Motley Crue Lineup Changes: A Complete Guide

Four names come to thoughts while you consider Motley Crue: Nikki Sixx, Tommy Lee, Vince Neil and Mick Mars. But the group has undergone a number of lineup modifications at numerous levels of its 40-plus-year profession.

Granted, half of the band’s lineups consisted of the twice-reunited well-known unique foursome, with Sixx and Mars all the time remaining on board till the guitarist’s ongoing well being points pressured him to lastly retire from the highway in 2022. The tales of how first singer Neil after which drummer Lee left and got here again to the group — and what occurred whereas they have been gone — function nice examples of the extent of chaos that circled the band for a lot of its profession.

After a quick march to the highest and a decade-long reign as laborious rock’s most notorious unhealthy boys, Motley Crue discovered simply how fickle mainstream music followers may very well be after they fired Neil and experimented with heavier and extra serious-minded music on 1994’s Motley Crue. Bringing Neil again however persevering with to experiment with new sounds on 1997’s Generation Swine did not work significantly better.

So the band received again to fundamentals on 2000’s New Tattoo. Well, three of them, anyway. Lee determined he was sick of taking part in the identical form of music time and again, so he break up. Five years later, all of them realized as soon as and for all that they have been happier collectively. A decade after that, they introduced their retirement and made a giant present of signing a “legally binding” contract to stop any future reunions. Four years later, in 2019, they actually blew up that contract and reunited for a profitable stadium tour that was delayed by the pandemic for 2 years. Once that was concluded, Mars was lastly pressured to name it a profession.

That’s the quick model. You can learn the entire historical past of Motley Crue’s lineup modifications — together with the 4 drummers who briefly stuffed in after numerous Lee accidents — beneath.