Tapes that kill

[Nitro Express]

Alice broke out of alcoholism simply by going to the same bars and drinking Coke or Pepsi or whatever to keep up his social side while doing away with the booze (when at home not on tour). And I have also heard he's a good dude. But seeing old footage of Alice doing morning interviews with a can of Bud in his hand are still priceless...

Actually he moved to Arizona to get out of LA to dry out. He became very good friends with Glenn Campbell who by coincidence moved to the Phoenix area to get sober, so those two became really good friends and Alice married well. His wife gave him the ultimatum, the booze or me. When he hit bottom he was right there where Eddie Van Halen hit bottom if not worse. What drives many addicts to sober up is there is something in their life they don't want to lose, when it becomes clear they are going to lose it they get serious. The chums at the bar really aren't that important. Family usually is.

Anyways Alice and his wife are great people and he still puts on a good show and is worth seeing.

[Terry]

Shit there was so much going on in the 80’s there was more to grab your interest than Motely Crue but they were good at selling the bad boy image. Alice Cooper just about drank himself to death and he was in pretty rough shape in the early 80’s. I have a lot of friends in Scottsdale. Alice and his wife are highly liked there. I watched Alice play a golf tournament back in the 90’s.

Cooper's career had pretty much peaked in the mid-1970's and, as you say, he wasn't doing much by the time the US Fest took place. When [Cooper] was name-checked in press articles in 1983/1984 as an influence on Motley Crue I was kinda like "oh, yeah, I remember that guy...what's he doing these days?" But as you said, Crue were just one of many rock bands selling a decent amount of records and getting airplay on MTV in the mid-80's. It probably wasn't until the Dr. Feelgood album, which was...what...1989/1990?...that I got a sense that Crue were still popular and getting more so than they were in the mid-1980's. By 1990, most of Crue's American rock (or 'hair metal') contemporaries were selling less than they had been 5 years earlier.

[Nickdfresh]

The band that owned Sunday at the 83 US Festival was The Scorpions. That was the best band. People were actually leaving during Van Halen.

To be fair Van Halen was the late act...

[Nickdfresh]

Shit there was so much going on in the 80’s there was more to grab your interest than Motely Crue but they were good at selling the bad boy image. Alice Cooper just about drank himself to death and he was in pretty rough shape in the early 80’s. I have a lot of friends in Scottsdale. Alice and his wife are highly liked there. I watched Alice play a golf tournament back in the 90’s.

Alice broke out of alcoholism simply by going to the same bars and drinking Coke or Pepsi or whatever to keep up his social side while doing away with the booze (when at home not on tour). And I have also heard he's a good dude. But seeing old footage of Alice doing morning interviews with a can of Bud in his hand are still priceless...

[Jérôme Frenchise]

Sixx was on platform shoes, fake wigs and makeup. It was like a low budget KISS rip off.

:D Yeah, at least Ki$$ wore real wigs.

[Nitro Express]

But shit was that ever a long day. I actually had more fun in Newport Beach the following week than I did at the US Festival.

[Nitro Express]

The band that owned Sunday at the 83 US Festival was The Scorpions. That was the best band. People were actually leaving during Van Halen.

[Nitro Express]

Shit there was so much going on in the 80’s there was more to grab your interest than Motely Crue but they were good at selling the bad boy image. Alice Cooper just about drank himself to death and he was in pretty rough shape in the early 80’s. I have a lot of friends in Scottsdale. Alice and his wife are highly liked there. I watched Alice play a golf tournament back in the 90’s.

[Nitro Express]

I had a similar reaction when they first broke big in 1984 (I have no recollection of seeing the Crue's US Fest performance back in the day, because back at that time I only saw the Showtime cable tv movie channel broadcast of the US Fest which was edited to a few songs per each band), that of them being a sort of KISS rip-off. Rock rags back then would say they were ripping off KISS and Alice Cooper, although in early 1984 nobody gave much of a shit about Alice Cooper.

I liked 'em in 1984, though. I remember liking the Shout album, and then Elektra re-released the Too Fast For Love album after Shout was put out and I liked that one, too. Once Theater Of Pain came out, the band got a bit too glammy and safe and for me the music wasn't quite as good...overall I just didn't like what the band did post-Shout.

.
I think the 83 US Festival was their first big show and boy was it big. That broke them out of being a LA club band.

[Terry]

True I remember the day I saw CC play something I couldn't on YouTube it was disconcerting then I remembered he had at that point been a professional musician for over 20 years, :D


Another one to add to the list and it's funny the things you remember, is Tracii Guns. I distinctly remember sitting around with friends in the 1980s watching the official LA Guns live VHS commercially released live video and being amazed to see him play the riff to ATAL wrongly to a crowd of thousands. Not that he made a mistake - he just didn't know how to play it.

This as part of a nearly 7 MINUTE guitar solo spot!!??

The power of the internet and it wasn't a false memory you can relive it now. It's at around 39 minutes.

What was he thinking???????

I recall someone posted a youtube clip (it might have been on this site, now that I think about it) from a Posion show in the early to mid 2000's when the original lineup had gotten back together and were starting to tour again...it was a CC solo spot, and it sounded so bad I was honestly surprised that even though the guy was never any great shakes in the 80s he had apparently gotten worse after 20 years of touring, performing and recording. Like Nickd said, one would think even someone who was a marginal player twenty years ago would have gotten better over the last couple decades by default just from playing regularly.

Mars sounded okay at the 2015 show I saw, but there were so many backing guitar tracks going on at that gig (thus when Mars bitches about what the Crue are doing live backing-track wise now that he's not in the band it's a bit hypocritical) it was kinda hard to tell...it looked and sounded like he was playing the solos live.

[Terry]

I saw the Crue the first time at the 83 US Festival. I honestly thought who are these lame fucks? Sixx was on platform shoes, fake wigs and makeup. It was like a low budget KISS rip off. Anyways a few catchy songs and good at selling themselves as the bad boys of rock and roll. Now it’s drama, tracks and flab.

I had a similar reaction when they first broke big in 1984 (I have no recollection of seeing the Crue's US Fest performance back in the day, because back at that time I only saw the Showtime cable tv movie channel broadcast of the US Fest which was edited to a few songs per each band), that of them being a sort of KISS rip-off. Rock rags back then would say they were ripping off KISS and Alice Cooper, although in early 1984 nobody gave much of a shit about Alice Cooper.

I liked 'em in 1984, though. I remember liking the Shout album, and then Elektra re-released the Too Fast For Love album after Shout was put out and I liked that one, too. Once Theater Of Pain came out, the band got a bit too glammy and safe and for me the music wasn't quite as good...overall I just didn't like what the band did post-Shout.

[Nitro Express]

Anyways Sixx lives near me. Supposedly he’s this outdoors guy but I doubt I will see him mountain climbing this summer.

[Nitro Express]

I saw the Crue the first time at the 83 US Festival. I honestly thought who are these lame fucks? Sixx was on platform shoes, fake wigs and makeup. It was like a low budget KISS rip off. Anyways a few catchy songs and good at selling themselves as the bad boys of rock and roll. Now it’s drama, tracks and flab.

[Seshmeister]

Far as guitar solos go, Mars was the original Nigel Tufnel. I recall seeing Spinal Tap in the theater when it was released, which was shortly after Shout At The Devil was put out, and thinking when the Nigel Tufnel solo spot came onscreen that it sounded just like Mick Mars.

For a while around about the time of Dr Feelgood he had a solo spot that was pure Spinal Tap where he had racks of guitars lying flat and attempted to play more than one at a time and they were all heavily distorted so it was obviously just a hellish mess.

It was fucking hilarious but I'm pretty sure it wasn't meant to be. :D

[Seshmeister]

Yeah but to be fair I think some of the guitarists you mention that were fair-to-midline got better with age. Mick Mars/Deville were probably better players in 2005 than they were in 1985, because they actually started practicing...

True I remember the day I saw CC play something I couldn't on YouTube it was disconcerting then I remembered he had at that point been a professional musician for over 20 years, :D


Another one to add to the list and it's funny the things you remember, is Tracii Guns. I distinctly remember sitting around with friends in the 1980s watching the official LA Guns live VHS commercially released live video and being amazed to see him play the riff to ATAL wrongly to a crowd of thousands. Not that he made a mistake - he just didn't know how to play it.

This as part of a nearly 7 MINUTE guitar solo spot!!??

The power of the internet and it wasn't a false memory you can relive it now. It's at around 39 minutes.

What was he thinking???????