Tattoos & Tequila: To Hell and Back with One of Rock's Most Notorious Frontmen

by Vince Neil

  I couldn’t believe I was hearing myself say it, but I did. I told my lawyers, “Let’s do it. Let’s get this thing back together again.”

  A week or so later, as I listened to some of the instrumental tracks for the next album, Generation Swine, I was not so sure I’d done the right thing. Fuck! I knew it. I’d made a big fucking mistake! The bastards talked me into it and now here I was. It was money talking. And greed. Theirs and mine, too.

  The setting was Nikki’s house; the moment I’d walked in, I couldn’t help myself—all the old feelings surfaced; my skin crawled. I hated everybody from the jump. And I hated all the songs. The songs sucked. Period.

  On top of that, from the first minute of the first day back, me and Tommy were at each other’s throats. It was sort of like even though they decided they were going to get back together, nobody was going to make it easy on anyone else. If I was being honest, I’d say they didn’t want it any more than I wanted it. I don’t think they wanted me back even a little bit. Clearly they’d been talked into it, too. It was a forced relationship, like staying together for the sake of the kids. Tommy, especially, was acting like a fucking diva. Since he’d married Pam Anderson his ego was all over the place. Suddenly he wanted to be a singer. We’re in there the first day and he’s telling me how to sing the songs! He was like, “Sing it like this; sing it like that.” And I’m like, Why don’t you fucking sing it then? I mean, the guy can’t fucking sing for shit. What does he know about singing? The only reason he and the others do backups is so they can get the AFTRA money. That’s the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. That’s the union. If your name is on a record as a singer, you can claim their insurance—health and dental and stuff like that. If you don’t sing on the record, you don’t get those benefits. That’s the only reason Tommy ever sang backup. Not because he’s fuckin’ Pavarotti.

  After about an hour, I’d had it. I was done.

  I was like, Fuck all of you. I didn’t need their shit. I got in my car and drove home.

  Day one of my reunion with Mötley Crüe.

  Great idea, right?

  That night, somebody called me and apologized. Fuck no. It wasn’t Tommy. Are you crazy? I think it was Burt. Or it was Kovac. I can’t remember. Probably it was both of them calling on a fucking conference call together. That’s the only thing those fuckin’ guys know how to do. “Wait a minute; let me conference you in.”

  Of course they talked me into giving it another shot. Heidi was in agreement. I had no money. I gave it another shot. We made it work. We made the album.

  I never heard the record they did with Corabi, but I did get together with him at some point and we had some drinks. John told me that he’d actually gone at one point to the guys—this is when he was with the band—and told them, “You gotta get Vince back. You know this is not working.” And I think that’s when the whole thing to get me back really mushroomed. I think it was initiated by John. It’s true, I guess. We are all for one or we are nothing. I hate like hell to say it, but it’s true. I know it. And they know it. I wish it could be a little less like having to eat a bitter pill.

  “Generation Swine,” the single, came out in January ’97, the day after a reunited Mötley performed live at the American Music Awards in Los Angeles. Later, the album peaked at #4, with sales of 80,500 copies. Truthfully, the song sucked. The whole album sucked. The sales were totally out of loyalty from our fans. I think the only fun time I had that entire time we were doing that album was this one afternoon when I landed a helicopter in Nikki’s backyard.

  When we weren’t in the studio I was taking flying lessons. I was up with an instructor putting in some hours. Just about the time we got over by Westlake Village, out the 101 toward Thousand Oaks, west of Calabasas, where I used to live, my instructor and I ran out of beer. I knew Nikki lived in Westlake Village, so I called him on the cell. I was like, “Look up!” He was in his studio and he came outside, and he looked up. There was a helicopter hovering right above his house.

  We landed in his backyard. We got out, went into the studio and listened to some stuff, drank a couple beers. Then we took off.

  Nikki got hell from the homeowners’ association; it’s probably the nicest memory of him I have.

  December again. The last month of 1997. If my life was a movie, the soundtrack would change up right about here. Something was ready to go down. It didn’t take long to find out what.

  Mötley was on a small tour. Like with Feelgood, somebody had decided it would be best if we all stayed sober. If you were caught fucked up, it was explained, there would be a twenty-five-thousand-dollar fine. I don’t know how that was established. I never voted on it. I mean, we’re not just talking, like, staying away from heroin or cocaine. They were saying you could not have a glass of wine or a cocktail. Nothing. Nada. It was fuckin’ ridiculous. I was nearly thirty-seven years old. You’re gonna tell me what I can and cannot do? You gonna fuckin’ tuck me in at night, too?

  The next stop was San Francisco. A buddy of mine had volunteered to fly us in his private plane from LA to SF and then on to our next stop, in Boise, Idaho. The guy’s name was Neil McNeice. He had a sweet Gulfstream jet. His father basically owned the whole state of Wyoming—he had the uranium rights, anyway. I guess the story was Neil’s father and mother had been antelope hunting in the Gas Hills; for some reason Mr. McNeice brought along a Geiger counter; they discovered uranium in the hills. Later Mr. McNeice went on to found this huge uranium-mining company. The family was worth like a billion dollars.

  The son, I’m pretty sure his name was also Neil, was just this cool dude I met somewhere. We started hanging out together and we got along well. He’d be like, “Here, take the jet. Do whatever you want, man.” I mean I have a little bit of money, but this guy had real “fuck you” money. He could do whatever the fuck he wanted, basically. He wasn’t beholden to anybody. We’d take the jet to Hawaii and go hang out at his house in Maui. When we got tired of Maui, it would be like, “Hey, let’s go to Japan. Let’s go get some sushi.” That’s how you rolled when you were partying with him.

  So using my connection, the band flew in McNeice’s jet to San Francisco. After the show, I went to a strip club, had a drink, and then took a taxi home. I didn’t get that fucked up or anything. We’d been touring for a while. I’d been straight. I just needed a goddamn drink and some pussy, you know? Somehow, later, Nikki ended up taking the exact same cab as I’d taken. The driver of course got all excited and told Nikki he’d had me in the car—plus he told Nikki I’d been drinking.

  The next morning, Nikki called my room and demanded a check for twenty-five thousand dollars. I was like, Fuck, you know? I didn’t really want to be in the band, anyway; I was tired of the rules and the bullshit. I remember the tour manager, Mike Amato, came to my hotel room door with a pee bottle—I think it was him. He wanted a urine sample from me. He declined to be interviewed for this book.

  There was an altercation in the hallway. I was pissed off. I was like, “You know what? I don’t need this shit. Fuck all of you.”

  I packed my shit and went downstairs. I was actually calm, but I was mad. Really fuckin’ mad. We were all supposed to meet in the lobby at 4:00 P.M. for our ride to the airport to take the jet to Boise. The guys were down there, as were Nikki’s grandfather and Nikki’s wife, the former Baywatch hottie Donna D’Errico. I looked at Nikki and I said, “I quit. I can’t fuckin’ do this anymore.”

  Nikki’s like, “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ve had it,” I told him. “I quit. I’m going home.”

  Nikki just exploded. To my surprise, he fucking took a swing at me—nailed me right in the jaw with an uppercut. Then he jumped on me like a man possessed, grabbed me by the neck, and dug his fingernails in, screaming that he was going to rip out my vocal cords.

  We wrestled on the floor for a few seconds. I’ve always been stronger and in better shape than Nikki. I punched him in the face and threw him off of me.
Finally everybody held us back. I was like, “Fuck you, I’m out.”

  I went and grabbed McNeice and we went to the airport. When we got there, the whole band was in the waiting area. It was a private field, not a regular airport. So all they had was this tiny waiting area by the runway. Me and McNeice and the pilot walked into the facility and walked right past the band. “Wait here a minute,” I told them over my shoulder as we filed out onto the tarmac and got on the plane.

  And started it up.

  And rolled out onto the strip and took off.

  I can still see their faces as we were pulling away—they were all staring out the windows of the waiting room, like those fuckin’ cats that stick up against the back windows of cars? Garfield. They were all looking out the window like Garfield the cat, the plane pulling away without them.

  I remember Nikki calling me on my cell. He’s like, “You can’t do this! You can’t just leave us here. We have a sold-out show in Boise.”

  And I was like, “The hell I can’t, motherfucker.” I was done.

  Again.

  We flew back to LA and went directly to the bar at the Peninsula Hotel. Heidi joined us there. And thus began another epic night… I guess. I can’t really remember.

  I found out later that since it was a private airport, there of course weren’t any regular flights. The band had to stay there like eight or nine hours waiting for a flight. They ended up canceling the show in Boise and flying home.

  A few days later, Nikki called and we made up again.

  We went to Boise and fulfilled our obligation.

  I think something broke that time. Maybe it was Nikki finally being man enough to take a swing at me and connect. We’d come a long way. We were grown men now. We were getting too old for this bullshit. We knew our bread was buttered by Mötley Crüe. We knew what had to be done, whether we liked every single thing about it or not. I don’t really hold a grudge that long. It’s like let’s get it on, let’s just do it. But I just don’t trust Nikki. I don’t trust him. I don’t trust any of the guys in the band. Because they’re not trustworthy. They always have ulterior motives. And that’s why I have to always think ahead when I get a phone call from one of them. I’m always trying to figure out, Okay, what’s in it for them? What are they really angling for? I do get along better with Nikki than I guess anybody.

  And so it would go for the next thirteen years to the present. We don’t really like each other anymore, maybe, but we’ve stayed together for the benefit of the kids. And I prefer to think that despite everything, deep down, each of us loves the others. For the benefit of the whole, we each sacrifice a bit of ourselves. Like it or not, we are the four musketeers, all for one and one for all, placed on this earth to do what we do. Over the course of time, we have pumped out a number of albums, some better than others. There was Greatest Hits: Supersonic and Demonic Relics; Live: Entertainment or Death; New Tattoo; Red, White & Crüe; and Carnival of Sins. Who would ever have predicted that 2008’s Saints of Los Angeles, with all new material chronicling our life together as a band, would debut at #4 on the Billboard chart after selling 99,000 copies in the United States during its first week of release. It was the biggest sales week for Mötley since Christmas of 1991, when Decade of Decadence sold 121,000 copies. Once again, despite our own efforts to self-destruct, Mötley Crüe was back and being relevant. And so we remain today.

  I finally married Heidi on May 28, 2000, at L’Orangerie. We’d already been together for like six years. I don’t remember what the final straw was that moved us to tie the knot. I think I was probably in the doghouse big-time and was trying to make things right. “Mercurial” is the best word to describe my relationship with Heidi.

  It was just a small wedding, like thirty people. We were married to the tune of Van Morrison’s “Crazy Love,” which explained us exactly. The bridesmaids were mainly Playboy Playmates; Nikki stood as my best man—don’t ask me how that happened. Like I said earlier, he was at all four of my weddings. It’s a love/hate thing between him and me. Some things are best left unexplained.

  All in all, life was good. At least I thought it was good. While I was on tour—almost a year to the day after our wedding—Heidi calls me and tells me she found somebody else, some fuckin’ plastic surgeon.

  Obviously, she’d been fucking him the whole time. After she told me she was leaving me she moved in with the guy within a couple of days—so obviously it wasn’t like she’d just met the guy. This had been going on for a while. I don’t know how long it was going on, but it was, it was going on.

  After that it got ugly. The June 4, 2002, edition of the National Enquirer featured this huge story: “Playboy Playmate Tells All. My 10 Years of Abuse at Hands of Mötley Crüe Rocker.” In the story, Heidi alleged that I first started abusing her three months into our relationship and that I continued to pull her hair, slap her, and punch her at times over the course of our relationship, including one time when I supposedly hit her so hard that I broke her breast implant. She also alleged that I once kicked her karate-style in the stomach in the middle of a Beverly Hills restaurant and that I cheated on her at Skylar’s funeral. I stayed out of the fray, preferring to have my lawyer respond. He told the press that the allegations were “outrageous and defamatory” and added that Heidi was the abusive one with the bad temper who frequently threw things at me during our years together.

  The truth is we fought just like every other married couple fights. I think maybe at times we both drank too much. There was a lot of, there was definitely verbal abuse, from both sides. She could give as good as she got. But we had something special together, you can believe that.

  I know you will hear some juice from Heidi, so I’ll just let her have her say. She’s still a beautiful woman. I will always cherish the good times we had.

  Heidi Mark Vince’s Third Wife

  He definitely knew that alcohol was his problem. And he readily admitted it to me. I remember sitting on our couch and him being on the floor with his arms on my legs crying. And I could tell it was bullshit. This was a broken person. This was a scene that played over and over.

  One time I’m thinking of, he’s like, “I can’t stop drinking, Heidi. I can’t stop it. Once it starts going and that light switch goes off, I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.” And of course he’s like, “Please, I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything you want.”

  That was one of the times Promises picked him up. They pick him up that day, and that night I was getting a phone call: “We need thirty grand.” I gave them fifteen thousand, I called our friend Roger King, who has since passed away, he gave me another fifteen thousand, and I had it in their bank account the next day. It was like they were going to bring him back home if I didn’t give them the money. And I go, “Do not bring him home. Do not bring him home, please.”

  What would happen is he’d start off with good intentions. He’d be like, “Okay, I’m going to have three drinks, and that’s it, Heidi. Three drinks. That’s it.” And then the third drink would be finished. And he looks at me. And he’s like, “Okay, I’m going to have one more.” You get to a point… you know you try to enforce the rules? And you get to a point where you’re just a nagging bitch and it’s just not worth it. So, I just wouldn’t even fight the fight. You know what I mean? Nobody wants to be that person.

  I put him through I think it was five rehabs. Vince knew exactly what to say to get out of each rehab, so he may remember a lot more than he wants you to think he remembers. He can play that game. He knows exactly what to say. He’s dumb as a fox. Granted, he has definitely lost a lot of time to blackouts. There’s no doubt about that. He’s a blackout drunk. He functions without functioning.

  I know for a fact that if I wouldn’t have left, we’d still be together. Because Vince is a lover. He would never leave anybody, you know? He would cheat on you like a dog, but he would never break up with someone. He would never leave. He can’t be alone. He would wake up somewhere with a girl and literally he w
ould come home crying, “I didn’t know, I’m sorry, I don’t know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ll go into rehab; I’ll do anything, I’m sorry.” And he’d go into rehab; he’d do what he needed to do. He’d talk the talk and walk the walk and all the people in there would fall in love with him. Vince is a charming, charming guy. So that’s how it would go. There would be some big thing—like when I found him in a hotel with two hookers, you know? Then he’d go into rehab.

  One of the nice things about Vince was that when he was home he would drive me to my auditions or to my meetings so I didn’t have to drive. Then he’d wait for me or pick me up after, when I called. It was great because on the way to an audition, say, I could look over my sides and get ready. He did so many lovely gestures that weren’t about money. Though he also did things I didn’t like. I think in the gesture department he had a couple of go-to moves, like I’d get a couple dozen red roses. But roses meant nothing to me. It took no thought. He probably had his manager’s assistant call it in—the card would always be very generic. Like one card was: “To Heidi, I love you, your husband Vince.” Like when would he ever tell someone to sign a card that way? How about a personal note? Thought, not money. It never even occurred to him that I hated red roses. That is a whole book in itself, but suffice it to say, red roses were not the way to my heart or anything else. In fact, I had a favorite rose—he could’ve found out. It isn’t hard. I like ambrosias. They’re kind of an orangey color with like dark red.

  I remember he had this pink shirt. He loved to wear it all the time. He had gotten in a fight in it; it still had the bloodstains no matter how many times he washed it. I think it meant something to him. I think he won the fight. And he had these shorts that he loved that had a hole in them. I remember one time after we’d been fighting and he was wearing this outfit. And he just says to me, “Heidi, I think our problem is that we don’t kiss enough. If we started kissing enough, I think that we’d get back on track.” And it was like, the look in his eyes, he was totally serious. He meant every single word of it, no bullshit. That was him at his best, you know? When there was nobody around, when there was no bullshit or ceremony. It was just Vince being Vince and me being myself. Vince and Heidi. That part was great.