Review Summary: Vince Neil's Mötley Crüe cover band try to sell you a fairly good bootleg and pretend it's 1983 all over again.
If this was recorded in the early 1980s, this would be heralded as a true gem. You know - a chance to hear a young, amateurish Vince Neil performing some of his best songs with some friends. Behind the muddy, crude production, one could say, lies the sound of a still developing star leaping into the arenas and stadiums that fill his head atop a small bar room stage.
Unfortunately, this is not that. This is 2003, and with Neil’s band
Mötley Crüe on a period of indefinite hiatus, and a failed solo career behind him, Neil has been forced to downscale to these smaller venues. In the 80s, he played Mötley Crüe’s 80s hits because they were big, fresh and incredible. Now he is playing them because they are all he has that people still want to hear.
The album capitalises well on the nostalgia generated by the band’s 2000 throwback album New Tattoo – the first thing the band did that sounded like it came from their decade, the 1980s – and by their smash-hit tell-all autobiography, 2001’s The Dirt. The simple artwork – a photograph of the Whisky a Go Go on the front and of Neil leaning out towards his rabid fans on the back – and crude production go some way towards emulating the cheap ‘n’ cheerful era of bands selling their own bootleg-quality live recordings.
It is a cheap, profit-orientated idea, but to an extent it works at achieving a certain ambience as you approach the album. The entire glam metal brigade has struggled with how best to present themselves in recent years – appearing sell-out if they attempt to update their image and sound, but facing accusations of being out-dated and using the same old handful of tricks if nothing changes. Crüe were always better at having an attitude than the rest, and bigger than most of the rest, and Neil brings that ego and attitude to this show. It lacks the flamboyance and power of Mötley Crüe, but the lion’s heart is still beating.
Part of the problem is this is not Crüe. One can quibble that Neil helped to write 5 of the 10 songs from the Nikki Sixx Songbook, giving him more right to call them his own, but this is still in essence a tribute album to Neil’s own former band, with a fairly generic backing band. Don’t get me wrong, the rhythm section is tight and the guitar work technical, but there is no soul, no attitude, they never play loose – they are too good for the crude, simple material they are working with.
The album does throw in a few surprises, to give it some credit. The opening backing track is “In the Beginning...” from Shout at the Devil, which raises a smile, while Neil’s solo song “Look in her Eyes” might be new to some listeners and is performed well. However, this is not enough to save the album from its utter mediocrity. At times Neil seems aware of how much he is living on his past, while the audience are blissfully unaware: “Red Hot” is introduced with Neil asking the crowd “Is it alright if we go back in time a little bit?”, despite the fact the entire set-list has involved old material, and nothing new. This concert is about escapism after all – no one wants to realise it’s all so far away from their grasp.
This really is a cheap, sleazy way of making money. It’s awful – the quality of the recording and performance are poor and the packaging makes little effort to compensate for this. Mötley Crüe were never a band who did things in halves, even in their latter days, but it seems Neil lacks this vision when alone. You’ll find some of the material gets you nodding your head and tapping your toes, because it’s a solid enough approximation of what seeing the band in 1981/2 must have felt like to achieve that.
I don’t recommend buying this – bootlegs are free and of the same standard, and more importantly it is just offensive to be expected to pay good money for this kind of product – but if you happen to spot it lying around, rip it...it isn’t a bad bootleg, infact it’s a good one, just not one that compares to the vast collection of fantastic free ones out there. And if you want a good live album, by one by the band itself, rather than one by 1/4 of the band.
