hard rockmotley cruesylvie simmons
21:17 Wednesday, 31 May 2023
Mötley Crüe feature on the cover of issue #38 of Rock Candy Mag as legendary rock journalist Sylvie Simmons reveals exactly what it was like to be right at the heart of the action when the band first emerged onto Hollywood’s Sunset Strip back in 1981.
Simmons moved from the UK to Los Angeles in the 1970s to cover the US rock scene, and her timing couldn’t have been better as she got to witness first hand the rise of hard rock in the ’80s. “Mötley Crüe weren’t new wave, and Mötley Crüe weren’t nice,” she writes. “Mötley Crüe were delinquent and proud of it. But I could see that this band had something.”
Spearheading a new movement of young rockers who simply didn’t care about moral conventions or radio airplay, Mötley Crüe soon became buddies with Simmons, and she became one of very few people to be admitted into the band’s inner sanctum.
Reliving her first encounter with the band at The Starwood club in the spring of 1981, Simmons writes, “I was intrigued by a cluster of people I saw standing outside. They were pale - something that took serious commitment in sunny Los Angeles, with black Spandex pants and big shaggy hair. Inside the club, Mötley Crüe’s music sounded like someone had chopped up Sweet, KISS, Alice Cooper and the Godz and put them all in a blender... They came across as deadly serious but at the same time trashy and a lot of fun.”
At her very first interview with the band, bassist Nikki Sixx was quick to tell Simmons about his unshakeable belief in Mötley world domination. “‘In five years maybe every band will look like us,' he said. He couldn't have imagined how accurate that was. Or that this group - which a local weekly newspaper would dub the worst band in LA - would spearhead an entire musical movement: glam metal, aka hair metal, the over-the-top, tarty, party scene that dominated a decade of US rock.”
You can read the 14-page Mötley Crüe special, together with many other fascinating stories about Extreme, King Kobra, Steve Lukather, and Desmond Child in issue #38 of Rock Candy Mag. For more details visit rockcandymag.com.
