Mötley Crüe Respond To Mick Mars’ Lawsuit
Mötley Crüe have responded to a lawsuit filed by former guitarist Mick Mars.
While Mars said he retired from touring, yet still considers himself a part of the band, the band says he “resigned.” They also dismissed his argument that he’s owed money.
“Retiring from touring is resigning from the band,” said Sasha Frid, Mötley Crüe’s litigation attorney (via Variety). “The band’s primary function is to tour and perform concerts… If a shareholder resigns, he cannot receive any compensation from touring — which is what Mick is trying to get. It’s clear-cut that Mick is not entitled to any more money.”
The band’s attorneys also provided Variety with signed statements from seven members of the band’s touring crew who claim Mars’ performances at shows were on the decline and caused issues for the band.
“Mick would consistently forget chords and songs so the band would have to stop and re-teach those parts to Mick to remind him of the arrangements,” the declaration read. “Mick’s performance issues continued throughout the tour. He would consistently miss notes; play out of tune; play the wrong chords during a song; stay within a chorus of a song and never come out of it; forget the song that he was playing and start a different one; and would get lost in songs. This happened at every show. … Our playback engineer put in cues for Mick so that he would stay on course but he would miss the cues.”
Mars isn’t going down without a fight. In a new interview, he claimed to have “carried those bastard for years.”
“Those guys have been hammering on me since ’87, trying to replace me,” Mars told Variety. They haven’t been able to do that, because I’m the guitar player. I helped form this band. It’s my name I came up with [the Mötley Crüe moniker], my ideas, my money that I had from a backer to start this band. It wouldn’t have gone anywhere.”
“That’s an insult to me that they’re offering me that,” Mars continued. “No. It’s my name. It’s Mick Mars, it’s Mötley Crüe, the four of us that made the band. You would have to have a good reason to be fired. I don’t. I could come back with this and go like, ‘Hey, you know what? I’m gonna counter because you assholes are felons. You [Tommy Lee] for spousal abuse; you [Vince Neil] for manslaughter.’ I’m not doing that. It just makes me really upset that they want to try and bully me more or less out of the band, so it’s the last man standing that collects everything. And if there’s any real justice to it, I’d be the one that would be the only one that has no criminal record. I’m pure. I’m clean as a freshly washed baby.”
In response to the band’s claims of Mars’ declining performance, he said “What was going in my ear wasn’t really my guitar. It was some kind of weird, out-of-phase kind of a thing. And I have it here, on my iPad. I’m telling my sound guy, Scotty, to turn up my guitar, and I go, ‘Wait a minute, that ain’t mine.’ Because mine’s a big, huge, fat sound. And so when I started getting at it, it was a lot better. But there was parts with that tape on my guitar that were so horrible, yes, I did lose my spot a couple of times. But not all the time. And it is very difficult. And then it’s also difficult when they have a bunch of old-school 808 bass drums going and turning up the bass guitar. Do you know what that does to a guitar frequency? It drowns it out. And that’s what was going on a lot out front. … You’d have to be me to know it was the truth.”
Read the full interview here.
Mötley Crüe continue their 2023 world tour with Def Leppard next month.
