A Motley Farewell

By Matt Garaghty

 

For nine months, it had all culminated to this one song, one moment, and last show ever in Minnesota. The center stage lowered back to ground level, the guitar & bass faded, the drums came to a stop in a crash of cymbals, and the lights came back on.

 

“Goodbye Minneapolis! Motley Crue loves you,” said Sixx, the bass player and founding member of the legendary group since 1981.

 

The band threw their last picks, drumsticks and gave their high fives before walking back through the crowd to their bus. Only hours earlier, I had been walking through a snowstorm to the Xcel Energy Center with my brother and best friend, greeted by a group of Christians calling us sinners and threatening that we’ll all burn in hell.

 Opening the show were the Raskins, who played the same generic blend of rock and blues since the 1970’s.

 Alice Cooper was the main support for Motley Crue’s farewell tour. Alice brought his entire stage show, along with a new female guitar player Nita Strauss. He ripped through 13 classic songs, as well as incorporated the famous “Another Brick in the Wall” into “School’s Out.” The 66 year old performer put on a better show than most other acts could only dream of by decapitating himself, electrifying himself, giving away money and pearls, throwing giant balloons into the crowd, and taking abuse from an undead nurse while in a straight jacket.

 The Crue finally took the stage to the song “Saints of Los Angeles,” and played countless hits like “Wild Side,” “Primal Scream,” and “Dr. Feelgood,” while Sixx lit his microphone stand on fire with his flamethrower bass. The band even dove into their deep cuts and played “On With the Show” and “Anarchy in the U.K.,” a Sex Pistols cover.

 “Sit your asses down St. Paul, it’s story time!” Screamed Sixx, who then told the story of how the band met and came together to dominate the 80’s rock scene.

 Tommy Lee unleashed his latest and most extreme drum solo yet, by taking a roller coaster ride over the crowd to the center of the arena drumming upside down to the beats of his dubstep recordings.

 “You know, I’ve been waiting my whole life to pull stunts like this, and look at me now!” Yelled Tommy Lee, before his rollercoaster ride back to the stage. After Lee landed, Mick Mars, lead guitarist, took to the stage for his ratty, overdriven guitar solo.

 Vince Neil stepped up to the front of the stage and emulated the starting of a Harley motorcycle, and the band kicked into the mega hit “Girls, Girls, Girls,” followed by arguably their most popular song, “Kickstart My Heart,” written about Sixx’s heroin overdose while on tour in 1986.

 The band left the stage and the lights went out, but there was no movement. If you looked close enough, you could see the band sneaking their way to the center of the crowd, onto a small stage that elevated up 20 to 30 feet where the band played their encore: “Home Sweet Home.”

 The band looked worn out, yet they were full of energy and delivered a top notch performance. The sound and playing was dirty, but that’s what the bands image is and what they’ve built over the years. Motley Crue didn’t go out with a bang, but more so with the bittersweet tears of overjoyed fans of all generations.

As Sixx said, “This isn’t the end of Motley Crue, because our music is gonna haunt you until the day you die!”