MICHAEL PINTER (photographer) Allan Coffman, who started managing Mötley Crüe, was from Grass Valley. He had a brother-in-law who happened to be a professional roadie in Los Angeles, working for different bands.
DON ADKINS The roadie’s name was Stick, because he liked Thai sticks. So Mötley had two guys, Stick and Slug. I forget who Slug was. Another friend of theirs.
MICHAEL PINTER And this roadie would come up to Grass Valley to visit his sister and Allan, who at this time was a residential contractor, building houses and stuff. He would tell all these tales of life in the fast lane down in L.A., and I guess that sounded pretty exciting to a guy in Grass Valley doing residential construction. So Allan told his brother-in-law, “If you find an up-and-coming band that looks really promising, why don’t you let me know? I might want to invest in them.” And the band he came up with was Mötley Crüe.
DON ADKINS Allan was straitlaced but looking for something. Looking for a little excitement in his life. It seemed like he had a very traditional family. I met his wife. Very mom-looking.
BRIAN SLAGEL I was working at a record store in Woodland Hills and I had a metal show on a local radio station on Sunday nights. And I was friends with the Mötley guys. I’d see them all the time. I knew their manager really well. So when I first started putting together the Metal Massacre compilation record I said, “Hey, would you guys wanna be on it?” They said, “Sure, why not?” At that point, being on a record was somewhat of a big thing. But then they ended up making their own rec-ord instead.
NIKKI SIXX We did [Too Fast for Love] at a place called Hit City on the corner of La Cienega and Pico and basically cut it live.
AVI KIPPER (engineer, Hit City West) Hit City West was a small, low-overhead facility. Two rooms. A couple offices and a shop. We did a lot of R&B, we did a lot of Persian music. The Beach Boys were there at one point. We had everything from the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo to Andraé Crouch. We could stay in the black at a fifty-bucks-an-hour rate and come out with a decent-sounding product. As is evidenced by that first Mötley Crüe record.
GLENN FEIT (engineer, Mötley Crüe, Too Fast for Love [Credited on Album Sleeve as “Gleen Felt”]) I knew the owners there and they gave me a deal, $35 an hour.
VINCE NEIL I think it cost us, what, three grand to make and we did it in just a couple days? It was basically just a glorified demo tape.
GLENN FEIT We cut the whole album in four or five days. And unfortunately at the end of it I came down with the flu and, you know, you don’t want to mix with your ears full of fluid and stuff. I finally got better about three days later and they were in the studio with Michael Wagener.
MICHAEL WAGENER I knew Mick Mars because I had recorded a demo for his band Vendetta when I was in the States for the first time from Germany in 1979. When I came back in ’81 he said, “Hey, you gotta help me with my new band. It’s called Mötley Crüe.”
MICK MARS I’d known him a long time and he was doing a band called Accept with Udo Dirkschneider. I almost played in that band. About a week before Nikki had called, Michael Wagener asked me if I would play in Accept. So, I was almost a German guy!
MICHAEL WAGENER They were just crazy … a crazy bunch of people. Mick was the calmest of them all and obviously Tommy and Vince were absolutely crazy. When I walked in the first time, Tommy was laying on the ground on his back and was lighting his farts on fire. So, that’s how I met Mötley Crüe.
MICHAEL PINTER I owned a photofinishing company in Grass Valley, and Allan Coffman would come in when he was back from L.A. and have me print up photos. One thing led to another and I said, “Well, why don’t you let me do the cover for your album?” And he said, “Okay.”
He got my plane ticket and he picked me up at the airport. We went right to a place called Sunset Sound, a rehearsal stage place on Sunset Boulevard. We wanted a gritty, black-and-white look. Because everything else … remember bands like Loverboy, the Canadian band? They all had these nice pretty pastel colors in their covers. And we said, “We’re just gonna go maybe the opposite of all that.” I found this one album by Marty Balin, his first solo album [Balin], and the cover was black-and-white with a red title. I thought, This is the look we need to go for. So that’s kind of how Too Fast for Love came about. I mashed the picture into that concept. The resemblance to Sticky Fingers was not completely lost on me, either.
NIKKI SIXX When the lights were all white and cut and industrial-looking it gave things a sort of stark, coked-out feeling. It would sort of make people’s skin crawl.
MICHAEL PINTER The lighting in the back was four times more powerful than the lighting actually lighting the figures. But one of the things that did was that the band’s hair got completely blown out of existence in the photographs. Their big hair turned small. So we added the hair back into those pictures with airbrush. I told the airbrush artist to make it look big.
VICKY HAMILTON On the back cover of Too Fast for Love Vince’s hair was a mess. He had that Roseanne Roseannadanna sort of look. And he was furious about that, you know? But I think they only printed like a thousand of those.
GLENN FEIT I had taken demos around to the labels. I talked to Epic, I talked to Columbia. I played it for people at A&M. They were not into it. It was too hard for them. They said, “It’s not really what’s going on right now.” So the record was released independently. Leathür Records was a business entity that Allan Coffman put together because no one was interested in the band.
DEEDEE KEEL Mötley Crüe’s first show at the Whisky was on a Monday. I went to Elmer [Valentine, co-founder of the Whisky a Go Go] and I said, “I really want a big favor. I really want to book this band.” He was totally against it. It wasn’t his cup of tea. But Monday and Tuesday were off nights—if I could fill them I could have them. They got $50, at most.
NIKKI SIXX Bro, we were fucking poor back then. We were broke. The only way we ate was when we picked up girls and raided their refrigerators or got them to buy us McDonald’s. Most of the clothes we wore were T-shirts and shit we stole out of their houses.
DEEDEE KEEL I couldn’t figure out how they knew every day when Elmer went home from the club. Because they’d come running upstairs to see me and they’d scour the trash cans for little bits of roaches, the ashtrays for cigarette butts, my desk for whatever lunch I might have left over. I got into the habit of not eating all my lunch so I could give some to them. They also took all my phone books. I said, “What the hell? Why are you guys taking my phone books?” And Tommy said, “We don’t have any toilet paper.”
STEPHEN PEARCY Their place was really easy to get into; the door was always open. People would crawl in the window to their bedroom. Robbin and I went to hang out there, we wouldn’t leave for three days. It was a party that never ended.
DEEDEE KEEL I went to their apartment around the corner from the Whisky a couple of times. It was too terrifying to ever go back to. It was horrible. The first time I went there, the entire front pane of glass from the window was gone. They’d crashed through it. And the porch was completely filled from top to bottom with beer cans and whiskey bottles. The inside … I don’t even want to tell you, it was so disgusting. And there were girls in there half-dressed. It was quite a sight.
DON ADKINS It was a total divey apartment. Paper-thin walls, shoddy construction. I got up one morning after sleeping there and I just remember the three of them, Tommy, Nikki, and Vince, eating … it was either Kaboom or Trix cereal. They’re all wearing bathrobes, sitting on the couch eating cereal and watching Looney Tunes. It was the greatest sight ever.
DEEDEE KEEL And Vince, he would use the Whisky to bring girls up during the day and have sex with them in our light booth. I caught him up there many times and had to throw him out.
BRIAN SLAGEL Right around that time their manager guy—Coffman was the name—came to my mom’s house, sat on my mom’s couch, and said, “Hey, we have nine hundred Mötley Crüe records that we made. What do we do with ’em?” This is the version of Too Fast for Love that they put out on Leathür Records. I said, “Well, there’s this distributor here locally that I buy stuff from called Greenworld. You should probably talk to them.” So he said, “Okay, cool.”
ALAN NIVEN Greenworld basically started as an import house. We brought in a lot of records from Europe and Japan, the likes of Kitaro, for example. One day Wes Hein came into my office, because in ’81 I was handling the sales for the company, and he said that somebody had come in with a tape that they wanted to sell to Greenworld. Would I take it home and listen to it and evaluate it?
WES HEIN (co-owner, Greenworld Distribution, Enigma Records) We did not have a record label at this stage. But we were pressing some people’s rec-ords and we were doing what were called exclusives, where we said, “Oh, you pressed X-thousand copies of whatever? We’ll take them all and we’ll help you with marketing and so forth.”
ALAN NIVEN So I took it home and put it on my little boom box, put my Sennheiser headphones on, and it was the original Too Fast for Love. And there was a track on there called “Piece of Your Action” that I thought was a really good, bona fide rock ’n’ roll song. It was something that I personally connected to—certainly more strongly than the very eclectic records that the Heins brought into the company to distribute. And more so than the prevalent new wave stuff. Wes asked me if I would take over the negotiation of the contract with Allan Coffman, which I duly did. And we signed Mötley Crüe to Greenworld. I think we scratched up $15,000 for the advance. And everybody laughed at us. They thought we were crazy.
BILL HEIN (co-owner, Greenworld Distribution, Enigma Records) The band had a nice little buzz, but there was no giant rush of people going out to sign Mötley Crüe.
ALAN NIVEN I was a little surprised that it had come all the way down to the bottom of the barrel to Greenworld and no one else had picked it up. But in those days, you have to remember, it was A Flock of Haircuts and the Thompson Durans, you know, everything was Brit new wave pop. And Mötley were viewed as a throwback dinosaur that couldn’t play very well. But I rather thought that Too Fast for Love was kind of a glorious train wreck of a record that had a spirit to it and an attitude. There was an element of Cheap Trick to it. There was an element of Alice Cooper to it. And I thought, This could be a lot of fun …
BILL HEIN People viewed them as sort of punkish, which, you know, if you think there’s a line from punk rock that starts with the New York Dolls, you can kind of see that.
TRACII GUNS (guitarist, Pyrrhus, Guns N’ Roses, L.A. Guns) In tenth grade my best friend, Danny Tull, had a Music Connection magazine and there was a little ad for Mötley Crüe in there. They were playing at the Troubadour. I saw that picture and I was like, “Whoa, are these guys punk rock? Are they metal? What are these guys?” And Danny goes, “I don’t know, man, but we should go see them.” So we went down to the Troubadour and it was, like, five bucks to get in and it was a completely life-changing experience. The music was loud and heavy and the guitarist had two Marshall half stacks, one on either side of the drummer, like, yeeeaaah! I think I dyed my hair black later that week.
SLASH (guitarist, Tidus Sloan, Road Crew, Hollywood Rose, Black Sheep, Guns N’ Roses) I was in a “special” program at my school called Continuation Education, and there were these three girls—total rocker chicks with ripped shirts, makeup, tight pants, all of that—that were all about Mötley. They had just come out with the indie version of Too Fast for Love. I have this vivid memory of Nikki and Tommy, all decked out, with their heels and leather and teased-up hair, the whole nine yards, hanging out in front of the school, smoking cigarettes. And these girls ran out to meet them, and they were excited. Nikki and Tommy gave them all these posters and flyers to hand out. Basically, these girls were gonna do whatever they told them to do.
NIKKI SIXX Yup. They were “marketing.” Street Team 101, way back in the day!
GINA ZAMPARELLI With Van Halen, I watched them promote. And they were good at it. But there was nothing like Mötley Crüe. There wasn’t a phone pole, there wasn’t a magazine … I’d drive down streets in Pasadena, then I’d be down on Hollywood, down on Ventura Boulevard, Mötley Crüe was in your face 24/7. It was just over-the-top and they wouldn’t stop until every last person in every single city in Los Angeles saw a flyer or a poster that said Mötley Crüe.
VICKY HAMILTON Around the time Too Fast for Love came out I started doing some management consulting for Allan Coffman. I would do these big displays at Licorice Pizza, and a friend of mine got some mannequins from Sears and we painted them white and we built towers with the album cover. Then we called up the band and I said, “Bring down some personal effects.” So they brought down whips and chains and handcuffs and cop hats. Nikki gave me a tarot card of the devil. And Tommy had some broken drumsticks. And Vince goes, “Close your eyes…” And he dropped a pair of pink panties in my hand. And they were, like, not clean. It was kind of gross.
DEEDEE KEEL Nikki became a staple in my office at the Whisky. He’d come up and Elmer let him design posters with me, he let him do advertising with me. And I would allow him to use the telephones and he would throw ideas out at me. Just kind of do a game plan for the band.
SLASH I think it was that same night that I went out to the Whisky and saw Mötley play for the first time. The thing I remember most was the band’s impact. They had the audience in the palm of their hands, and they had a production going that was as professional as you could get at the Whisky. They had the flash pots, the lights, the drum riser, all the blood, the outfits, and everything. Back then, Van Halen was the band that really defined the L.A. scene, but as cool as they were, there was an element to them that was so glitzy that I couldn’t stand. And that spread across L.A. when they took off. When Mötley came out, it was something that was pretty different. They were a little bit more hardcore, and that appealed to me.
STEPHEN PEARCY They were amazing. I mean, they were actually new. Not new in a sense like, you know, where they got part of their image and this and that, but they just, Nikki knew just what to do with it and he accomplished it.
CHRIS HOLMES All that stuff where Nikki used to light his boots on fire, Blackie figured that crap out way before, in the Sister days.
NIKKI SIXX Vince and Tommy used to light me on fire in our apartment. And, you know, the carpet was all burnt. We would practice with different things. I remember I used to hang out by a dumpster behind this pyro company in Hollywood. Finally they were like, “What d’ya want, kid?” And I was like, “Can you show me how to do this? Can you show me how to do that?” I was very inquisitive about pyrotechnics. I still am.
VINCE NEIL We would experiment with putting pyro gel on his boots.
NIKKI SIXX It was a pyro gel, which I only used once. It worked great on instruments because it would burn for a long time very hot. But you can’t put it on the body because it would get so hot. And I had leather pants, leather boots. Sometimes I would have to wrap my legs underneath. Then we started using just straight rubbing alcohol, but it burned really fast. It was just, Holy shit! And then it was over. With Tommy, Mick, Vince, and myself, it was never a question of “Should we do that?” It was always “Yes!” Should Vince chainsaw the head off a mannequin filled with blood during a song called “Piece of Your Action”? Of course! Who wouldn’t? Well, 99.99999 percent of all other bands wouldn’t. But we would.
VICKY HAMILTON Mötley Crüe was kind of the right cocktail for the Sunset Strip.
TRACII GUNS What they were able to do was create a lifestyle in the Hollywood music scene. Even the audience started dressing more and more like Mötley Crüe. And it was really fun. You know, they really did it.
DON ADKINS They did a New Year’s Eve show at the Troubadour at the end of ’81 that sold out immediately. And they had David Lee Roth introduce them onstage. That was a big deal. Afterward they have a party at their apartment, and David Lee Roth shows up, everybody in L.A. is there.
ALAN NIVEN For me, I thought the exceptional thing was their three nights at the Whisky [in February 1982]. To play three nights at the Whisky was not done at that time. It was a full house every night. There was a vibe there, there was an audience there, and, oh my god, the girls were there, too. And these girls came pre-ravaged in their attire. I’m looking at this going, “There’s more going on there than people realize…”
NIKKI SIXX I remember back then somebody in my band saying to me, “Bro, we’re doing three nights at the Whisky. We made it.” And I said, “Made what? I wanna sell out the Forum. I don’t care about the fucking Whisky a Go Go.” Everything Mötley did in those days was always, at least in my eyes, a stepping-stone to something bigger. We approached everything from the perspective of “Don’t just tackle the quarterback—break his arms and legs, too!”