Mick Mars addresses Mötley Crüe lawsuit: “I carried those bastards for years”
“Those guys have been hammering on me since ’87, trying to replace me,” the guitarist claims.
Image: Kevin Mazur / Getty Images
Mick Mars has spoken up about his ongoing lawsuit against Mötley Crüe and his experience ‘carrying those bastards for years’.
The guitarist, who retired from touring last year due to his ongoing battle with Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS), has recently sued the band for allegedly cutting him out of profits and kicking him out against his will.
Discussing his relationship with the band’s members in a new Variety interview, the guitarist said that “Those guys have been hammering on me since ’87, trying to replace me.”
“They haven’t been able to do that, because I’m the guitar player. I helped form this band. It’s my name I came up with [the Motley Crue moniker], my ideas, my money that I had from a backer to start this band. It wouldn’t have gone anywhere.”
“The thing that they keep pushing, for many years, is that I have a bad memory,” Mars said. “And that’s full-blown, out-of-proportion crap.”
“The truth is: I want to retire from touring because of my AS [Ankylosing Spondylitis],” Mars explained. “I don’t have a problem remembering the songs. I don’t have a problem with any of that stuff. But I do have a problem with them, constantly, the whole time, telling me that I lost my memory. No. Wrong. That’s wrong. Absolutely wrong.”
Asked about the severance package Motley Crue had allegedly offered him — per legal papers, Mars’ 25 percent share in the band’s touring profits would decrease to five percent for the rest of the year and become 0 percent thereafter (via Rolling Stone) — Mars replied that the offer was an “insult”, saying “No. It’s my name. It’s Mick Mars, it’s Motley Crew, the four of us that made the band. You would have to have a good reason to be fired. I don’t.”
“It just makes me really upset that they want to try and bully me more or less out of the band, so it’s the last man standing that collects everything.”
The musician also called his final tour with Crüe “the worst 36 gigs [he] ever had with the band”, saying, “I don’t know, and I can’t say I positively know, but I have a pretty good feeling that they wanted me gone anyway. Because they’ve been wanting that since forever. It’s just frustrating for me. I’m pretty upset that they’re even pulling this crap, when I carried these bastards for years.”
In response to Mick’s lawsuit, Sasha Frid, Mötley Crüe’s litigation attorney, stated “After the last tour, Mick publicly resigned from Mötley Crüe.”
“Despite the fact that the band did not owe Mick anything — and with Mick owing the band millions in advances that he did not pay back — the band offered Mick a generous compensation package to honor his career with the band. Manipulated by his manager and lawyer, Mick refused and chose to file this ugly public lawsuit.”