Hella Nation - Evan Wright [131]
“Wait till we see him in New York, after he’s deloaded his balls,” Tommy adds. “Maybe he’ll start talking again.”
“I’ll be in New York with Donna in a few hours,” Nikki says in an unusually tender tone, then adds, “I better wash out my ass.”
AT SEVEN-THIRTY A.M. ON MONDAY, Mötley Crüe gathers in the lobby of the Rihga Royal Hotel in Manhattan in preparation for their appearance later in the morning on The Howard Stern Show.
The band members spent the previous day—their first time off in two weeks—holed up in their suites at the hotel. All of them except Tommy were with their women, and all of them except Tommy seem relaxed and well rested as they cut through the autograph seekers in front of the hotel, signing whatever is put in front of them, and climb into the van that will take them to the studio.
Nikki stares at the window as the van rides through the cavernous New York streets and reminisces with Vince about their first time in New York, more than fifteen years ago, when they did their first show here. “I wanted to stay in the where-Sid-killed-Nancy hotel,” states Nikki.
“We stayed in a dump, whatever it was,” Vince laughs. “You and me shared that room that had the giant cockroaches.”
“I remember the first time we sold out at the Whiskey,” Tommy calls from the front passenger seat. “I phoned my mom and dad and told them we’d made it. My mom was so proud.”
Thoughts of his mother put Tommy in a pensive frame of mind. “My mom was a beautiful lady, Greek. She never learned English very well. My therapist told me the reason I am so into tattoos is I had a lot of pain when I was a kid because I couldn’t use words to communicate with my mom. It made me feel frightened and alone. So I turned to pictures. I put them all over my body to communicate my pain to my mother. That’s why I have ‘MAYHEM’ tattooed on my stomach.”
“But that’s a word tattoo, not a picture,” a reporter points out.
“I know, dude,” Tommy says, missing the point but tripping out anyway. “It’s fucking heavy how the mind works.”
Vince gazes at the passing buildings, reminiscing. “The first time I ever saw snow was on our first tour.” He adds, “Remember that apartment we had in Hollywood when AC/DC and the Scorpions used to hang out with us all the time.”
Tommy: “Why did they hang out with us?”
Vince: “They did our drugs.”
Mick: “No, man, we did their drugs, and they did our girls.”
Nikki: “In the old days for every album we sold, I think we ingested a different drug and tried to destroy ourselves and wreck the whole process.
“We tried to blow up, and every time we tried, we kept getting bigger. Every car we wrecked, every overdose just made us bigger. It was ridiculous. I was never in it for the success. I was in it for the crash and burn.”
BY EIGHT A.M. the Crüe arrive at the CBS Radio studios high above Manhattan. Vince prepares his vocal cords for the live band performance they will do on-air by shutting himself into a soundproof room and screaming.
In the hallway outside the green room, Gary Dell’Abate argues with Dave, the tour manager, about the Mötley Crüe wives and girlfriends, who the record label promised would be on the show.
“I hate it when people at the record label lie,” Nikki sighs.
A sound technician who’s been setting up equipment for their live performance approaches Nikki and Tommy. “You guys are so much cooler to work with than Judas Priest.”
“That’s ’cause we don’t have jizz on our breath,” Tommy says.
“You guys will go on and do one song and an interview without the girls,” a Howard Stern producer says to Nikki. “It’s okay with our people, if it’s okay with your people.”
“Of course it’s okay.” Nikki laughs. “We are ‘our people.’”
THE INTERVIEW WITH HOWARD STERN goes without a snag until Stern asks Nikki about the bet once held between Mötley Crüe members to see who could screw the most girls without taking a shower.
“I won after thirty days with seventeen girls,” Nikki boasts. “I was getting a blow job . . .”
“You can