Now emboldened by the success of his Heroin Diaries, Motley Crue bassist/songwriter Nikki Sixx decided to try a very risky experiment: with glam and hair metal declared dead and the corpse having been incinerated and sealed in a time capsule with Reaganomics, the careers of both Steve Gutenberg and Patrick Duffy before being buried next to the lost episodes of Falcon Crest, could Motley Crue beat every set of odds imaginable and stage a comeback? The band’s members have never really left the public eye—Tommy Lee went to college on camera, Vince Neil has done a very public stretch in court because of his penchant for prostitutes and his battery of them, and Mick Mars has found success with his songwriting abilities, but with nearly a decade lapsing since the band last tried to write anything together, the looming question would be if they could summon those demons for an attempt that wouldn’t be mawkish or pitiful.
Anything’s possible and Saints Of Los Angeles proves it. After a spoken prelude that sets the mood and subject for the record (“L.A.M.F.”), Motley Crue launches into a set that can only be considered classic for the band as they fall right back into heavy riffing, hard hitting, high flying form for songs including (but not limited to) “Face Down In The Dirt,” “Just Another Psycho,” “This Ain’t A Love Song” and the title track that all reclaim the band’s place as danger-pop icons.
While the boozy, bouncing fun of vintage Crue is unmistakably in place on this album, it’s not as if songwriter Sixx has deluded himself into thinking he and his merry band of miscreants are this generation’s Peter Pan and The Lost Boys. While “White Trash Circus” looks on the band’s bad old days fondly, “Down At The Whisky” seems a little more honest as it realizes that there isn’t any going back. That doesn’t, however, preclude rocking like hell and doing it convincingly; in these thirteen tracks, the band isn’t exactly playing it safe, but they aren’t singing about snorting rails off the stomachs of hookers either. It sounds young but not juvenile.
Even so, at this stage of the game it’s debatable how long it can last. Nikki Sixx’s experiment was a success—Motley Crue didn’t need a scene or time to thrive because his songs are just that good—but now attention will be on what the band will (or won’t) do next. It’s a salacious question that a lot of people—both fans and detractors—can’t wait to hear the answer to.
Artist:
www.motley.com
www.myspace.com/motleycrue
Album:
Motley Crue – Saints Of Los Angeles. Buy it NOW on Amazon.
