![]() ![]() He wouldn’t catch that boat until he was 29. “There was a lot of really good stuff in the Seventies,” Mars says. He’s a decade older than his three bandmates, and had way more love for blues-rock bands like Ten Years After and Bad Company than the glittery groups like Kiss and the New York Dolls that the others worshiped. But Mars was never a perfect fit for an Eighties glam-metal band. It’s a strange thing to hear coming from the guitarist who co-wrote “Girls, Girls, Girls” and “Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away),” not exactly minimalist, unpolished productions. GLAM : Mars, Sixx, Neil, and Lee Randy Bachman/Getty Images Two long, wooden skulls hold up the subwoofer in their home theater. There are plastic skulls of all shapes and sizes stocked throughout the house, including a skull cup in the kitchen that holds packets of Equal and Sweet’N Low. Their long-haired Maine coon cat, Ernie Ball, lounges on the couch while an ad for the TruTV show Ghost Hunters plays on the television. An ornate, enormous chocolate cake with white-pearl sprinkles - made from scratch - sits in the fridge. roasting a pork butt in the backyard’s Big Green Egg barbecue. His wife, Seraina, bought him a Roland System 8 synthesizer as a present (“It does lots of cool stuff!” Mars says, excitedly), and she’s been up since 5 a.m. ![]() On the morning of his birthday, Mars is just trying to focus on the day’s plans. What’s the point? He’s destroying his own legacy.” And now he’s only saying these things because he’s trying to hurt us. But we couldn’t let his side of the stage just be a train wreck. We really were, with kid gloves, always trying to support Mick. “We were there watching him physically fall apart, mentally fall apart, his memory fell apart. “We’re sitting there, coming back from retirement, and our guitar player can’t remember songs,” he says. Speaking a few weeks before the start of Mötley Crüe’s European tour with replacement guitarist John 5, bassist Nikki Sixx - who has largely stayed silent alongside the other members - vents months of pent-up frustration. They’re trying to take that away from me. Frank Sinatra’s or Jimi Hendrix’s legacy goes on forever, and their heirs continue to profit from it. “Now they’re trying to take my legacy away, my part of Mötley Crüe, my ownership of the name, the brand. “When they wanted to get high and fuck everything up, I covered for them,” Mars fumes. The case has just started to work its way through the legal system, and emotions remain hot. In the legal proceedings, he’s also accused his bandmates of miming to prerecorded tracks on the tour, and they’ve turned around and said Mars was the one faking it onstage, since, they say, he was unable to remember the songs or play them properly. Mars has alleged in court filings that the band used this as an excuse to remove him from the group he co-founded 42 years ago, denying him what he sees as his share of future band proceeds. Mötley Crüe are in the midst of a nasty legal battle following Mars’ decision in October to retire from the road after spending last summer on a reunion tour alongside Poison, Def Leppard, and Joan Jett. ![]() His phone has been buzzing all day with birthday wishes from family and friends, but he hasn’t heard a word from his three bandmates. “I don’t feel a day over 71,” he jokes as I greet him. About five feet away are 10 enormous Marshall speaker stacks and studio-quality microphones that he’s been using to record his debut solo album. His skin is so pale it looks almost translucent. He’s seated on a couch in the living room of his Tennessee mansion, draped head to toe in black, with his thin black hair protruding from the back of a newsboy cap. It’s a morbid conversation any time, but today happens to be Mars’ 72nd birthday. “I want people to be able to say, ‘Mick Mars is lost in the Bermuda Triangle.’” “I want them to take it into an airplane and drop it into the center of the Bermuda Triangle,” he says. Instead, the Mötley Crüe guitarist wants the cremated remains of his body - which has been ravaged for nearly 60 years by the disfiguring bone disease ankylosing spondylitis - packed into a lead urn. ![]() There won’t be a funeral or memorial service of any kind. MICK MARS HAS SPENT a great deal of time thinking about his own death, which will happen, he estimates, in about eight years, tops. ![]()
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