Photo By Sally Steele/Vegas Rocks Magazine

Vince Neil, fresh off the Motley Crue Canadian DEAD OF WINTER tour, celebrated his 49th birthday (Feb 8th) at his bar FEELGOOD’S in Las Vegas. The Vince Neil Solo band treated fans to a night of kickass rock n roll they won’t soon forget. During the festivities, Vince Neil’s son Neil Wharton presented his father with a ‘feelgood’ themed cake.

Vince is taking very little time to rest up before hitting the road with his solo band. He also expects to drop his new solo CD later this spring and his book, later this year.

Motley Crue may be off the road for a while, but Vince will keep rockin out with his solo band. Dates are as followed

Visit Vince Neil On The Web
http://www.sevenclothingcompany.com
http://www.feelgoodsvegas.com
http://www.vinceneil.net

Photo By John Lucas, Edmonton Journal

REGINA  — Mere moments before the curtain dropped before Motley Crue’s highly anticipated show at the Brandt Centre on the band’s “Dead of Winter Tour,” a wall of fire and loud cannon blasts alerted the crowd that this was no Lawrence Welk concert.

After knocking the crowd collectively back a foot or two, the heavy metal quartet took the stage at 10:05 p.m. to the delirious cheers of a nearly full house. The sonic blasts and fire were a recurring event throughout the Los Angeles band’s set, which was to be expected due to their grandiose nature.

Starting their set with the 1989 smash “Kick Start My Heart,” the crowd roared appreciatively as vocalist Vince Neil belted out the opening notes and drummer Tommy Lee wailed on his oversized drum kit.

The stage set up was relatively minimalist compared to previous tours, though was more than compensated by the immense lighting and pyrotechnic production. A standard full-sized stage, the Crue had the left side of the stage packed with a pyro rig that periodically shot off fireworks, flames, and multiple sonic booms during the set. Eschewing the use of LCD screens or any video, the backdrop was a rather understated silver and charcoal, which would be lit up in various colors by the lights during the set.

Lee’s kick drum was at least four or five feet tall and adorned with gears and flywheels, while guitarist Mick Mars had 12 Marshall cabinets, stacked 2×6 high, taking up much of the right side of the stage.

Musically, the Crue were tight as a vise, as Mars and bassist Nikki Sixx wailed on their guitars, and Lee further cemented his status as one of the best drummers of his generation. Neil was solid, as per usual, as the 48-year old vocalist is great at what he does, but struggles with the high notes more than he did in his heyday.

Regardless, this was meant to be a gritty rock concert, not American Idol, so no one seemingly noticed, nor cared.

One of the more interesting points of the set came when Sixx, widely considered to be the heart and soul of the metal mavens, took the mike during one interlude and asked the crowd to loudly repeat after him the following: “God, please help Motley Crue from self-destructing so they can come back next year for their 30th anniversary tour.”

Understandably, the arena went wild as it dawned on them that the super group would likely be back soon.

For those familiar with the bands’ troubled past, having dealt with much infighting, substance abuse, and personal suffering and loss, it was a heartfelt moment that gave promise that the foursome had found happier times. In fact, the guys, who at times had gone years without having meaningful conversation, seemed to be quite pleased to be in each other’s company throughout.

The set was a fair length at 82 minutes including an encore that included Lee helming a piano at the start and conclusion of “Home Sweet Home,” before the Crue ended the evening with a rousing rendition of “Dr. Feelgood.”

While one could argue that the absence of some of the hits and a more elaborate stage show could be a sign of the group pulling some of their punches before launching the big guns next year on their anniversary tour, it really seemed like the group was focusing on stripping things to the basics.

At the heart of it, Thursday’s Motley Crue show was exactly what people thought they were paying for — a loud, fiery, and fun rock concert.

Mick Mars has a fused spine and can’t move his head, but there’s nothing wrong with his hands.

The Mötley Crüe guitarist suffers from ankylosing spondylitis, a chronic autoimmune arthritic disorder that has caused the top and bottom of his spine to fuse.

“It’s a bit difficult to deal with. I’ve had a hip replacement too, but A.S. is extremely rare to go into your hands and feet. It can affect your neck and shoulders, but rarely does it go into your hands. I can’t move my head and say yes or no, but it doesn’t affect my guitar playing,” says Mars, a founding member of the Los Angeles hard rock band who has stayed true to the Crüe through all its ups and downs and lineup changes, no matter how much pain he was in.

In the 1980s the glammed-up rockers – Mars, vocalist Vince Neil, bassist Nikki Sixx and drummer Tommy Lee — lived the clichéd rock star life filled with sex, drugs, stints in jail, trips to rehab and marriages to models and TV stars.

The hedonistic details of the band’s wild times were documented in the 2001 memoir The Dirt, and supplemented with books by Sixx and Lee.

The Dirt revealed the inner workings of the band and the friction between members, but Mars says that’s all in the past now and the group is a perfectly functional unit.

“When we get together, all four of us, it’s like a family reunion kind of thing, you know? We all do our own stuff on our breaks and when we get back together when we do a tour it’s like, drop the nonsense, it’s time to get back to what we do best, which is Mötley Crüe, and all the bad stuff disappears,” he says.

The band achieved stardom in the 1980s on the strength of albums like Shout at the Devil, Theatre of Pain and Girls, Girls, Girls. Following the release of their most successful album, 1989’s Dr. Feelgood, Neil left the band for one album and started a solo career. He returned to record 1997’s Generation Swine, but Lee was unhappy and split to start his solo ventures, which included a rap-metal band, Methods of Mayhem.

In 2005 the original lineup reunited and have hit the road every year since (stopping in Winnipeg in 2005, 2006 and 2008) and released a new studio album, 2008’s Saints of Los Angeles, based on The Dirt.

There is also talk of a movie based on the book, but so far none of the scripts have done the band justice other than making it look like the Monkees, Mars says.

“I think they purposely left out the juicy parts, but they put the parts in when we drove down the streets with my ass hanging out of the bus. They were trying to make it lighter and all fun and games, but it wasn’t all like that. It was a lot of ups and downs,” he says.

The band appears to be on an up right now. They have started their own music festival — Crüe Fest — and Mars is constantly working on riffs for a new album.

“I’m sure we all have- stuff we could get together and collaborate on. I’m positive that we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing, like the Stones, and we’ll keep reinventing ourselves. Madonna is a good example of that.

Not to compare ourselves to Madonna, but putting out new music and

new looks but remaining true to what you are and what you are about is a key factor,” he says.

Winnipeg Free Press

Next year, Motley Crue will celebrate 30 years of full-on rock ‘n’ roll debauchery.

They will probably celebrate with spectacular stage extravaganza somewhere near their old Sunset Strip stomping grounds and continue with an extensive world tour.

Perhaps the thought of that milestone is why the Crue has taken a simpler approach to their Dead of Winter Canadian tour, which made a stop in Calgary last night.

About 9,000 fans watched the four-piece glam-metal band as they made their way through more than a dozen of their classic hits and newer tracks.

With nine studio albums to their credit, Motley Crue could have played longer than the relatively short 80 minutes they did.

But the band managed to cram in the songs the fans— or at least the people with a passing knowledge of the Motley Crue — wanted to hear.

Looking more well-fed than in his heyday (yet better than he has in recent years) singer Vince Neil ran around the stage like an aerobics instructor as he belted out the first song, Kickstart My Heart.

It certainly kickstarted the crowd, some of whom still sported the same hairstyles they had in high school.

In 1987.

Neil could still hit the high notes and, as opposed to other times I’ve seen him, looked like he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

The energy stayed high as the band ripped through Wild Side and Shout at the Devil. Unlike Guns n’ Roses, who played the ’Dome a little more than a week ago, Motley Crue didn’t try to shove too many new songs down the crowd’s throat.

They sneaked in the fist-pumping title track from their 2008 release, Saints of Los Angeles early on in the show, but kept the set streamlined and focused mostly on the tried-and-true hits such as Looks That Kill, Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away), Same Ol’ Situation and Girls, Girls, Girls.

Bassist Nikki Sixx acted more like a lead guitarist, whipping his instrument around and holding it up in the air in a typical rock star pose several times. Guitarist Mick Mars, on the other hand, didn’t move around too much due to a painful conditioncalled ankylosing spondylitis.

Still, when he had his moment in the spotlight he proved that he is one of the best — if most underrated —guitar players of any genre.

As of press time, drummer Tommy Lee, himself a fantastic musician, had yet to drag out the infamous Tommy Cam. It’s probably for the best given the state of some of the more, um, extroverted fans.

Australia’s Airbourne had the tough task of opening the show. While very few people had taken their seats in the tiers, the floor was surprisingly full and very receptive to the band’s AC/DC-like power rock. Singer Joel O’Keeffe shares an eerily similar raspy squeal to late AC/DC singer Bon Scott and the band play their stomping, dumb-as-bricks rock with such joyful energy there is no way you can resist them.

The Joe Perry Project pretty much had a built-in audience thanks to Perry’s association with another band you may have heard of — Aerosmith.

But with Aerosmith currently on a singer-induced hiatus, Perry is putting his considerable guitar-playing talent to good use in JJP.

Perry treated fans to old Aerosmith classics such as Toys in the Attic, Walkin’ the Dog and Walk This Way with German singer Hagen Grohe taking over lead vocal duties from Steven Tyler.

The band performed a few tracks from its latest CD, Have Guitar, Will Travel, including the first single, Long Way to Go, a decent rocker that starts off like Aerosmith’s Love in an Elevator but ends up sounding like The Strokes with more hard-rock guitar flourishes.

It’s not Aerosmith but I’m pretty sure I could watch Perry play guitar with just a cowbell backing him up and still enjoy it.

by Lisa Wilton
www.sunmedia.ca

—————————-
BRAND NEW MERCH FROM DEAD OF WINTER TOUR
NEW – Dead Of Winter 2010 Crue Babydoll

The Saints of Los Angeles are picking up where Saint Nick left off.

The timing of Mötley Crüe’s aptly titled Dead of Winter Canadian tour is all Santa’s fault, laughs guitarist Mick Mars.

“He started it,” cracks the 58-year-old glam-rocker from sunny Southern California. “He said he was going to have us delivered by Dec. 25 and he lied, so now we gotta make it up, to make him look good.”

And just to stick with the Yuletide theme, the Crüe — which also includes bassist Nikki Sixx, drummer Tommy Lee and singer Vince Neil — have been making a set list, and checking it twice.

“The original plan was to do the full Dr. Feelgood album as a 20th anniversary thing,” Mars says. “It was a thing a lot of bands were doing — Judas Priest did British Steel all the way through on their last tour, and Iron Maiden did their whole new album. So it seemed like a good idea. And we tried it, and it was cool. But I felt it had too many ups and downs; I felt we lost the crowd.

“So now we’re doing kind of a mixture of everything — but mostly, it’s the heavier songs from every album. Not too many ballads or mid-tempo songs. It should be a good show.”

Before packing his sleigh and heading to their first date in Victoria on Saturday, Mars — who suffers from the degenerative orthopedic condition ankylosing spondylitis — took a few minutes to talk to us about his health, touring with his hero Joe Perry, and how he and his Crüemates are getting along these days. Here’s some of what he had to say.

And remember, kids: Hail Santa!

So, you’re touring Canada in the winter. Were you hoping to cash in by being the only game in town at this time of year?

Oh, I don’t know about that. I mean, we’ve got Joe Perry opening for us. So right there, we’re not the only game in town.

Speaking of Joe, is it kind of weird to have him opening for you?

You know, it is kind of weird. I used to listen to him. I think he might be a couple of years older than me

Actually, it’s only a few months.

Really? Well, see, that’s what I got jealous of — he had records out and I was still wandering around, playing in cover bands and stuff, trying to make ends meet. And later, we used to open up for bands like Aerosmith. So to turn it around is ironic.

He seems to enjoy jamming. Are you hoping to get together?

With Joe? I plan on it. I’m going to make a point of it. Either I’m going to go onstage with him, or I’m going to make him come on with us. I’ll make him! I’ll twist his arm off!

Kick him in the hip — he’s got an artificial one, so maybe it won’t hurt as much.

Hey, I do too!

See, you guys are like brothers! So, do you even have to rehearse before you tour anymore?

Oh sure. We did it last week. We just finished day before yesterday.

Have you started working on new material to follow up Saints of Los Angeles?

I have at least 50 ideas for some new songs for Mötley. Everybody in the band writes on their own and has their own thing. Tommy’s doing his solo album, Nikki is doing Sixx:AM again and Vince is touring. And I’m writing songs for a solo album as well. But we’ve got a bunch of ideas we can collaborate on some time.

Would you rather have it happen sooner than later?

I’d rather have it happen before we tour in 2011, so we not only have a new tour but a new album to go with it. But we’ll have to see what happens.

How are you guys getting along? The usual ups and downs?

Yep. It’s just like family feud. One week, it’s like, ‘Hey, you’re the best!’ And the next week, it’s like, ‘Hey, go fuck yourself!’

Are they never going to respect you for being their elder?

Who, those guys? Guess what? They’ve all caught up! They’re all like, ‘Oh man, this is getting rough to get up and do every night.’ So now they can relate.

Talking about that, I have to ask you about your AS. How are you doing these days?

Good. I’m cool with it. Sometimes it gets painful, but it is what it is. I don’t want sympathy or violins.

I read that Vince has started up a charter-jet service. Is he actually a pilot?

Oh, no. He doesn’t fly.

Because I was wondering if he was going go start flying you guys, like Bruce Dickinson and Iron Maiden. Would you get in the plane if Vince was flying?

Uh … no (laughs).

-Toronto Sun.