The Dirt also wins on the detail front. The costumes
from the various parts of the band’s career are exact
replicas of the real thing, right down to Sixx’s To o Fa s t
For Love-era black-and-white-striped spandex strides
and their various stage boots.
“They took our stuff and replicated it,” the bassist
says of the film’s authenticity. “The shoulder piece that
I had on Shout At The Devil, I sent it to them. Everything
was based on the original outfits. And those boots are
high. We had to tell them: ‘You gotta wrap your
ankles, cos you’ll roll ’em.”
Sixx cites a pair of classic 1990s films as the bar they
were aiming for: Martin Scorsese’s iconic mob movie
Goodfellas and Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1998 porn-
industry epic Boogie Nights. Like those films, and like
the book, The Dirt plays fast and loose with
convention: viewpoints shift, narrators change,
nothing stays still for long.
And then there’s the soundtrack. Mötley’s platinum-
plated back catalogue provides the musical spine of
the film, but the band also reunited to record four
brand new tracks – almost four years after playing
their last ever show, on New Year’s Eve 2015.
“I was writing stuff, all the other guys are working
on music all the time,” says Sixx. “So we sat down and
listened to a bunch of ideas, and boiled it down to the
songs that we really liked.”
The four songs consist of three originals – including
the magnificent title track The Dirt, featuring a cameo
from Machine Gun Kelly – plus an unexpected cover
of Madonna’s Like A Virgin.
“I’m walking my dogs, it was a beautiful day, and all
of a sudden this idea pops into my head,” Sixx recalls.
“I look up as if to look to God and I start laughing. And
I said: ‘That’s the worst idea ever.’ So I called
[producer] Bob Rock, and he was, like: ‘Uh, I don’t
think the guys are gonna go for it.’
“I demoed it up and went over to Tommy’s house.
I said: ‘I have a song to play you, but I’m going to go in
the bathroom and hide cos I don’t want you to punch
me in the face. And it starts going, and Tommy gets
this huge smile on his face: ‘This is so fucking wrong.’And I talked to Mick and Vince, and they were, like,
‘Fuck it, let’s go.’ I think it’s funny for Vince Neil to
sing: ‘Like a virgin, touched for the ver y first time’ ”The new songs on the The Dirt soundtrack
inevitably raise the question of reactivating Mötley
Crüe. It’s something that Sixx claims, not entirelyconvincingly, he hasn’t thought about. “That’s a whole
conversation that we haven’t even had,” he says. “And I
don’t know if we ever will. We’ve just been wrapped
up in the movie. Yeah, I miss the guys, and I miss
playing with them and playing that music, but
everyone’s fairly busy with their own thing.”
For Sixx, one happy bonus of working on the film is
that he says it helped rekindle his relationship with his
former bandmates, who had drifted apart even before
they wound up Mötley Crüe. In particular, the
bassist’s friendship with his former partner-in-crime
Tommy Lee, with whom Sixx hints at a “falling out”
for reasons that he declines to go into.
“That always bothered me,” he says. “But me and
Tommy went to New Orleans, and we were both
a little nervous. There were no managers, no press,
just us together on the set of a movie about our lives.
We kind of rekindled our friendship. It did take
a second to get everyone back on the same page again,
but once we did we realised that we had something
magical. It really did warm my heart.”
The Dirt is unlikely to alter anyone’s pre-conceived
notion of Mötley Crüe as a bunch of party-loving bozos,
but it does at least explore their backgrounds and
reasons for behaving like they did, and adds nuance and
shade to this most insane of rock’n’roll stories.
“I think the movie is gonna explain our behaviour as
people,” says Sixx. “We’re four different men with one
thing in common, which is Mötley Crüe. As far as
other peoples’ perception of the band, that’s kind of
on us. We were so transparent with our story, even in
interviews at the time, that people saw us and
thought: ‘These guys are fucking bonkers.’ But there’s
some texture beneath the skin.”
And did watching the finished film make him miss
the old days? “Oh hell no,” he says with a laugh. “Listen,
I’m very proud of what we did, and the fact that we did
it on our own terms, but I wouldn’t want to go through
that again.” DEThe Dirt premieres on Netflix on March 22,
and will be reviewed next issue.IT’S A WRAP!
More rock on celluloid that’s on the way.OZZY AND SHARON
- THEIR STORY
An as-yet untitled film has been commissioned about
the romance between Ozzy Osbourne and his manager.
Sharon has someone in mind to portray herself, but
favours “a complete unknown” for her eventual husband.
“It’s everything before we get married,” Sharon tells
Variety. “It’s the madness of my childhood, growing up in
the industry with a powerful father [Don Arden] who was
somewhat violent, and it’s Ozzy at twenty.”
DAVID BOWIE: STARDUST
With filming due to commence in June, British actor
Johnny Flynn has been cast as the iconic singer, who
died three years ago. To be directed by Gabriel Range
(Death Of A President, I Am Slave), Stardust co-stars
Jena Malone and Marc Maron and follows Bowie
during his first trip to the US in 1971, during which
he created his Ziggy Stardust character.
However, Bowie’s son Duncan Jones insists that he
is yet to sign off use of original Bowie music. “As it
stands, this movie won’t have any of dad’s music in it
and I can’t imagine that changing,” tweeted the 47-year-
old, adding that the project was being made “without
the family’s blessing”.PHIL LYNOTT: SONGS FOR
WHILE I’M AWAY
This documentary about the life and music of the late
Thin Lizzy leader is being directed by the award-winning
Irish filmmaker Emer Reynolds. It follows the highs and
lows of Lynott’s career before his tragic death in 1986.
Lynott’s Thin Lizzy bandmates Eric Bell, Scott Gorham
and Darren Wharton have all been interviewed, along
with James Hetfield of Metallica, Skid Row’s Brush Shiels,
Adam Clayton from U2, Midge Ure and Suzi Quatro.
A release date is yet to be confirmed.MA
RK
WE
ISS
/PR
ESS12 CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM
Mötley Crüe in 1985, unwittingly
writing their own film script:
(l-r) Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil,
Tommy Lee, Mick Mars.