Hella Nation - Evan Wright [133]
MÖTLEY CRÜE ARRIVE at Tower Records at midnight. A crowd of nearly a thousand curls around the store waiting to buy their new Generation Swine CD.
The Crüe sit at a table raised on a platform inside and begin signing for their fans.
“Tommy, man. I’m an engineer, and I designed a drum kit for you,” a wiry teenager says, approaching the table. He raises a camera and tries snapping a picture unsuccessfully.
“Dude, you’ve got to wind the camera.” Tommy takes it from his hands and snaps the picture for him.
“Oh my friggin’ God!” a group of chicks from Long Island cry out. They lean against the table, touching Crüe members’ hands as they indicate where they want their pictures and CDs signed. “You guys are so rad!” a girl shouts, pulling her top down momentarily to expose herself.
“Thanks,” Nikki mumbles, barely noticing the bare breasts inches from his nose. The twenty-hour workday is taking its toll. Hundreds of girls slide past the table, repeating the scene again and again.
Three hours into the signing, Nikki slumps back in his chair and falls asleep. The rear chair legs slide off the stand, and a couple of store employees catch his fall inches before his head cracks against the floor.
As they tilt his chair back up to the table, Nikki’s eyes open. He resumes signing autographs and bantering with the fans.
“It takes a lot for Nikki to say uncle,” Dave, the tour manager, groans. “We can’t keep them away from their fans.”
The last kid walks out of the store at four-thirty in the morning.
“WOW! I COULD USE A HAMBURGER!” Nikki jumps into the van, escaping the clutches of fans outside the Tower store who want more.
“That was cool,” Vince says, in a red-eyed daze.
“Pass me some of those mushy fries,” Mick mumbles in the back, as Tommy rips into a greasy McDonald’s sack that somebody loaded into the van hours ago.
A publicist from their management company has joined them for the ride back to the hotel to strategize for the next day. “I wanted to feel you out about doing a CNN spot tomorrow at two.”
“That sounds okay,” Nikki mumbles, scarfing down a cold hamburger.
“It’ll be a hip thing that a lot of kids are into. At the virtual laser-tag center.”
“What’s that?”
“You’ll dress up in laser-tag suits and play the game.”
“That doesn’t sound very cool.”
“So you guys aren’t into it?”
“That sounds like something Bon Jovi might do.”
“I’m very protective of Mötley Crüe,” Mick says the next day on the way to David Letterman’s show. “I dreamed of being in a successful band since I was kid. I don’t want to ruin it by dressing up in space suits.”
“We’ve been around for seventeen years,” Nikki says. “We’ve survived the drugs, the alcohol . . .”
“Breaking up,” Vince adds.
“The lawsuits,” Nikki says. “We’ve been sued by people who claimed our music inspired them to commit suicide. We were sued by a guy who said Mick’s guitar playing made him go deaf. We were sued by a guy who saw me set my pants on fire in a show, and went home and did it, so he nearly burned himself to death. We ought to change our name to Mötley Sue.”
FOR THE TAPING of Late Night with David Letterman, a block of Fifty-third Street has been closed by the NYPD. A stage has been erected in the middle of the road.
Humid, cloudy weather has blown off by late afternoon to a blue sky. After the sound check ensures that windowpanes will rattle for a several-block area, the Crüe retreats to the cramped dressing rooms above the Ed Sullivan Theater.
Heidi Mark, wearing a leopard-print jacket, and Robbie-Lauren Mantooth, in a lime-green Chanel suit, wait in the dressing room. Heidi’s shiner is barely visible, and her spirits have improved remarkably. “Did you see my new tattoo?” Heidi babbles contentedly, twisting her ankle to reveal the fairy dancing around a rose inked on her calf. “Roses are my favorite.