{"id":345493,"date":"2026-09-13T08:19:07","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T08:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/345493\/"},"modified":"2026-09-13T08:19:07","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T08:19:07","slug":"we-were-one-of-the-first-bands-to-take-punk-and-mix-it-with-glam-and-metal-we-started-a-whole-new-trend-how-motley-crue-created-the-album-that-invented-80s-hair-metal-with-help-fro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/345493\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWe were one of the first bands to take punk and mix it with glam and metal. We started a whole new trend\u201d: How Motley Crue created the album that invented 80s hair metal with help from an ex-construction worker and Queen\u2019s producer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in November 1981, just less than 12 months after they got together, M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce<\/a> were total unknowns; young, dumb and practically overflowing with cum. The four band members \u2013 singer Vince Neil, bassist Nikki Sixx, drummer Tommy Lee and guitarist Mick Mars \u2013 inhabited the M\u00f6tley house in Los Angeles. a den of iniquity later portrayed so graphically in their book The Dirt, and without the proverbial pot in which to urinate.<\/p>\n

The band\u2019s sleazy adaptation of hard-rock themes was hardly in demand at the time. Gigs were in short supply \u2013 as was toilet paper. Six months earlier all 100 copies pressed of their aptly titled seven-inch vinyl debut single Stick To Your Guns (b\/w Toast Of The Town) had been given away free at the band\u2019s live shows. And yet the full-length album they\u2019d been dying to make would ignite a glam-metal revolution.<\/p>\n

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In the days before Doc McGee and Doug Thaler handled their affairs and Elektra Records signed the group\u2019s royalty cheques, M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce were managed by Allan Coffman \u2013 a former construction worker who was the brother-in-law of a friend of Mars \u2013 and his wife. The group were being paid just $20 a week. Indeed it was drummer Tommy Lee\u2019s willingness to \u2018take one for the team\u2019 that enabled them to visit the studio at all.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe were all in relationships at the time except for Tommy, and the manager at Hit City West studio was this girl,\u201d singer Vince Neil reminisces with a mischievous grin. \u201cShe wasn\u2019t very attractive, but we made Tommy do her for some free recording time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Self-produced by the group, recorded over just three days and mixed at Cherokee Studios (with Coffman And Coffman Productions credited as executive producers), the album was made for the miserly sum of $2,500. Just 20,000 copies were pressed on their own label, Leath\u00fcr Records.<\/p>\n

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\"Motley\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Chris Walter\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cToo Fast For Love was a demo tape, man,\u201d Neil exclaims. But, without doubt, its audaciousness paid off. Once Elektra signed the group, Roy Thomas Baker, of Queen fame, was brought in to remix the original Leath\u00fcr edition.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people say Roy screwed up the album, and I agree,\u201d admits Neil. \u201cI prefer the rawness of the version that we did ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In fact M\u00f6tley had apparently tried to persuade Andy Scott, guitarist of The Sweet, to oversee the record, but their efforts were in vain<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s absolutely true,\u201d Neil confirms. \u201cM\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce loved Sweet\u2019s Desolation Boulevard album. We also asked Herman Rarebell [drummer with the Scorpions] to produce us and take a share in the band, but he passed. I still tease him about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neil is amused to be reminded that the press release that accompanied Too Fast For Love called the group\u2019s style \u201cA return to the hard-driving sound of The Beatles re-energised for the 80s\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Considering that M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce went on to become one of the most copied bands in the world, it didn\u2019t sound like they thought of themselves as particularly original.<\/p>\n

M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce – Live Wire (Official Music Video) – YouTube
\n\"M\u00f6tley<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou\u2019ve gotta remember that in the 1980s, music was still recovering from the punk rock movement,\u201d the singer protests. \u201cWe were one of the first bands to take punk and mix it with glam and metal. We started a whole new trend.\u201d<\/p>\n

So many acts never quite manage to surpass their first two or three albums. So what is it about the spark of a group\u2019s earliest work?<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, you have your whole life to write your first album, and then a year before the sophomore curse kicks in,\u201d Neil reasons. \u201cTo me, Too Fast For Love has some great material. We still do most of those songs on stage. Some are pretty juvenile, Come On And Dance makes me want to cringe a little, but we were a young band back then, and for the time that it came out, we were so far ahead of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally published in Classic Rock issue 150 (September 2010)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back in November 1981, just less than 12 months after they got together, M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce were total unknowns;…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-345493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}