Vince Neil says he immediately accepted the decision for MÖTLEY CRÜE to abandon its retirement and take the lead in a U.S. stadium tour.
Despite the band’s 2014/2015 “farewell” tour, during which CRÜE fans were convinced of the group’s permanent departure following the last show at the Staples Center in Los Angeles in December 2015, the band had promoted a pre-tour “cessation of touring” agreement to solidify the notion that it marked the definitive conclusion of CRÜE‘s touring days.
On the latest episode of “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk” on SiriusXM, Neil was asked about his sentiments regarding returning from retirement to perform in concerts once more, specifically as a part of CRÜE‘s 2022 summer stadium tour alongside DEF LEPPARD and POISON.
He responded: “We sat around for — what? — five years without doing anything. I was always [doing shows] with my solo band, but I thought it’d be fun. I was in. They said, ‘We’re gonna get together and do some stadiums.’ And I was, like, ‘Okay, that sounds pretty cool.’ ‘The Stadium Tour’ got us out to more people, so it was a lot of fun.”
CRÜE drummer Tommy Lee previously discussed the band’s decision to abandon their retirement in a June 2020 interview on SiriusXM‘s Debatable. HE said at the time: “[As far as we were concerned] that was it. 2016 — I’ll never forget it. I think it was New Year’s Eve. Staples Center [in] L.A. That was it. We all said goodbye. That was the dopest 32, 33 years of our lives. We’re out. This is the best way ever to go out — on top. Mic drop, boom, see ya. We’re out. And that was it. We’re done. We didn’t really speak to each other for probably a year. Everybody just went and did their own thing. And here it is four years later, [concert promoter] Live Nation asked us if we’d like to do a stadium tour, and all of us were, like, ‘Ehhh…’ And then we thought about it for a minute. We were, like, that is the one thing that this band has never done. Yeah, we played stadiums on festivals all over the place, but our own stadium tour? We were, like, ‘Hold on. Let us think about this. Okay.'”
Lee also expressed that the major factor prompting him and his fellow band members to reunite was the success of the “The Dirt” movie.
“The movie … really [inspired] a whole new generation of kids that are probably… I know, ’cause I’ve talked to many of them; I stay in touch with a lot of fans, and they’re, like, ‘Dude, is that really what it was like in the ’80s when you guys were around?’ “And I’m, like, ‘That’s exactly what it was like.’ They’re, like, ‘Oh my God.’ That newer generation feels like they missed out, and they did, because s**t isn’t like that anymore, man. It was a free-for-all back then — anything went. And I think they wanna be a part of it and see it and witness it. So, yeah, there’s this whole generation of kids that that movie has brought into the fold now that are super pumped to come and see what we do, come to see that life that we lived. And [they] probably can’t believe we’re all still alive. [They’re] going, like, ‘These guys are still doing this s**t. What are they, cockroaches? You can’t kill these motherf**kers.'”
