In a recent interview on The Mistress Carrie Podcast, MÖTLEY CRÜE bassist Nikki Sixx delved into the band’s choice to bring guitarist John 5 on board as a replacement for Mick Mars, who had announced his retirement from touring with the iconic rock group.
Sixx said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): “John‘s a great guy. I’ve known John for a long time. I brought John in on a Meat Loaf song that I wrote, ‘The Monster Is Loose’. And then some SIXX:A.M. songs. He wrote a song with me called ‘Lies Of The Beautiful People’, which was a big hit for SIXX:A.M. And I brought him in to do a project that I did for Netflix called L.A. RATS with Rob Zombie and Tommy Clufetos on drums, a Johnny Cash cover. And I wrote The Dirt [MÖTLEY CRÜE movie soundtrack] songs with him, and he played a lot of the guitar on those tracks.
“And so when this moment that we weren’t expecting happened, Mick‘s leaving the band, we were in the middle of ‘The Stadium Tour’. We were in the middle of a huge tour with us and DEF LEPPARD. A world tour, not just a couple gigs. And we had to ask ourselves, like, ‘Do we fold? Do we leave Live Nation in the lurch? Do we bone our partners in DEF LEPPARD?’ And we had to dig deep and we were, like, ‘We’ve gotta do what’s right for the fans.’ And John was the guy. We didn’t even talk about anybody else. We knew John. I knew John. We knew what he was as a guitar player. We knew he was a writer. And it just was like taking a situation we didn’t expect and turning it into something. And now we have new music and we’re having a great time.”
“The thing with creativity is it’s a circle,” Sixx continued. “And if there’s a break in it, you can’t really get all the energy going. And this new moment has reinvigorated the creativity in the band. And I will attribute that to John and also just change in general sometimes happens.
“I played with a lot of different musicians over the years. And every time I play with a new musician, I have a new interpretation of something. And they bring that. So there’s a freshness to having John in the band right now.”
When asked by Mistress Carrie about whether he had to engage in a Mafia-style meeting with Rob Zombie, John 5‘s longtime bandmate and employer, while recruiting John 5 to join MÖTLEY CRÜE, Sixx responded: “It was one of those things that I feel bad about. It wasn’t my decision. It was John‘s decision. I had been talking to John as a friend during some of the frustrations with Mick‘s playing, specifically on the tour. And he was my friend. And when I called him and said, ‘Wow, we’re faced with a really bad situation.’ And we talked. And he wanted to do the next-level thing in his life.
“He’d been with Rob for a long, long time, and they were kind of coming to an end of a tour. And he talked to Rob, and Rob was not happy but understood. I still feel bad about that. That was never my intention, to go out and steal somebody from another band. That’s not what we did. But I have so much respect for Rob. It’s one of those things where I’m really happy and at the same time I’m, like… Sometimes this stuff’s f**king hard. Like making a decision to move on without an original member. It’s not exactly as seamless as people would like it to seem. There’s some little bumps along the way, little bumps in the road.”
John 5 stepped in as Mars‘s replacement in fall of 2022. Mick officially retired from touring with the band in October 2022 due to deteriorating health conditions.
In April 2023, Mars initiated legal action against his MÖTLEY CRÜE bandmates, alleging that he was unjustly terminated by his “brothers of 41 years.”
In his lawsuit, Mars asserted that the other CRÜE members sought to unlawfully strip him of his 25% ownership stake in the band after he disclosed his inability to tour due to an arthritic condition known as ankylosing spondylitis, which he described as a “tragic announcement.” Mars also claimed that Nikki Sixx “did not play a single note on bass” during the entire 2022 tour, that “100% of Sixx‘s bass parts were nothing but recordings” and asserted that a “significant portion” of Neil‘s vocals and “some of” Tommy Lee‘s drumming were pre-recorded.
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