.

Before the show, we drove to KNAC for an on-air interview and acoustic set. As we began the broadcast, someone handed Long Paul, the disc jockey, a piece of paper. He read it, raised his eyebrows, and announced, “We just got a fax here. It says that Mötley Crüe has gotten rid of Vince Neil. Can you believe that?”

None of us replied. Instead, the whole band turned and stared at me. They knew something was up. But I played stupid. “Are you serious?” I asked. “They got rid of him?”

THREE DAYS LATER, MY TIME had come. The audition. I had no idea how I was going to pull it off because, besides my complete lack of expertise on the Crüe, Vince’s voice is so much higher than mine. His is high and clean, mine is dark and raspy. When I walked into the studio in Burbank, there they were, the enigmas themselves, jamming on “Angel” by Jimi Hendrix. It sounded loud, dirty, and amazing. They were a tight band. And they had so much equipment in the room it looked like the Guitar Center.