Mötley Crüe is gearing up for “The Return Of Carnival Of Sins” tour, celebrating the 20th anniversary of their original “Carnival Of Sins” tour back in 2005-06. The trek will feature support from Extreme and Tesla.
In a new interview with the Zach Sang Show, drummer Tommy Lee talked about the tour, and he was asked about the current dynamic in the band. “The vibe’s cool, man,” he said. “As we’ve grown, the vibe as a band has really gotten closer, and you would think it wouldn’t. We’ve gotten closer. Everybody, I think, has had enough time to kind of step back and reflect on what we’ve done together, man, and we’re still doing. Count that on one hand. There’s not a whole lot of bands that are still doing it from when we started. So we all have a big gratification, a new love, and just — I don’t know — appreciation for a lot. And we’ve been very, very fortunate.”
Later in the conversation, Sang mentioned that despite the band’s current relationship with one another, there must have been moments where he wanted to leave. Tommy Lee did actually quit the group in 1999 to pursue a solo career.
“I actually did quit Mötley for a couple years. I was creatively dying slowly as just my personal musicianship and craft and stuff, and I needed an outlet,” he said. “So I actually quit for a couple years, and that’s when I started Methods Of Mayhem and started doing some solo stuff because I had to switch gears. I wasn’t able to creatively do anything outside of the Mötley format. And with my own stuff, it was a place for me — I call it the adult sandbox. Like, literally anything goes. No genres, no style — it doesn’t matter. We’re doing whatever I wanna do and just have fun with it. Creatively I needed that, ’cause I was at kind of a bad place in my life. And then I realized it sitting in jail,” which was a reference to serving four months in jail for an abuse charge on then wife Pamela Anderson. “I was, like, ‘I gotta change something, ’cause obviously I’m here. I gotta switch it up because I gotta get happy and get out of here.'”
Lee said his exit and unhappiness was linked to being creatively stifled. “100%, man,” he said. “It’s such a big part of me. If you’re not happy creatively and you don’t feel like you’re able to constantly evolve and create and do that stuff, that’s dangerous.”
Check out Tommy Lee’s full interview below.
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