STACK #203 Sep 2021

MUSIC FEATURE

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MÖTLEY CRÜE DR. FEELGOOD

Bryget Chrisfield hits you with some juicy nuggets of wisdom surrounding the creation, impact, and legacy of her favourite classic records.This month it’s the one, the only, the mighty Mötley Crüe with Dr. Feelgood .

Year 1989

Following the near-death experience that inspired Kickstart My Heart , Nikki immediately discharged himself from hospital and was driven home by fans On December 23, 1987, Nikki went on a drug-fuelled bender with pals (including Slash and Steven Adler from Guns N’ Roses and Ratt’s Robbin Crosby) before their dealer injected him with a lethal dose of heroin. Nikki was pronounced clinically dead for two

Dr. Feelgood by Mötley Crüe is available on CD and 30th anniversary white vinyl, via Eleven Seven Music.

Mötley Crüe’s fifth album, Dr. Feelgood – which spent a total of 109 weeks on the Billboard 200 and is the band’s only record to top the U.S. chart – elevated theTinseltown terrors to peak popularity. And this record’s title track, which became the Crüe’s first TopTen hit, ain’t about an actual doctor, obvs. “It was inspired by drug dealers,” Nikki Sixx confirmed during an interview. “Is there ever just one? A good drug addict always has more than one dealer.”

I ripped out my tubes and staggered in just my leather pants into the parking lot, where two teenage girls were sitting crying around a candle. They had heard on the radio that I was dead and looked kind of surprised to see me.” After giving Nikki a jacket – and making him promise he’d kick his drug habit – the teenagers gave the Crüe’s bassist/primary songwriter a ride home in their Mazda.

minutes. After he was revived, the musician eventually came to in a hospital bed. He recounted in his autobiography The Heroin

It bummed [us] out to the point where we said, ‘We will do anything to prove that we are the biggest band in the world’

Diaries: AYear In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star : “There was a cop asking me questions, so I told him to go f-ck himself.

The Crüe sobered up to record Dr. Feelgood Described by

drummer Tommy Lee as “the best record of [their] career”, Dr. Feelgood was recorded while the Crüe were (uncharacteristically) sober. The band responsibly relocated

- Nikki Sixx

from the party-hard temptations surrounding LA’s Sunset Strip to laser-focus on making the follow-up to Girls, Girls, Girls – with producer Bob Rock – in Vancouver, Canada, where they stayed for almost a year. Girls, Girls, Girls peaked at #2 on the Billboard 200, pipped at the post by Whitney Houston’s Whitney . “It was through payola that we lost the #1 position,” Nikki claims during Autobiography: The Mötley Crüe Mini-Doc . “It unified the band even harder and it bummed the band out to the point where we said, ‘We will do anything to prove that we are the biggest band in the world.’ And that is how we got to Dr. Feelgood. ”

Motley Crue in front of their Dr. Feelgood tour plane, 1990

18 SEPTEMBER 2021

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