Sometimes when Rocks Off has had a little too much to drink, he has a little trouble remembering specific details of the night before, like how he got back upstairs. If pen and paper are handy, he'll occasionally scratch out a paragraph or two of semi-coherent, semi-legible prose, but he's certainly never done anything like record one of the greatest hard rock/glam-metal albums of the 1980s. This is why he's fairly certain he'll never be asked to join Motley Crue.
Until today, Rocks Off somehow missed the salient fact that, to mark its 20th anniversary, the Crue plans on playing 1989's
Dr. Feelgood front to back on this summer's Crue Fest 2 tour, which stops at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion August 7. (The album also figured heavily in
last year's Crue Fest.) Luckily,
Rolling Stone didn't, and sat down (separately) with the Crue's Nikki Sixx and Vince Neil to discuss the complicated artistic origins of "She Goes Down" and "Slice of Your Pie."
The title song, allows Sixx, "was inspired by drug dealers. Is there ever just one?" A few more choice quotes after the jump.
"Slice of Your Pie"
Sample lyric: "Whiplash/ I never looked at you in high school/ Hot child, always walk behind you for the rear view, rear view"
Neil: I haven't heard that song in a while. I can't really comment on it. I'm going to be playing it soon, so I better start listening to it.
"Rattlesnake Shake"
Sample lyric: "She's got sassy class/ Bring you to your knees when she shakes her ass"
Sixx: "I can't really remember what the song was about. There were some really good grooves going on with the music."
"Kickstart My Heart"
Sample lyric: "Skydive naked from an aeroplane, or a lady with a body from outer space"
Neil: "It's about Nikki dying."
Sixx: "It just really took on a life of its own and fit on the album a lot better than it should."
"Without You"
Sample lyric: "If I just reached out and touched the rain, it wouldn't feel the same"
Neil: "I remember shooting
the video down in Corpus Christi, Texas. We had a black panther and all kinds of crap."
"Same Ol' Situation"
Sample lyric: "Dressed in black on black, she's got a Filipino girlie she claims is her friend"
Neil: "That's about chicks leaving you for chicks. It happens. It definitely happens."
SIxx: "The subject plagues men worldwide."
"She Goes Down"
Sample lyric: "It's like connecting the dots/ Start at the bottom, lick it to the top"
Neil: "There's some sex being done in the background of that song if you listen real closely."
Sixx: "I think it's about that other age-old problem of loyalty, not that we were necessarily the most loyal of loyals ourselves."
Read the full interview here.