This page also available in the book: Chronological Crue Vol.1 - The Eighties

5/1/85
Following the cancellation of their U.S. tour, Hanoi Rocks plays two contracted gigs in Helsinki for a television broadcast on Europe-A-Go-Go, which they dedicate to the memory of their late drummer Razzle. Tommy Lee offers to play drums for them at the shows but it doesn’t work out. Former drummer of The Clash, Terry (Tory) Chimes, plays the shows after rehearsing three or four times. With Vince Neil to face vehicular manslaughter charges in court in a few days, it is rumoured that Hanoi Rocks vocalist Michael Monroe will replace Vince in Mötley if he is jailed for a considerable period of time. Crüe manager Doug Thaler reports that members of both bands have been commiserating the loss, while jamming and collaborating on four or five songs; however Hanoi Rocks members Mike Monroe and Andy McCoy just sit around the house of Nikki Sixx and Robbin Crosby for days on end, shooting cocaine and heroin as their way of dealing with the tragedy.

9/1/85
Wearing a conservative grey suit, Vince attends South Bay Municipal Court in Torrance, California accompanied by his lawyer Michael Nasatir, a partner of Nasatir, Hirsch, Podberesky & Khero in Santa Monica. Vince hears the charges against him of vehicular manslaughter and drunk driving, which stem from his Dec. 8 car accident in Redondo Beach, in which his rock musician friend was killed and two people were injured. Vince stands silently during the two-minute arraignment, while his lawyer enters a plea of not guilty on his behalf. The judge allows Vince to remain free on two-and-a-half-thousand dollars bail pending a preliminary hearing in the case on February 20.

The trial is postponed many times throughout the year. Vince was previously found guilty of another drink-driving charge prior to the accident, meaning this time he could face up to seven years in jail, which places the future of Mötley Crüe in the balance. Newspaper headlines around the world call him a murderer. Returning from the preliminary hearing, Doc McGhee tells him that the court requires him to check into rehab. Vince spends thirty days of intense therapy with Bob Timmons in the Palmer Drug Abuse Program for rehabilitation at a detox hospital on Van Nuys Boulevard. He successfully completes the program feels but his career is over. Vince's parents and Beth visit him in rehab, but he doesn't see or hear from any of his band mates. Management offers Vince a twelve-thousand-dollar diamond and gold Rolex watch if he can last three months without a drink; an act they later strongly regret as it doesn’t teach him his lesson.

2/85
Drinking more heavily than ever, Mick Mars discovers his BMW 320i has been taken from his Marina Del Ray apartment by his girlfriend Linda, as their relationship falls apart. She leaves Mick for a football player named Nick Frontero.

17/2/85
Mötley starts recording their next album with a title of Entertainment or Death at Cherokee with Tom Werman once again producing and Brad Gilderman as the engineer. Werman’s charcoal-coloured Porsche sports a license plate of 33 RPM. The title and theme of the new album is inspired by Nikki’s reading of Commedia dell’arte–a popular form of comedy employing improvised dialogue and masked characters that flourished in Italy from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth century. He also reads Antonin Artaud’s essay titled Theatre Of Cruelty, which provides further inspiration. Nikki is intrigued by his learning that court jesters wearing motley-coloured clothing were beheaded if they failed to entertain the king. New theatrical stage outfits with more colourful, glittery, softer fabrics are designed and made by Australian Ray Brown, with the cost of their tour wardrobe totaling one-hundred-thousand dollars. Brown had recently made stage wear for Ozzy Osbourne, and the band visits his studio in LA's Playa Del Ray district where they exchange ideas and choose trashy glam-lace fabrics from his stock, and complete the look with rhinestone adornments.

Mötley enters the studio with only five songs that Nikki has written. Home Sweet Home is one of the first to be laid down and they want it to be their Dream On or Stairway to Heaven. After Tommy rehearses the song on a grand piano, producer Werman convinces him to record it on a small Roland keyboard in the studio instead. The Crüe gets up to all sorts of antics in the studio. Nikki tries to write while being high on drugs and trying to get two women to go down on each other. With his car license suspended, Vince gets around in chauffeur-driven limos and on his Harley Davidson motorbike.

6/3/85
At 4:10pm as Nikki and Vince make their way to the recording studio, a silver 1980 Cadillac Eldorado runs a stop sign as they turn onto Hollywood Boulevard, hitting Nikki’s one-week-old jeep before taking off. Nikki and Vince abandon the jeep in the middle of the road and chase the driver. Nikki flags down a taxi as they run, having the taxi pull in front of the Cadillac after spotting it about eight cars ahead. Vince then jumps on top of the car and kicks in the windshield with his sneaker. The offender gets out and is detained by Vince while Nikki goes to a nearby gas station to call the police. Upon their arrival, they advise the Mötley men that they have been responsible for the capture of a man reputedly wanted by the Los Angeles Police Dept. for a number of hit-and-run accidents.

4/85
A wasted Tommy flips his motorbike seven times on a Los Angeles freeway with his Armored Saint bassist friend Joey Vera on the back, as he gives him a ride after seeing him play a show at a club in the mountains. Tommy escapes with minor injuries, while Joey’s hand is mangled, taking him two months after surgery at County General Hospital before he can play again.

13/4/85
Vince's second child Elizabeth Ashley is born and named after her mother (but in later years she changes her name to Elle). This is the first child with his wife Beth Lynn. He has a young son Neil from a prior relationship with Tami Jones.

23/4/85
Nikki arrives back at the studio from a visit to Elektra's Mexican office, where he picks up a Most Popular Band in Mexico award for the band, as they even out sell Prince.

5/85
Mötley continues to record at Pasha and Record Plant West studios with Duane Baron engineering. The album is mixed at Record Plant West. Tommy records his drums at Pasha in four days with drums miked in one room and the amps in another, while Mick’s guitar sounds are largely created at Cherokee.

Tommy receives notice that his marriage to Candice has been annulled, after they separated about a month ago. He then dates model Tawny Kitaen, who was the high school sweetheart of Ratt guitarist Robbin Crosby. Years later, Kitaen says, “With Tommy, he was constantly doing coke, so he wanted to go out. He just wore me out. I remember one night, we were lying on top of the bed and he took out two knives. He was trying to teach me how to throw a knife. ‘You hold the top of the knife, and... boom!’ By the end of the evening there must have been about 5,000 knife marks in the wall. That was his idea of a good time.” Occasionally, Tommy still has sex with Candice while going out with Tawny.

6/85
A video for the first single of the new Mötley Crüe album is shot; a cover version of Smokin’ In The Boys Room by Detroit band Brownsville Station, which went to number three on the charts for them in 1973. Mötley used to play the song during sound-checks and jams, and Vince suggests it be recorded for the album since he also enjoyed playing it in his previous band Rockandi. The Crüe's version features Willie Nelson's harmonica player Mickey Raphael. Producer Tom Werman loves it and feels it should be recorded ahead of a cover version of Mountain’s classic Mississippi Queen. The video is shot in extreme summer heat at Woodland Hills High School in California’s San Fernando Valley and is completed two days before the album's release. Actor Michael Berryman, who starred in the movies One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and The Hills Have Eyes, acts as the Principal while the storyline centres around a schoolboy named Jimmy. Mick befriends Michael Berryman, who was born with the condition Hypohidrotic Ectodermal Dysplasia that prevents the formation of hair, fingernails, teeth, and sweat glands.

A single titled Stars is released from the Hear ‘N Aid project that Vince and Mick contribute to. Dio bassist Jimmy Bain, who organises the project, phoned Vince to ask if they wanted to participate. The album, featuring many of today’s hard rock giants, is recorded to help raise money for starving Africans. Set to sing a solo part on the song, Vince is unable to due to a scheduling conflict as Mötley Crüe shoots their new video the same day that he’s required in the studio.

Tommy and Bobby Blotzer from Ratt call Lita Ford’s former drummer Randy Castillo from a party they’re at with Ozzy Osbourne, and tell him that Ozzy needs a new drummer. Randy has recently broken his right leg in a skiing mishap in his home state of New Mexico, but catches a plane the next day to audition–cast, crutches and all. The audition doesn’t go as planned due to the broken leg but a friendship is cemented.

21/6/85
Mötley Crüe’s third album titled Theatre of Pain is released and debuts on the charts at number ninety, at a cost of almost $200,000 to produce. (Manager Doug Thaler got the previous Entertainment or Death album title tattooed on his arm a week before the band decided to change the name to Theatre of Pain.) The album cover is illustrated by Dave Willardson and shows two drama masks, one bearing a pentagram. The concept was developed by Nikki with Bob Defrin, who also designed the new Mötley Crüe logo. Included on the album is the song Louder Than Hell that was demoed for Shout At The Devil when it was called Hotter Than Hell. It changes as the band feels ‘louder’ is what they are about more. The track Tonight (We Need A Lover) also seems to have been created from the unreleased Shout demo track called Black Widow, which is supposed to end up on a movie soundtrack with Mike Monroe from Hanoi Rocks on vocals, collaborated with Gene Simmons. Save Our Souls is penned from some reworked verses of the unreleased Running Wild In the Night, since there was a lack of fresh material for the album.

24/6/85
Smokin’ In The Boys Room is released in the U.S. as the first single from Theatre of Pain. It becomes Mötley Crüe’s first Top 40 single, peaking at number sixteen and spending fifteen weeks on the U.S. charts. Use It Or Lose It is included on the B-side of the single.

7/7/85
The Theatre of Pain tour kicks off at the Sun Plaza in Tokyo, Japan; the Crüe’s first show in the land of the rising sun. The tour begins with five concerts in Tokyo (the first four sell-outs), followed by Nagoya and Osaka. Mick switches from using Gibson guitars to Kramer, utilising Kramer Explorers, Barettas, and Pacers. Vince and Tommy get mobbed by fans in a McDonalds restaurant and are assisted by Tokyo Police. Nikki remains in his room where he suffers from having no heroin. He realises that he has become a junkie, whilst his band-mates are unaware of how much he has been scoring and shooting up.

15/7/85
The short Japanese tour concludes in Osaka and the Crüe returns to the United States. They prepare to embark on a headlining U.S. tour in two weeks, featuring a huge amount of lights and a ninety-degree tilting drum riser for Tommy’s drum solo. Eddie Van Halen's guitar technician Rudy Leiren replaces Mark Mulcahy as the tech for Mick.

Tommy soon meets actress star of Dynasty and TJ Hooker, Heather Locklear, backstage at an REO Speedwagon show at the L.A. Forum. They are introduced by Mötley’s accountant Chuck Shapiro, who is also REO Speedwagon’s accountant, and they briefly chat. Tommy then chases her phone number down the following week from Chuck’s brother, who is Heather’s dentist. He calls her while watching The Fall Guy and tells her that he is watching her on TV. She turns on her TV and tells him that it’s Heather Thomas. They talk for hours, before they set up a date for the following Friday night. Tommy picks her up from her Tudor-style house in the Tarzana hills where she lives with one of her three older sisters and they go out for their first date-dinner at an Italian Restaurant and the late show at The Comedy Club. During the night she tells him she has been out with a lot of rich guys in the past, as well as actor Scott Baio, and Tommy feels she is a good girl longing for a bad boy, but he plays it carefully. She also has a Mötley cassette tape in her car. For their second date, Tommy visits her home during the day and they swim, dance and drink lots of champagne with Heather’s sister. They start spending more time together going out to dinner, parties and movies. Heather was raised in suburban Thousand Oaks as the youngest of four children.

17/7/85
Theatre of Pain is released in Australia, while Vince performs Smokin’ In The Boys Room at the Farm Aid II benefit concert with Jon Bon Jovi, Willy Nelson and others.

31/7/85
Mötley Crüe's Theatre of Pain U.S. tour begins at the Glens Falls Civic Center in upstate New York with Y&T in support. The album currently sits in the Top 20 of the Billboard album chart. They travel from show to show in a private plane, painted black with a giant penis and testicles emblazoned on the tail.

2/8/85
Playing the second show of their U.S. tour in New Haven, Connecticut, the Crüe is joined on stage by former Brownsville Station member Cub Koda for a jam on guitar and vocals to Smokin’ In The Boys Room, the song he wrote in 1973. Whenever they play the song live, the harmonica solo is played backstage by their tour security guy Fred Saunders. Since Vince can’t play the instrument, he just pretends to play it live on stage.

3/8/85
Mötley plays an outdoor show at the Manning Bowl football stadium in Lynn, Massachusetts before fifteen thousand people, billed as Summer Jam '85. Originally scheduled for Kingston, NH, the concert was moved because the anticipated crowd numbers couldn’t be handled. Twenty-five-year-old Alfred Reice of Flushing, New York is arrested outside the grounds for selling false documents and larceny, when he is caught with forty counterfeit tickets on him. An audience member is taken to hospital with suspected broken ribs after being crushed against a metal barrier by the crowd. Although the show is meant to start at 1pm, it doesn’t begin until 2.40 due to the late arrival of some of Mötley Crüe's equipment from their previous concert. As a result, Helix doesn’t perform, so Y&T open and are followed by Accept.

4/8/85
Onstage in Providence, Rhode Island, a fan grabs Vince’s scarf and pulls him into the audience. When he is pulled back on stage by security, he realises his pants have been entirely ripped off, causing him to run backstage wearing just his boots. He returns in Tommy’s stage underwear to finish the concert.

7/8/85
Tickets for the front row seats of Mötley’s concert at Civic Arena in Pittsburgh are donated to Abraxas, a local treatment program for drug and alcohol abuse. These are auctioned off for over $1,000. Vince also records a series of public service announcements for Abraxas. Meanwhile the Crüe’s own drug usage gets to the point where they shoot heroin on stage. They also mainline Jack Daniels and gin at night, shooting it up rather than drinking it, to come down off their cocaine. They also drink and do drugs in front of Vince and chew him out if they catch him having one drink, warning him of his pending trial and the consequences of being seen drinking. Vince turns to women as his new vice of choice, going through four or five most nights.

14/8/85
Before the show at New York City’s Madison Square Gardens, the crowd is so psyched to see Mötley that during the set from Japanese support band Loudness, fireworks are tossed amongst the crowd. The venue’s announcer tells the crowd that the fireworks have to stop or the band will not perform. After the show, Nikki goes to Alphabet City and scores some heroin before returning to the hotel and hanging out with Eddie Ojeda from Twisted Sister and a girl.

17/8/85
Theatre of Pain continues to climb the U.S. charts and peaks at number six, the highest position of any Mötley album to date.

19/8/85
In an interview leading up to Mötley’s concert at Five Seasons Center in Cedar Rapids Iowa, Nikki says the band is trying to gain Guinness Book of Records’ recognition as the loudest band in the world. After reading the comments, city officials issue earplugs and earmuffs to employees and security officers working at the concert. An employee Safety Director from the City of Cedar Rapids uses a noise meter to monitor the sound levels. The average reading during the band’s ninety-minute set is 108 to 110 decibels, with an average reported level of 116 decibels for people standing close to the stage in front of the speaker columns. At one point, thirteen to fifteen pyrotechnic explosions in the performance push the meter to 127 decibels. People begin to feel physical pain at about 125 decibels. There’s no doubting that Mötley certainly is Louder Than Hell.

24/8/85
Proceeds of Mötley Crüe's Los Angeles show are donated to the Encino-based Palmer Drug Abuse Program, where one of Vince's car crash victims once worked. The band treats Vince as somewhat of an outsider on tour, due to his upcoming trial.

After handing out flyers for their band before the concert, Poison's Bret Michaels and CC Deville are taken backstage by Nikki and invited on stage to perform the encore medley; it's their first time on a big stage.

8/85
An authorised biography written by Dante Bonutto called The Comedy and the Tragedy is published, as the official Crüe fan club S.I.N. (Safety in Numbers) continues to grow in membership, making it one of the largest fan clubs in the U.S.

Vince works hard towards gaining a black belt in the Tang Soo Do style of karate, while Mick’s computer is stolen, losing the war game he was programming.

Tommy shows Polaroid photos of naked Heather to his band-mates at rehearsals. He watches dirt bike racing with her on TV one day and comments that he’d like to try it; the next day he finds a new dirt bike outside his house from her. He feels he wants to be with her for a long, long time.

Guitarist and singer John Corabi moves to Los Angeles from Philadelphia with his wife Valerie and her nine-year-old daughter, after loving the place when he visited six months earlier on an anniversary trip. John got his first tattoo a couple of years earlier: the words ‘John & Valerie’ on his arm. After playing in a heap of cover bands on the circuit in the Philly-New Jersey-Delaware area for a few years, he started doing some originals but found there wasn’t really a market for it. The rest of his band called Angora soon follows him to L.A., encouraged by winning recent awards for Best New Band in their local club scene. Angora soon falls apart due to drug and social problems. At one point, Gene Simmons from Kiss looks to sign Angora, but wants to change their name to 8-BALL because the guys in the band have eight balls (testicles) collectively.

1/9/85
Theatre of Pain and Shout At The Devil both reach double-Platinum status.

20/9/85
Vince flies back to Los Angeles in between Crüe concerts in Ohio to meet with Deputy District Attorney Roger Kelly and the families of his accident's victims in court. As part of a plea bargain, his lawyer advises him to plead guilty to his vehicular manslaughter charge, to avoid the matter going to trial. His lawyer uses the angle that since most of the members at the party were from Mötley Crüe and Hanoi Rocks, it can be construed that it was a business meeting, and therefore the band's limited liability insurance could cover the payment of much higher damages to the victims, than if Vince were to have to pay them himself. The families agree and Torrance Superior Court Judge Edward A. Hinz Jr. sentences Vince to thirty days in County Jail to be served at the end of his Theatre of Pain world tour in the middle of next year, plus five years’ probation, and completion of two hundred hours of community service. He also orders restitution of $1.8 million to be paid to Lisa Hogan, who was critically injured and spent weeks in a coma after the accident. The other victim Daniel Smithers shall receive $700,000, while $200,000 will go to the estate of Nicholas "Razzle" Dingley, who died in the crash. The District Attorney's office says Vince has already performed forty to fifty hours of community service, including last month's Mötley Crüe concert at the Forum in Inglewood, which benefited the Palmer Drug Abuse Program, where Daniel Smithers was a program counselor. Many believe he has received a lenient penalty, due to his lawyer’s plea bargaining to buy his way out of jail. Newspaper headlines now read, "Drunk Killer Vince Neil Sentenced to Touring World with Rock Band" causing bittersweet feelings inside Vince.

24/9/85
Tommy calls Heather from Bloomington, Indiana during a day off and holds the phone next to his left forearm. Heather hears the hum of a tattoo needle as it etches a big black rose ribboned with Heather’s name into Tommy.

27/9/85
As Mötley plays Shout at the Devil during their concert at Von Braun Civic Center in Huntsville, Alabama, thirteen-year-old audience member Robby Miller is struck in the eye by an object, believed to be dry-ice propelled from the band's smoke effects on stage. Blood also splatters from his lip, covering the shirt he is wearing in blood.

2/10/85
Heather Locklear proposes to Tommy in their Dallas, Texas hotel room. He is incredulous and tells her to not say that kind of stuff unless she means it, as he doesn’t want to be heartbroken.

3/10/85
Mötley’s Tour Manager Rich Fisher is an avid golfer and Vince joins him for a round on the course at their hotel TPC Four Seasons Las Colinas near Dallas Fort Worth Airport. Enjoying his first-ever game of golf on their day off, Vince rents some clubs, but buys his first set upon returning to the clubhouse and pro-shop.

6/10/85
After their San Antonio, Texas show, Mötley Crüe donates $17,500 to ALL-STAR, a non profit youth peer leadership organisation that Vince has been working with to educate students in becoming responsible drivers. Vince gives anti-drink-driving talks at schools. Front row seats for their upcoming shows in Rochester and Pittsburgh are auctioned by a radio station, raising $1,000 for an alcohol and drug education program.

Vince tears ligaments in his knee while water-skiing in Texas, which causes him to wear a brace on his knee under his stage clothes, and forces him to give up his karate lessons. He finishes at red belt, one before his black belt goal.

26/10/85
Home Sweet Home is released as the second single from Theatre of Pain, and is backed with Red Hot from the Shout At The Devil album. The single peaks at number eighty nine and spends only six weeks in the charts. Nikki wrote some of the lyrics for the song when he was seventeen years old. Playing the song live on tour night after night, Tommy feels he wants to make his own home with Heather.

31/10/83
Mötley appears live on MTV for the first time during their Halloween Horror Show with live footage from the Crüe’s show at the Limelight Club in New York being broadcast to millions of viewers. MTV also runs a Crüe Halloween contest, where the winner Debbie McIntosh from Ohio and twenty-five friends are flown in for the private show, plus the following night's concert in Chicago, taking up the entire front row.

11/85
The video for the band’s latest single Home Sweet Home first airs, having been made in Texas the previous month. Much of the footage for the video was filmed in Houston and Amarillo, with the audience and venue shots being filmed in Dallas. The night before the Dallas shoot, Nikki freaks out after having an eight-ball of cocaine and four blue pills. He has visions of his mother and father and starts tearing his hair out while standing on top of a table, before convulsing with a foaming mouth. On the set the next day, his bass tech Tim Luzzi sees Nikki talking with an imaginary friend under the stage before the video shoot begins. The video becomes MTV’s most requested clip for the next four months, prompting MTV to change its request line rules and establish an expiration date for new videos to stop requests continually coming in. It’s also MTV’s first power ballad aired.

A US Senate committee on pornography in rock music condemns Mötley Crüe’s lyrics for degrading women and glorifying violence. So in the middle of the tour, a concept for the next stage show is first brought up. Sitting around wasted on the tour bus, they come up with the idea of having a huge backdrop of a spread-legged female, and the band could enter the stage through the middle of her legs.

The Dead Milkmen scores a college radio hit with their song Bitchin’ Camaro on their Big Lizard in My Backyard debut album. The comedy punk rock song includes the lyric, “Don’t forget to get your Mötley Crüe t-shirt, y’know, all proceeds go to get their lead singer out of jail.” Other Crüe-related music released this year includes Tommy’s contribution on Espionage’s second album titled ESP on Elektra Records and produced by Roy Thomas Baker, as well as Tommy and Vince making a guest appearance on Night Ranger’s third album titled 7 Wishes.

19/12/85
Manager Doc McGhee becomes so tired of trying to keep Vince sober while on probation, he leaves him in his Orlando, Florida hotel room with two security guys instructed to beat him up.

21/12/85
Mötley’s successful U.S. tour ends in Florida. A pedometer shows Tommy averages twelve miles each night on the drums.Tommy looks like a criminal in his new passport photo, after stacking a friend’s Honda motocross bike in a ditch, wearing no helmet.  Vince heads to the Cayman Islands for a few days’ holiday before the European tour commences early next year. He meets up with Jon Bon Jovi and Pat Travers there and they jam every night at the local pub. Nikki returns to Los Angeles after the tour. His yuppie, actress-in-practice girlfriend and drug-buddy Nicole, who he met through the band’s lawyer as an attempt to clean Nikki up somewhat, meets him at the airport with syringes and they party their night away shooting heroin.

24/12/85
On Christmas Eve, Tommy formally proposes to his actress girlfriend Heather Locklear, while riding in a limousine along the Ventura Freeway with their heads in the wind outside the open moon-roof. With eyes watering and his hair flapping in his face, Tommy placed a 2.3-carat diamond ring on her finger and yells, “Will you marry me?” “Yes!” she shouts back.

25/12/85
Nikki spends Christmas morning with a girl he picked up at a strip club the night before, before taking her home on his Harley and later having Christmas dinner by himself in McDonalds.

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