In an explosive new interview with Rolling Stone, former MÖTLEY CRÜE guitarist Mick Mars talks about his nasty legal fight with the band following his decision in October to retire from the road after spending last summer on a reunion tour alongside Poison, Def Leppard, and Joan Jett. He continues to battle AS (Ankylosing spondylitis, an inflammatory, arthritic disease that causes vertebrae to fuse).
When he was 27, a doctor diagnosed him with the disease. “I thought, ‘Cool, I know how I’m going to die now,’” he says. “But it isn’t AS that kills you. It causes something else to happen that kills you. It rarely goes into your hands or feet. That meant I could play guitar, and that’s what mattered most.”
Mars has alleged in court filings that the band used this as an excuse to remove him from the group he co-founded 42 years ago.
“When they wanted to get high and fuck everything up, I covered for them,” Mars says. “Now they’re trying to take my legacy away, my part of Mötley Crüe, my ownership of the name, the brand. How can you fire Mr. Heinz from Heinz ketchup? He owns it. Frank Sinatra’s or Jimi Hendrix’s legacy goes on forever, and their heirs continue to profit from it. They’re trying to take that away from me. I’m not going to let them.”
His AS had progressed to the point where he was no longer able to move his head from side to side. “My spine is now one solid bone,” he says. “It feels like there’s a 40-pound cinder block tied to my forehead with string at all times, pulling it down.”
The Mars camp counters that he’s not a “resigning shareholder,” but merely a member who can’t commit to touring.
“There’s a document that Mick signed,” says Crüe attorney Sasha Frid. “If you’re resigned from touring, you don’t get to participate [in the profits]. You don’t get to sit home in any corporation and collect a paycheck when you’re not out there touring and making your contributions. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
When asked if he ever regretted joining the band in the first place, Mars says, “Not really. We were different when we came out of the Sunset Strip. The rough spots were rough spots, and hard to deal with, but I got to see the world and play with a group that was this successful. So I don’t regret anything … besides Generation Swine.”
Read the entire interview at Rolling Stone.
