On June 16 at Hellfest in Clisson, France, Colson Baker, known by his stage name Machine Gun Kelly, performed with MÖTLEY CRÜE on stage to play their single “The Dirt (Est. 1981) (feat. Machine Gun Kelly),” which was one of the four songs the band recorded for the soundtrack of their biography film, The Dirt – Confessions Of The World’s Most Notorious Rock Band.
Fan-recorded footage of the performance is available online.
MÖTLEY CRÜE bassist Nikki Sixx shared the story behind the creation of The Dirt (Est. 1981) while speaking on Steve Jones‘s radio show, “Jonesy’s Jukebox,” on the 95.5 KLOS radio station.
He said: “We were in New Orleans. That’s where we filmed most of the movie. And we were flying back, and I was flying with Tommy [Lee, drums]… And I said, ‘Let’s write some music.’ And I didn’t think we would ever do anything again together besides this movie — we kind of called it a day. And I had about seven, eight songs I had been working on — not for MÖTLEY CRÜE.
“I was working with John 5 [then-ROB ZOMBIE guitarist]. We were just writing music. So I had these ideas. And Tommy said he had a bunch of ideas. And Mick Mars [guitar] had some ideas. And we just started kind of putting them together. And we ended up with nine songs all called ‘The Dirt’. And by the time we figured out which ones we loved, we were down to three songs, and this song ended up being the one we chose for the first single.”
