MÖTLEY CRÜE Frontman VINCE NEIL Talks Decline Of Arena Rock Shows - "Hopefully There's Someone Out There Right Now In Their Garage Rehearsing, Lighting Themselves On Fire"

Maxim recently caught up with Mötley Crüe frontman Vince Neil to discuss the band’s final days as they countdown The Final Tour, which wraps up on New Year’s Eve. An excerpt from the interview is available below.

Maxim: Through the course of your career, how would you say that the metal scene has changed, both for the better and for the worse?

Vince: “When we started getting bigger and were headlining arenas and all the other bands in the eighties were coming out and ‘arena rock’ was kinda being born, we really took pride in putting shows together. We put a lot into the entertainment value of fans coming out to watch a show. And that was really only a handful of bands, like us, who went out of their way to give fans a great show. And there’s only a handful left. It’s like us, Ozzy, Alice Cooper, and KISS. That’s it. When we’re all gone, I don’t see anyone else carrying the torch of wanting to put together a great show with pyro and lights and fire, along with the songs. It’s just kinda sad that that’s all kinda disappeared. Hopefully there’s someone out there right now in their garage rehearsing, lighting themselves on fire.”

Maxim: Now that it’s almost over, do you feel like you did everything you wanted to do as a member of Mötley Crüe? Do you get the sense that it was all a happy ending, or would you go back and change some things if you could?

Vince: “I think we definitely did everything that we set out to do. I feel really good about my career with Mötley, and we had a really great run. It was a lot of fun and we got to do things that most people, in their lives, would never get to do. We were more of a fan band than a critic’s band. We don’t care that we never won a Grammy. All we care about is that we always had sold out concerts and everybody was out there enjoying it with us.”

Go to this location for the complete interview.

Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee spoke with Thenational.ae prior to the band’s November 20th Abu Dhabi gig which marked a sad milestone for the group – it was the Crüe’s last live show outside of the United States. Lee has mixed emotions about the end of the band’s 35-year run.

“It’s weird. I don’t think about it much during the show,” he says. “But towards the end, when things slow down and I’m sitting on the piano, that’s the first time I get to look around and think, whoa – this is the last time I’m playing to these people, and then it hits you. You look out in the audience and see some people happy and some people sad, and then it hits you, it’s really quite a moment but I don’t think it’s really going to sink in until that final show in LA on New Year’s Eve and there’s no show the following day.”

Lee says he will have no regrets when the band part ways.

“We’ve got 35 years of good times and memories behind us. Everything we set out to do, we’ve accomplished – and we’re going out with our heads up high, with a bang, at the top of our game, not slowly fading out,” he says. “We decided this about six years ago, on tour in Japan. We’d seen too many of our peers just kind of fade out and end up playing the county fair and we’re not doing that.”

Lee assures fans they haven’t heard the last of him, although he can’t reveal his next step, yet.

“I’m gonna continue after this and I have some big plans, but with Mötley I really think we’ve done everything we set out to do and at this point it would just be redundant to keep going around doing the same thing,” he says. “We came, we saw, we kicked its ass and now we’re getting out.”