For Mötley Crüe, 2026 represents a major milestone — 45 years since Vince Neil, Mick Mars, Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee and released their 1981 debut “Too Fast for Love” on their own Leathür Records Four and a half decades later and Neil, Sixx, Lee and current guitarist John 5 are set to embark on The Return of The Carnival of Sins tour, a 33-date jaunt that also includes opening acts Extreme and Tesla on the bill.
In addition, the band is celebrating its legacy via the release of the 5-LP/5-CD picture disc box set “Crücial Crüe 1981 — 1989.” Cruising down the freeway in California on the way to rehearsal, Sixx is not only excited about revisiting the band’s 1980s canon, but commemorating the original Carnival of Sins Tour.
“It was 20 years ago and we had a lot of fun doing The Carnival of Sins Tour and the technology has really advanced to a place for live performances where you can even expand on ideas you had,” Sixx explained in an early July interview. “It was such a fun time and fun visual show. We’ve been able to go back to try to reimagine it, so that’s been a lot of fun for us. Playing outside is a different kind of an animal with a show like this. It’s very theatrical, so we’re looking forward to that, too, because Tesla, Extreme and Mötley Crüe is a good outside summertime show on top of that.”
A big part of what informs what fans will hear on this slate of dates is the inspiration of having delved back into the Crüe’s five multi-platinum ’80s albums for the box set — “Too Fast For Love” (1981), “Shout At the Devil” (1983), “Theatre of Pain” (1985), “Girls Girls Girls” (1987) and “Dr. Feelgood” (1989). Sixx is also quick to credit input from the band’s fanbase for including in the live show more vintage jams like “Take Me To the Top,” “Red Hot,” “Louder Than Love” and “Too Young To Fall in Love.”
“We love our fans,” Sixx said. “We call them Crüe Heads and they’re vocal. They’re vocal if they like something and they’re vocal if they don’t like something, so they’re our sounding board. We threw out something on our social where we told them we were pulling together a set list for The Return of the Carnival of Sins tour and (let us know) if there was anything they were dying to hear. These songs came bubbling to the top through the most votes through the fans. They voted for stuff like the obscure demo track from 1984 called ‘Mood Ring.’ We thought that was cute, but we weren’t going to take ‘Dr. Feelgood’ out.”
He added, “It’s a balancing act. We did drop some of the hits we’ve been playing for a while. We decided to lean on what the fans want. We have a lot of hits and can play that for two hours and that’s exciting. But they’re asking for some non-hits or more obscure songs, so let’s give it to them.”
For Sixx, who was born Frank Ferranna and grew up living with his grandparents and his mom in Idaho and Washington State, his childhood was steeped in journaling, daydreaming and writing stories. That storytelling gene was strengthened by a couple of early musical memories Sixx had of sitting in the passenger seat of his mom’s car while tooling around in L.A. when he was a kid.
“I remember hearing that Petula Clark song ‘Downtown’ come on the radio,” Sixx said. “It goes, ‘Downtown, everything happens downtown’ and I’d been living in the country in Idaho. And Los Angeles was everything — the cars, the freeways, the lights. And the other big song was ‘Big Bad John’ by Jimmy Dean. Again, it painted a story, which became the hallmark of how I write lyrics. I don’t believe in ‘Oh baby, baby, yeah, yeah, yeah.’ You have a moment to do something to turn a listener’s ear on or off. Those songs were very important to me early as a songwriter, even though I didn’t know it.”
A move to Seattle when Sixx was 15 was where he had the epiphany of mating lyrics with music. And it all started with him receiving a three-string, gut-string guitar from his mom’s latest husband.
“I was obsessed with music and words, but never thought about being a musician,” Sixx said. “We didn’t have that in the small town we lived in. I didn’t know anybody that had a guitar. My stepdad gave me this guitar if I wanted it. I would listen to the music and move my fingers around. Then I started moving my fingers around and talking my lyrics. Lightning came down, hit me on top of the head and I realized this was how I could tell my stories. I had hundreds of stories to tell. That was the connective thing. I met other kids in Seattle that had bands and started learning how to play bass. I wasn’t very good, but I had songs. Everybody was like, ‘This weird kid has the best songs.’ By the time I got to L.A., that was my mission — to be in a band to write songs. Not to be in a band for what people think you want be in a band for — the girls and the money.”
While the history of Mötley Crüe involves a lot of well-documented anecdotes steeped in enough drugs, tragedy and legal woes that makes you wonder if VH-1 came up with the “Behind the Music” series based on the band’s checkered past, Sixx’s willingness to learn the non-sexy side of the music and considerable business acumen is what’s kept his band going all this time. It’s no accident that many of the bands who were peers during the hair metal heyday of the Sunset Strip have since fallen by the wayside while the Crüe is marking 45 years and counting. Sixx is proud of the band’s resiliency and survival.
“The best advice I learned was filtered through a lot of high-ranking, responsible business people in the industry,” Sixx said. “I learned the law, about corporations, shareholders and share obligations. These are dirty words, but the bottom line is, we’re still here 45 years later because through all the mistakes, accidents and craziness that has happened on every band member’s level, we were able to survive ourselves because we had an understanding of how to start a record company, how to build your catalog and then sell it to BMG at a high multiple. And then work with BMG to keep getting music to the fans. Anyone can sit there with a metronome and play fast, but you’ve got to understand songwriting, human psyche and how that connects to make it an amazing experience because what you want is when you’re playing something for people to say, ‘That’s real. I can relate to that.’ The best thing I got was understanding how to protect ourselves in the ocean full of sharks.”