Jake E. Lee Talking All Kinds of Sh*t About Mötley Crüe

Jake E. Lee, current guitarist for Red Dragon Cartel and former guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne (amongst others), recently appeared on Tone-Talk podcast, where he seems to have gone out of his way to start beef with Mötley Crüe. Probably because he knew it would make headlines. Mission accomplished.

ANYHOO, some of Lee’s claims aren’t that interesting — like asserting that the infamous story from The Dirt about Ozzy Osbourne snorting a row of ants isn’t true:

“I was there, and I never saw ants. I was right there. He snorted a little spider. There was a not a trail of fucking ants there. Tommy [Lee] says it, Nikki [Sixx] says it, Ozzy says it — they were fucked up. I was not. I was just trying to get a fucking sun tan. That’s all I was doing. They were getting fucked up. Ozzy snorted a little tiny stupid spider that was crawling across. There was no ants — there was no fucking ants. I don’t care what the other guys say — there was no ants.”

The event is memorable enough that a dramatized version made it into The Dirt movie… but it’s also not the most interesting part of that story. No. The most interesting part of that story is that Ozzy also allegedly lapped up Nikki’s piss. By comparison, snorting ants, a spider, a ladybug, or any other insect is, y’know, not all that crazy sounding. Honestly, a 62-year-old man saying “there was no ants” twice in a row sounds much loonier to me.

Lee made another claim in the same interview, though, which I do think is pretty interesting: that at one point early in the band’s career, Lee was approached about replacing Mick Mars in the Crüe. I guess no one was concerned about having two “Lee”s in the band.

Says Jake:

“Nikki and Tommy wanted me in the band. They actually wanted me to replace Mick — which you can understand that. [I was] fucking better looking and fucking better playing.”

He was clearly not fucking better speaking, but that’s not why he ultimately didn’t get the gig: he says that Mick’s “in-law or whatever” was financing the band, thus giving Mars complete job security.

So what does Lee think Mötley Crüe would have sounded like with him in the band?

“They wouldn’t have been as big with me. Musically, they might have been better.”

I’m not even sure that qualifies as a backhanded compliment. It might just be a straight diss. But whatever. The important thing is that Jake isn’t still better almost forty years later. That would just be sad.

[via dickhammer.pl]