While Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx and frontman Vince Neil have been pretty open in recent interviews about “retiring” the band, drummer Tommy Lee seemed a little quiet. He’s been busy depriving himself of sleep in the state-of-the-art studio that takes up the entire first floor of his house, or taking the nightclub set he’s evolved with producing partner DJ Aero out on the road. Lee and Aero spun live at the Aug. 25 edition of the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino’s long-running weekly pool party Rehab to help celebrate its 10th anniversary, and Lee saw the first phase of the Hard Rock’s transformation into a veritable Mötley Crüe campus in observance of the band’s upcoming 12-concert residency at The Joint.
Lee witnessed a similar design takeover last year when the Crüe was the first band to hold a Hard Rock residency after Carlos Santana’s long-running headlining engagement ended. “It was a full-on Mötley takeover,” said an upbeat Lee by phone from his Calabasas, Calif., home. “It’s pretty cool, I have to admit. … They’re doing the same stuff, and even more. All of the casino tables are covered in Mötley felts, whether it’s blackjack or craps or whatever. Last time they were kind of spread around the casino, and now it’s all of them. The staff is all wearing shirts. I don’t know if they were doing that last year.”
He’s not ambivalent about the band going out in style, though. “It would be foolish for me to say we haven’t talked about it,” says Lee. “It’s a pretty mutual consensus that the thing we do not want to do is kind of fizzle out. Why wouldn’t you want to go out with a huge bang and go out on top, you know? We’ve seen so many bands fizzle out, and then you’re going to see them at county fairs. … We’d much rather bow out and be like, ‘Thank you, good night,’ throw the mic down on the floor and bail.”
Retirement for Mötley Crüe is a two-year career arc, likely to include some recording, the completion of the band’s in-development biopic Dirt, and a final tour that would end in 2015. That arc begins with the residency, with Lee’s roller coaster-ride drum set likely the only holdover from the February 2012 production. “We decided to make this residency completely different, obviously,” said Lee. “It would be silly to do the same thing, so we decided to base the entire evening around … you know, it’s called An Intimate Evening in Hell, so you can imagine what that’s like. It’s largely based on fire, and you’ll be seeing some things I can guarantee you haven’t seen done with fire yet.”
Even though the residency opens the final chapter, the reality of a final Mötley concert approaches. “It’s still building slowly,” says Lee. “And it’s not … I mean, look, how cool would it be to just keep playing forever? That’s not possible, but I’m sure as we get closer to anything like that we’ll start to plan a big-bang exit. Right now we’re not really talking about any of that stuff. We’re just enjoying getting the Mötley movie made and kind of just moving forward.”
The Joint at Hard Rock Hotel 9 p.m. Sept. 18, 20-22, 25, 27-29, Oct. 2 and 4-6, starting at $49.50 plus tax and fee. 800.745.3000 Ticketmaster
