by Vince Neil
They brought back Tom Werman to produce the album that would eventually be called Girls, Girls, Girls… a more apt title for that time period would have been difficult to come by.
In between bouts of partying and fucking, we recorded the album. The whole process took about eight months. While we were in the studio I got a call offering me the role of the prince in a rock musical version of Cinderella. I was excited about the idea and even met with the producer. But in the end I had to decline; the musical would be running while Mötley was on tour. It was fun to think about, tickled the fancy of my inner entertainer, I suppose.
At this time, Nikki was still shooting heroin—as well as freebasing coke. He had a new girlfriend, the former Prince protégée Vanity, who used to be amazing looking but was now a stone freebase addict. She would eventually lose a kidney to her addiction. Nikki’s weight had dropped from 204 to 160 pounds in less than a year. He probably thought he was “elegantly wasted,” but he just looked awful. I mean, his fucking legs were like matchsticks.
Mick came up with the album’s title track, “Girls, Girls, Girls.” If you’ve ever wondered why the solo at the end of the song ends so abruptly, it’s because Mick was so wasted that he fell off his stool while recording it. As to the cover look, by now our image was dovetailing from the Road Warrior vibe to a sort of motorcycle-outlaw theme… a prelude to today’s Tattoos & Tequila, I guess. Nikki came up with the design for the Girls album sleeve, which featured a new Mötley Crüe logo designed by Chris Polentz over a photo of us posing on our Harleys. At that time, we were all about our motorcycles, hard likker, black leather, and pussy, pussy, pussy—maybe that would have been a better title?
For you aficionados, it might be interesting to note that the opening revving sound on the album was recorded in the courtyard of Conway Studios with my new Harley; for the outro sample, Werman took the bike for a spin through Franklin Canyon and recorded the bike shifting through the gears. I helped contribute to the opening track, “Wild Side,” which was Nikki’s alternate take on the Lord’s Prayer. Girls also features another first for us: gospel singers performing backup vocals. (The more money you make, the more the company lets you spend on recording frills.) They also spent the money to use street noises recorded in downtown Los Angeles to aid the whole sonic flavor of the thing. Ted Nugent band member Dave Amato contributed backup vocals, as did Pat Torpey, who previously drummed for Robert Plant and Belinda Carlisle and later would drum for Mr. Big. The final track on the album is a live version of Elvis Presley’s hit “Jailhouse Rock,” recorded at Long Beach Arena, California, on the previous Theatre of Pain U.S. tour.
In May 1987, the title track of the new album was released as the first single. The song peaked at #12 on the U.S. charts—the highest placing yet for a Crüe single.
The album followed soon after—it entered the Billboard 200 at #5, the highest positioning of a metal album since Led Zeppelin’s The Song Remains the Same almost a decade earlier. It went on to reach #2—Whitney Houston’s second album, Whitney, beat us out. According to the story, or the mythology, depending which you believe, there was a bunch of intrigue and hanky-panky involving CBS honcho Clive Davis, who supposedly bribed buyers with a trip to keep Whitney on top. Who knows? What I do know is we all felt like Girls should have been our first #1 album.
In preparation for the upcoming tour, I sold my house and rented a small apartment in Hollywood, putting most of my possessions in storage. If it is true that Mötley Crüe has always been known as a sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll band, the Girls tour was probably our wildest outing in terms of excess.
After a week of technical run-throughs and rehearsals at arenas in San Diego and Arizona, the Girls world tour kicked off on June 19, 1987, in Tucson. Ex–Deep Purple frontman David Coverdale’s Whitesnake was our opening act. The plan was to tour the U.S., then head to Japan in December, then on to Europe in January. We’d return home in early February for a couple of months off before a further American leg with Guns N’ Roses.
Of course, that’s not exactly how things went down.
We took the largest—and loudest—PA ever assembled out on the road with us. The stage theatrics included a giant inflatable Harley-Davidson motorbike and a spinning drum cage for Tommy, who first imagined the setup in a dream. Developed by an ex-navy submarine hydraulics specialist, it cost around eighty thousand dollars. It was welded onto a forklift, mounted on yokes from a garbage truck, and connected by microphone cables.
The success of the Girls album also meant yet another touring upgrade. We crisscrossed American airspace in an eighteen-seater Gulfstream One jet fitted out with beds, couches, and a plush black leather interior. We even had our own stewardess whose job it was to lay out drugs and drinks on each band member’s meal tray before we boarded. Nikki got white wine and zombie dust (a mix of Halcion and cocaine); Tommy got a cocktail and a helping of zombie dust; Mick got his vodka—he always carried his own prescription pills; he was like a pharmacist. I was easy to please. Just give me a drink and a sleeping pill. Like I said earlier: My destination of choice tends to be Planet Oblivion.
The jet’s exterior sported a radical Mötley logo design with a scantily dressed cowgirl riding a bomb, a takeoff on those old World War II bomber planes. We soon began referring to this junket as the Airport Blow Job Tour. Every time we’d land at the airport there’d be a line of hot chicks waiting for us, and we’d oblige them by taking the best-looking ones into the airport’s private VIP bathrooms. I can’t imagine what would possess a young woman to drive in the night to a private landing field with the intention of sucking a stranger’s dick. Thinking back on it, however, I can’t say I ever took the time to ask.
And so it would go, one city after the next, a trail of debauchery, the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle. It’s such a haze to me now, gig after gig, place after place, a parade of different drugs and different female parts, each of them wonderfully different, like snowflakes. It would make a great, like, dream sequence in a movie—the carnal slide show of all the girls I’ve ever known. I’d pay to go to that flick.
As you might expect, things began to get a bit sloppy. In Rochester, New York, I ended up severing tendons, nerves, and an artery in my right hand and almost losing a finger when I threw a temper tantrum over a glass jar of GREY POUPON mustard. I was just being an asshole, but I did have a point. For a week or more I’d been telling everybody that I didn’t like GREY POUPON. They had this food set up; I liked to eat something before the show, but I like yellow mustard. And every day there was only GREY POUPON, which I do not like. And call me an ass, you know, but who was the food supposed to be for? Me and the other guys, correct?
Finally, one night, I just lost it. I was all dressed. I was ready to go onstage. I was in my stage clothes. And I was like, “I fucking told you I hate fucking GREY POUPON!” I threw it against the wall, but I threw it really close, or I don’t know what happened, but it cut my finger bad—to this day I can’t even stretch my finger. There was a lot of blood. It basically severed the finger. Fuck yeah, I freaked out; I was in shock. They rushed me to the hospital and they had to operate, like, instantly. Obviously the show was canceled that night. The doctors managed to repair most of the damage to my hand, but I had to wear a full cast up to my elbow for a month. But they never had any GREY POUPON there again.
In Chicago, we were hanging out in a transvestite bar, drinking vodka and eating caviar and doing tons of coke, when the cops came bursting in. The officer in charge turned out to be a huge fan of ours, so he let us off. In Nikki’s hometown of San Jose, they weren’t so nice. We were playing the Great Western Forum; Nikki decided to ride to the venue on his Harley. On the way a cop pulled him over for speeding. When he couldn’t produce his driver’s license, he was arrested. Thankfully Doc McGhee got there in time to sort the situation out.
When we hit Japan things just got even crazier. There’s something about the Japanese—they were so polite and worshipful that I think it made yo
u want to act out even more than usual. The stories about that trip are well known—if not exactly accurate. It is true that the first official happening of our Japanese tour was Tommy getting busted by customs officials at the airport; they found some marijuana in his drum kit. Luckily, he was saved by our Japanese promoter, who managed to smooth things over without any charges being laid. When we got to the hotel, Tommy’s foul mood became his great idea of fun—dropping a wine bottle out of a tenth-story window. Nikki, meanwhile, shortsightedly made the trip with no stash of heroin. By the time we landed, he was going through withdrawal.
There is another story about me getting drunk at a Roppongi restaurant and getting into a fight with a crew of Yakuza gangsters. I have no idea where that one came from. Nikki, on the other hand, had quite a night—his birthday. I guess he was drinking to fight down the withdrawals. He was like a bear woken from hibernation. First he comes to blows with Tommy. There is a historical dispute about this fight. Tommy says Nikki hit him in the mouth. Nikki says that Tommy was so drunk he fell over on his own and smashed his face into the floor. Whatever. Neither of those pussies can fight.
Before leaving the club, Nikki got into a second altercation with an American tourist, whose head he directed into a steel pole, cracking it open. Leaving the club wearing a Godzilla mask, Mick terrorized people in the street. Reportedly with his pants around his ankles, he was apprehended by police as he was urinating along the side of the road.
Later, after a show in Osaka, heading back to Tokyo by high-speed bullet train, Tommy and Nikki got roaring drunk on sake and Jack Daniel’s. They poured liquor over the heads of several Japanese commuters—and also on Mick’s girl, Emi. Emi Canyon was a backup singer in Nasty Habit, who were on tour with us. We had this rule where we weren’t supposed to sleep with anyone who works for the band. Tommy and Nikki gave Mick a lot of shit, even though Tommy usually slept with anyone he wanted, as we’ve well established. They punished the couple on tour by pouring drinks on them and smearing food over their luggage. At one point Mick was so pissed he almost walked.
Now, on the train, Tommy and Nikki ordered curry and smeared it all over the walls. Then Nikki threw the Jack bottle and it hit a businessman; the guy went down like he’d been shot, bleeding copiously from a head wound. At this point our Japanese tour manager used a martial arts pressure-point move on Nikki and Tommy, pressing his finger onto a point on the backs of their necks, rendering them unconscious. When the train stopped in Tokyo, Japanese police took Nikki into custody. When Doc McGhee went over to do his thing—take responsibility and deflect blame—they took him into custody, too.
It took them like twenty-four hours to get out of jail.
In the meantime, I hooked up with this beautiful Japanese chick. I brought her back to the hotel, but when I got there I realized, Holy shit! Sharise was in my room!!!! I’d forgotten I’d told her to come visit.
I went to Doc’s room. He’d just gotten into bed. I asked him if he would be a good manager and give me his room so I could fuck the Japanese girl.
Doc looked at me like I was crazy, that little fucker. Then he punched me in the face and closed the door.
Sharise Ruddell Neil Vince’s Second Wife
It soon became obvious that he was hugely famous. We couldn’t go anywhere without people stopping him and wanting his autograph and freaking out.
He wanted me to go to rehearsals with him—they were recording Girls, Girls, Girls. He made me go every single day to the studio with him, and I’d sit there for hours and hours. Parts of it were boring, because they sing the same line over and over and over, trying to get it right. But then again, this is a whole new world for me, I was getting to know Tommy and Nikki. Tommy’s wife, Heather Locklear, was just a doll to me. Here’s this big star and she’s coming up like, “Hi, my name is Heather.” She treated me like I was gold. She made me feel so welcome. And that became my life. Him saying, “Don’t go to work tonight. How much you going to make? I’ll pay you to stay with me.” I was like, “Okay.” Soon he was like, “You know what? I really don’t want you to work there anymore.” And I was like, “Okay.” What would you say?
We got married on April 30, 1988. The wedding was beautiful. It was at the Hotel Bel Air, by the lake with the swans. We both spent the night there before the wedding and he got really drunk, which made me mad—he was superhungover at the wedding.
When I first started dating him he was still coming off of being a sober guy, so he was limiting himself, regulating himself and his drinking. I didn’t really know as I was falling in love with him how bad it was. When I started to find out, it was devastating to me, because I had never seen him do the switcharoo he does. It’s like a switch he has. We would have a few drinks and he would be fine, and then one time out of maybe ten times he would get too drunk and then I’d be like, Whoa. Did that just happen? He needs somebody to babysit him. He was fine drinking between maybe one and four drinks. Around five, six, seven he gets sloppy. When he goes all the way to twelve he’s just belligerent; he doesn’t remember anything; he takes swings at people. He becomes psychotic, really. And he never remembered a thing.
He loved to fight. And let me tell you something—if he couldn’t fight with somebody else, on the way home he wanted to fight with me. That happened so many times. He just picks a fight.
I remember our first big fight. That’s when I saw the ugly side of him. We had gone to an event, some kind of an awards event. We sat at a table with the Mötley guys and I happened to be sitting next to Tom Werman, the producer of the Girls, Girls, Girls album. Vince was on my other side. It was a dress up event. We took a limo and it was just a really nice night. And Tom Werman was just making conversation with me because I’m sitting next to him, and that’s polite, right? I don’t even remember what he was saying. I might not have been even listening very hard. But all of a sudden Vince leans over to me and he says something like, “Why don’t you just go fuck him!” And I was like, “What?” I was shocked. He starts saying all these really mean things to me in my ear; it was just unbelievable stuff. The next morning he starts calling me. He leaves messages. He doesn’t seem to remember anything; he doesn’t remember saying those things. I don’t think I answered the phone for three days. He kept leaving me messages: “Why won’t you call me back,” blah blah blah. That’s like the first time I saw the ugly side of him. Which I was to see many, many, many, many, many more times. But when you’re twenty and somebody says, “I don’t know, I don’t remember,” and you love them, you kind of just say that must be a one-off. You know, “I’m just going to forgive him because he didn’t mean to do it and he apologized,” and blah blah blah. So by the time I was planning the wedding I had seen this a couple more times and I had a bad feeling. But the wedding was planned, do you know what I’m saying? The wedding was paid for.
Let me tell you about the first time he brought me to his house to meet his parents. They were very welcoming. His mom brings me into the front room; it’s very nice. She goes, “Have you seen all these magazines with Vince in them? Let me show you.” She starts pulling out scrapbooks and pictures, showing me pictures of him when he was little. Then she whips out the magazines; Vince and I are sitting on the couch and she’s like, “Oh, and here’s Vincent on the cover of Metal Edge,” here’s him on the cover of this, here’s him on the cover of that. And then she, like, starts to cry. And she looks at Vince and she goes, “What would you do if I died?” I was like, Whoa, whoa! Where did that come from? And Vince just goes, “Mom, Mom, what’s wrong with you?” And then he gets up and leaves. He just leaves me sitting with her.
Odie is very nice. He’s tall; you could tell he was a really good-looking man when he was young. Very quiet man. Very passive and quiet. And he likes his drink. They both do. I’ve never seen Odie lose control or anything. But they’re both drinkers. I don’t know what Vince had to grow up with in terms of dealing with all that.
The second we’d have a fight, Vince would be on the phone
to a friend calling him to come out to our house and sit with him. He’s very co-dependent. He’s just a very insecure person. I was constantly having to beef up his ego. You’d think when you’re singing in front of twenty thousand people who are screaming how much they love you—you’d think that would fill the hole. The girls are out there showing their boobs. He could have his pick of any of them. But he was like, “People only want something from me; I have no friends; nobody likes me.” I heard that five thousand times.
When he was on the road he wore my pants. He was that small. He could wear my stuff. He took my leopard-skin leggings and he would wear them onstage. He only ate once a day; he had a tuna sandwich. He never drank before the show back then. He’d only drink after. We had a trainer who would come to the house. He would train both. But before that Vince used to do this kind of karate or martial arts thing. I think that was when he lived at the beach with Beth.
I was the first to hear of Nikki’s death.
It was December 23, 1987, when I got the call. I was sound asleep, at home in bed with Sharise.
The call came from Nikki’s driver, Boris, who’d been parked outside the Franklin Plaza Hotel, where the guys from Guns N’ Roses stayed. “The dealer just ran past me screaming that he killed Nikki,” is how Boris put it… I think. He had some kind of accent, so it was hard to make him out.
I was like, What the fuck? I’m sure I’d been drinking earlier. You know how it is when you wake up in that haze.
Apparently, after a night on the town with Slash and his girlfriend—and some time spent at the Cathouse, another popular strip club we all frequented—they came back to the hotel and did some potent gummy Persian heroin. The dealer shot up Nikki, who passed out in front of Slash’s room and began turning blue. Seeing the turn of events, the dealer jumped out of the window and hightailed it over the balcony. He’s running down the street, yelling, “I just killed Nikki Sixx!”
