Mick Mars Hopes Mötley Crüe Never Speaks to Him Again

You may remember a story that ran last month about former Mötley Crüe guitarist Mick Mars speaking to Rolling Stone about his falling out with his former bandmates, which led to a messy lawsuit that is still ongoing and will populate the pages of this website for years to come. Well, on Monday, Rolling Stone published the outtakes from that feature and Mars pulled absolutely no punches about his bandmates.

Mars shares some hot takes about records like New Tattoo and Generation Swine, talks about his relationship with John 5 and further alleges use of backing tracks. But the most brutal revelation is that Mars hopes the members of Mötley Crüe never speak to him again.

“I think all of us would be okay with that. And I don’t just mean me with them. I mean them with each other. I don’t plan on having a funeral. If I did, I think maybe they’d show up for that just out of courtesy. But for me, there’s no funeral. There’s no nothing.”

Speaking on the subject of backing tracks,—a subject Mars and Mötley Crüe have gone back and forth about already—Mars says that Mötley began using them as far back as the Dr. Feelgood tour. Dr. Feelgood came out in 1989.

“I remember saying, ‘People know what’s supposed to be there. Will they miss it? Some probably will, but a majority will not. They’ll hear it subliminally the way it was recorded as long as the meat and potatoes are there.’ I didn’t want to fool the audience, but the others wanted to fill in where the holes were. I never liked that garbage.”

Mars also once again claimed that bassist Nikki Sixx used backing tracks on the band’s 2022 Stadium Tour. Sixx has denied using backing tracks and produced sworn statements from multiple crew members, but Mars is adamant.

“I’ve been with him a long time, and I got fan-based film of him thrusting his arms in the air and stuff when there’s a bass line playing. I’m absolutely positive [he wasn’t playing live bass]. I think he did that because he felt too much competition from the other bands on the tour, like Def Leppard. I think they made him feel inadequate about his bass playing.”