Nikki Sixx On Motley Crue Moving Forward Without Mick Mars: “We Were Forced”

In a new interview with Guitar World magazine, Mötley Crüe’s Nikki Sixx discussed the band’s decision to hire guitarist John 5 (who is wrapping up his solo fall tour) as Mick Mars’s replacement following the latter’s decision to no longer tour with the notorious rock band.

Blabbermouth reports that Nikki stated “Listen, we were forced. Guy’s gotta choose: you want to break up? Do you want to fuck over Live Nation? You want to screw Def Leppard? All those tickets, all that planning that we’d done because one of your band members is too ill to perform live?”

He continued, “We really had to think about it, bro. Like, do you think we wanted to take the grief we took, and end up in a lawsuit? But what were we supposed to do? Go home and fucking mow the lawn? It’s like your fucking football team; if one of your guys can’t play anymore, they bring in another guy.”

Earlier this month, Sixx told Classic Rock magazine that “it was becoming harder and harder to get anything done with Mick because of his memory problems and just his physical ailments. And we have a lot of empathy for that.”

The bassist continued, “When Mick left the band, we had to make a choice. And we made the right choice with John. We wish Mick nothing but the best.”

Addressing the fact that Mötley Crüe opted to carry on without the band’s founding guitarist, much to the dismay of fans, Sixx stated, “I run this band with an iron fist and nobody can get in and fuck with our band, legally, marketing-wise.” He went on to say that Mötley Crüe had to make “a self-sufficient decision” in regards to how to continue without Mars, which he insisted was “the right thing to do.” “But the right thing isn’t always fucking fun,” Sixx added, “[with] fans believing we did something we didn’t do.”

Mars suffers from Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS), a chronic and inflammatory form of arthritis that mainly affects the spine and pelvis. After years of performing through the pain, Mars informed the other members of Mötley Crüe in the summer of 2022 that he could no longer tour with them, but would still be open to recording new music or performing at residencies that did not require much travel.

When Mars announced that he would be retiring from touring with the band, he maintained that he would remain a member of the band, with John 5 taking his place on the road. However, in April 2023 the now-73-year-old musician filed a lawsuit against Mötley Crüe in Los Angeles County’s Superior Court claiming that, after his retirement, the rest of the band tried to remove him as a significant stakeholder in the group’s corporation and business holdings via a shareholders’ meeting.

Mars stated that when he refused to sign the papers reducing his shares of touring royalties to only 5%, the band commenced an arbitration process. His original filing said the group took the problem to arbitration “rather than a public lawsuit so that the public would be not aware of the deplorable manner in which they treated their ‘brother’ of 41 years.”

This past April, Angi Taylor of Chicago’s Rock 95.5 radio station spoke with Nikki Sixx of Mars’s departure from the band: “We didn’t see this coming. We were out doing our stadium tour, and Mick had decided to leave. And we really had to sit down and go, ‘Well, what do we do? Do we fold? Do we fold on the fans and Live Nation and Def Leppard?’ John, we’ve all known John. I’ve worked with John. We kind of talked about it. And if we had to move on, it’s moved on in such a beautiful way. It’s been great.”

In August 2023, Sixx told Guitar World magazine about the band’s decision to hire John 5: “We never saw it coming that Mick wasn’t going to be able to tour and was going to have to quit the band. In the middle — not even the middle — of a huge tour, we had to ask ourselves, ‘Do we want to let the fans down? Do we want to let Live Nation down? Do we want to let Def Leppard down? Do we want to let ourselves down because an original member of our band can’t tour anymore?’ We had to have a deep, deep look into what we were going to do.”

Sixx went on to say that John 5 was the obvious choice to step in for Mars in Mötley Crüe: “[With John] knowing all the members of the band, and me having this relationship with him writing and as friends, and even being in the studio with him writing stuff with the band for [the soundtrack to] The Dirt, it felt like a no-brainer in a horrible situation something we did not ask for or want. And then it was just kind of obvious. If there was ‘the guy’, John was the guy. Like I said, we didn’t choose this, but since we had to be put in this position, we’re very happy with where we’re at right now.”

Mick Mars – real name Robert Alan Deal – served as Mötley Crüe’s lead guitarist since the band’s conception in 1981. Although Sixx is responsible for penning the majority of the band’s material, Mars has co-wrote some of the group’s most famous tracks, including “Same Ol’ Situation (S.O.S.),” “Girls, Girls, Girls” and “Dr. Feelgood.” The only credit Mars has on the first two Mötley Crüe albums is the instrumental “God Bless the Children of the Beast” on their 1983 album Shout At The Devil.

Lauren Rettig: Lauren is a writer and student at York College of Pennsylvania. Her creative work includes collaborations with The York Review and The Rough Draft Podcast, while her academic work has taken her to the Mid-Atlantic Writing Centers Association's 2024 conference. When she's not writing, Lauren spends her time listening to COIN and playing The Sims 4.
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