Mötley Crüe

Los Angeles glam-metal rockers Mötley Crüe extolled the virtues of living loud and dirty on such hit singles as "Shout at the Devil," "Smokin' in the Boys Room," "Kickstart My Heart" and "Saints of Los Angeles" over the course of a three-decade music career steeped in excessive and occasional criminal behavior. Crüe's core quartet was culled from a variety of Los Angeles glam-metal bands: bassist Nikki Sixx had completed his tenure in London and began rehearsing with drummer Tommy Lee and veteran vocalist/guitarist Greg Leon from Suite 19. When Leon left the trio, Lee brought aboard Vince Neil, a classmate from Charter Oak High School that was fronting a garage act called Rockandi. With the addition of guitarist Mick Mars, whose career with blues-rock bands stretched back to the early '70s, Motley Crüe soon established a cult following on the club circuit with amalgam of punk attitude, heavy pop hooks a la Cheap Trick and a penchant for glam gear and crass theatrics. The band issued its first single, "Stick to Your Guns/Talk of the Town," on their own label, Leathur Records, in 1981, with a debut album, Too Fast For Love, following that same year. The album sold an impressive 20,000 copies, which helped to broker a recording deal with Elektra Records in 1982; the label reissued a new version of Too Fast remixed by producer Roy Thomas Baker (Queen) before releasing their sophomore album, Shout at the Devil. Regular airplay of the boisterous videos for the album's lead singles, "Looks That Kill" and the title track, on the fledgling MTV network, helped to bring Crüe to a wider audience, which led to platinum status for Devil. By the mid-1980s, the band had vaulted to the upper ranks of the charts thanks to Top 40 hits like "Smokin' in the Boys Room" and the title track from their fourth LP, Girls, Girls, Girls, which also became their first Top 10 album. But their success was sorely tempered by the band's hedonistic lifestyle, which had devolved from excessive to life-threatening: Neil was involved in a 1984 car accident that took the life of Hanoi Rocks drummer Nicholas "Razzle" Dingley and Sixx nearly died as a result of a heroin overdose in 1987. Crüe's management forced the group into rehabilitation, which kept them out of the spotlight for nearly two years; they resurfaced in 1989 to issue Dr. Feelgood, a harder-edged effort that shot to No. 1 on the albums chart on the strength of four hit singles, including the Top 10 title track and "Kickstart My Heart." A subsequent compilation album, Decade of Decadence 81-91, extended the band's streak of hits with a new take on "Home Sweet Home," but their fortunes soon took another downward turn. Neil was either fired or quit the group in 1992, and was replaced by singer John Corabi; though the resulting self-titled album from this iteration reached the Top 10 on the Billboard 200, the line was considered a failure, and Neil was back in the fold by 1997. But the reunited Crue's next release, Generation Swine (1997), also failed to generate much listener response, and the band parted ways with Elektra with lucrative spoils: the masters for all their previous albums. By the close of the millennium, the various members were again at odds with each other; Lee split the group over tensions with Neil, and replaced him with Ozzy Osbourne drummer Randy Castillo. Again, the results drew mixed results and the band resorted to nostalgia - reissues of their Elektra albums, a rarities LP and a scandalous tell-all autobiography, The Dirt (2001) - to maintain their fanbase. The respective band members would keep themselves busy with side projects (Sixx's Brides of Destruction) and shameless publicity grabs (Neil's appearance on "The Surreal Life" (The WB/VH1, 2003-2006) until 2004, when the quartet buried the hatchet for a tour to support their third greatest hits collection, Red, White & Crüe (2005). Response to the shows was so great that Crüe dove headfirst into new projects, including a new album, Saints of Los Angeles (2008), which generated a Top 5 single on the mainstream rock charts with its title track, and an annual package tour, Crüe Fest. Global tours with a host of venerable glam and metal acts, from KISS and Alice Cooper to the New York Dolls, dominated their schedule from 2011 to 2014, after which Crüe announced its retirement. The band's victory lap, accompanied by Cooper, took them around the globe until their final show in Los Angeles on December 31, 2015.