Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Motley Crue - Smoke The Sky


2:11 mark.

In 1992, not only had America grown weary of glam metal, the bands had too. Motley Crue came off the road after a 3 year run supporting their most successful album to date, the Bob Rock polished Dr. Feelgood. Despite producing a few early Canadian punk records, it is my opinion that Bob Rock is generally responsible for the neutering of great bands (See Skid Row and Metallica, I bet he wishes his name wasn't in the booklet for St. Anger) and should be avoided like the plague. But I digress, the band instead of taking a break, signed a huge deal with Elektra and rushed back into the studio. Infighting resulted in Vince Neil either quitting or being fired (the band cannot agree on which it was).

Enter John Corabi, singer of LA's The Scream. He originally reached out to thank Nikki Sixx for a kind mention of the bands debut in an interview, but was eventually asked to audition. He brings to the table a voice that is a combination of Steven Tyler's bluesy swagger and John Bush from Armored Saint's gravel throated belting. What followed was the recording of a record that sounded drastically different from anything the band had ever laid to tape.

Gone was the bands singles first, filler second song writing that had been prevalent since Theatre of Pain. This was instead replaced with heavy riffs, which were assisted by the fact that Corabi also played guitar and contributed heavily to the writting process. Tommy Lee also contributed an important factor that wasn't necessarily a traditional songwriting technique. "Make it heavy, like Pantera" (this is a fine example of how Tommy was spending his time) I believe is the exact line from The Dirt, the book penned by the members of the band a decade later.

Smoke The Sky is the definitive example of Pantera's influence over the band (despite John Corabi mentioning that he never actually listened to the band in the book). Penned about smoking weed which was as direct a drug reference as they had dared to this point, the riff at 2:13 is as close to a mosh part as Motley Crue will ever get and might not have seemed out of place on the cutting room floor of the Vulgar Display of Power sessions.

In all, the band would have benefited greatly from a name change because this incarnation was never allowed to fully spread its wings. Elektra pulled support as the sales tanked and they issued an ultimatum that either Vince Neil comes back now or they would be mired in legal issues until he does. Corabi saw the writting on the wall and advised the band to make the deal with the devil. This is a fantastic record full of great songs, it's just a shame it was released as Motley Crue.

Listen to "Motley Crue" on YouTube

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