Few bands have rap sheets as extensive as their discographies. The members of Mötley Crüe are legendary for their bad behavior on and off stage. With the recent news of their new tour with Poison and Def Leppard launching next year, here’s a refresher.
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Before his days in the band, bassist and principal songwriter Nikki Sixx (born Frank Carlton Serafino Feranna Jr.) was a juvenile delinquent while living with his grandparents in Jerome, Idaho, where he was reportedly expelled from high school. They packed him up and sent him off to Seattle to live with his mother, where he was arrested for selling “chocolate mescaline” at a Rolling Stones concert in June 1972. He subsequently fled the city and landed in Los Angeles.
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On Dec. 8, 1984, singer Vince Neil had been partying with members of Finnish rock band Hanoi Rocks, who were in LA to play. Driving drunk to a local liquor store, Neil lost control of the car and crashed into another vehicle. Hanoi Rocks drummer Nicholas Dingley was killed, and the occupants of the other car were seriously injured.
Neil was sentenced to 30 days in jail with five years probation, 200 hours of community service and ordered to pay $2.6 million in restitution to the victims of the crash, some of which was covered by his insurance.
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Guitarist Mick Mars (born Robert Alan Deal) was considerably less of a wild child than the rest of the band, legally speaking, except on the rare occasion when he was being blamed for something another one of them did.
Case in point:
Mars was booked for indecent exposure in Denver after a night culminated with drummer Tommy Lee running through the hotel, exposing himself to whoever would answer their door. When the police were summoned, they knocked on Mars’ door, who, while innocent, happened to look enough like Lee that both the victim and the cops thought nothing of hauling him in. The undated incident is recounted, with laughter from Lee — and less from Mars — in the band’s “Behind the Music” episode.
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The band skirted the law in their early days by mostly staging their arrests — including two famous “busts” in Canada done purely for the press. But this mishap wasn’t staged.
Sixx and then-manager Doc McGhee were jailed in Japan
in 1987 after Sixx threw a bottle of Jack Daniels at Mars while on a bullet train, McGhee recounted to Rock Candy Magazine in 2017. McGhee claims Sixx missed his bandmate, hitting a Japanese man in the back of the head. Police reportedly agreed to let the pair go if Sixx would write a letter of apology. He declined, McGhee said, and the pair spent hours behind bars before Sixx acquiesced.
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Things started to heat up in the ’90s after the group fired, then rehired Neil. In December 1997, Lee and Sixx were arrested after inviting fans to come onstage at the close of their concert in Phoenix, according to MTV News. When a security guard attempted to stop the fans, Lee and Sixx responded by going after the guard, allegedly kicking, punching and spitting at 18-year-old Kenneth Lee Chambers. Sixx had just turned 39 years old.
Lee was ultimately fined
and sentenced to 30 days in jail; he avoided additional prison time by receiving credit for the time he’d already served in his spousal abuse case against Pamela Anderson (see the next slide). Sixx pleaded not guilty, but it’s unclear what the outcome of this case was for him.
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Lee was arrested in February 1998 for felony spousal abuse, according to the Associated Press. He pled no contest to charges that he kicked then-wife Pamela Anderson while she held their baby son, and was sentenced to six months in jail, which he began serving in May 1998. Lee would go on to quit the band in April 1999.
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In August 1999, Sixx — along with three members of the band’s road crew — were busted after a Las Vegas concert. Sixx was reportedly complaining about the heavy-handedness of the police, and allegedly said from the stage, “If they don’t like it, we can start flipping over cop cars like we did a couple of years ago.” According to the LVPD, this resulted in audience members throwing chairs. The LVPD went to arrest Sixx at midnight and a scuffle broke out, after which Sixx and three members of the band’s crew were arrested. Sixx was eventually cleared of charges.
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Sixx (pictured in 2001) is arrested again in September 1999, on charges stemming from an incident in North Carolina. During a concert in Greensboro in October 1997, Sixx allegedly yelled racial slurs at a security guard and incited the crowd to attack him. He eventually pled
no contest and received a 30-day suspended sentence and various fines.
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Lee turned himself in on Oct. 12, 1999 in connection with the North Carolina incident. He received
a suspended jail sentence, unsupervised probation and a small fine.
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Vince Neil was arrested in Beverly Hills in August 2002 on assault charges stemming from an April incident involving record producer Michael Schuman, who accused Neil of attacking him outside of LA’s famed Rainbow Bar and Grill in West Hollywood. Neil pled no contest and was sentenced to community service and fines.
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In 2003, Andrea Terry, a sex worker at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch near Carson City, Nevada, accused Neil of choking her and throwing her against a wall. He pleaded no contest, and was sentenced to a 30-day suspended jail term, $1,000 fine and an anger-management course.
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In 2004, Neil was accused of punching a sound man named Michael Talbert during a solo show in Dallas. A warrant was issued for his arrest, though it’s unclear how this case turned out.
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In 2007, Neil was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving in Las Vegas. TMZ reported that he pleaded no contest to reckless driving charges to duck a DUI charge.
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In June 2010, Neil was arrested yet again on suspicion of drunk driving, again in Las Vegas.
He eventually pled guilty to DUI and was sentenced to 15 days in jail, 15 days house arrest, fines and various re-education programs.
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In April 2011, Neil was charged with battery after allegedly bursting into a comedy show at the Las Vegas Hilton and getting into an argument with his ex-girlfriend Alicia Jacobs. He pled guilty to a disorderly conduct charge and was fined.
Comedian Hal Sparks was performing that night, and tweeted about the alleged incident.
This booking photo is from February 2011, when Neil began serving time for DUI.
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In April 2016, Kelly Guerrero claimed that she approached Neil for an autograph outside the Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas when he pulled her to the ground by her hair, before being restrained by, of all people, Nicolas Cage. Neil pled guilty to misdemeanor battery. The case has continued to drag on into 2019, when Neil’s attorneys accused him of refusing to pay over $180,000 in legal fees stemming from the incident and necessitating a judge’s involvement.
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