Mick Mars would be willing to write new music for Mötley Crüe – despite his ousting and legal wrangle with his former bandmates.
The 72-year-old axe-slayer was shocked when Nikki Sixx, Tommy Lee and Vince Neil issued a statement announcing he had resigned from the ‘Girls Girls Girls’ group when in fact Mars had retired from touring.
He’s unable to talk too much about his exit, after he filed a lawsuit at Los Angeles County’s Superior Court in April 2023, in which he claimed his bandmates had been “gas-lighting” him and belittling his musicianship.
In his original filing, he accused the glam metal band of trying to force him out after he had to step back from touring due to longstanding health issues that have worsened.
Mars – who has just released his debut solo album, ‘The Other Side of Mars’ – claimed he would have remained a member of the band regardless of his retirement from touring due.
And speaking in a new interview, he admitted he would pen new tunes for the group if they wanted him to.
Asked about why it took him four decades to go solo, he told ‘Audacy Check In’: “Well, it took me 40 years ’cause Mötley was priority… and now that I’m retired, I’m just me.
“I mean, if Mötley wanted me to write songs with them again, of course I would… But right now, I’m just me, so I’m writing, and it’s not Mötley, and it’s how I feel — my ideas and my kind of thing and kind of trying to reinvent myself or bring myself up to date.”
In a recent interview with Guitar World, he said of his retirement: “I couldn’t do it anymore – the travelling part. I mean, I’m 72 and I have this c***. It gets a little bit strenuous for me to travel around the world and keep doing that for months at a time with a two-week break. It’s just gotten to be too much for me. So yeah, that’s about it.”
On them using “resigned” instead of “retired”, he said: “Two different words, two different meanings. It was just retiring from the touring part. I’d actively be involved in every entity of Mötley Crüe. I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for them. I don’t regret anything we’ve ever done – good, bad or ugly, whatever. My body just couldn’t do it anymore.”
Mars insists he was good friends with his bandmates, despite the drug and booze-fuelled antics they got up to, including allegedly setting fire to his doors.
Asked if they were more than colleagues, he said: “Yeah, at one point. It’s like, I don’t hate anybody. In the band there’s a lot of stuff that I wasn’t particularly fond of that would happen through the years. Wiping your [butt] on my doorknob wasn’t exactly fun. That kind of stuff – lighting my doors on fire. And like I said, when I look back at it now, it’s kind of comical.
But this happened, and it wasn’t funny at the time.”
Mars has been replaced by John 5.