Motley Crue

They released Too Fast for Love independently in 1981 and signed to Elektra Records in 1982. Shout at the Devil (1983) established them as one of the most dangerous-looking and sounding acts of the Sunset Strip era, the post-apocalyptic imagery borrowed directly from Mad Max and Escape from New York. They toured with Ozzy Osbourne in 1984 and the excess reached its first major consequence: on December 8, 1984, Vince Neil drove drunk and crashed, killing his passenger Nicholas Dingley — known as Razzle — the drummer of Hanoi Rocks. Neil was convicted of vehicular manslaughter and served eighteen days in jail. The band continued. Theatre of Pain (1985) included their cover of Smokin' in the Boys Room and went platinum. Girls Girls Girls (1987) hit number two on the Billboard 200. Then, in December 1987, Nikki Sixx overdosed on heroin and was clinically dead for two minutes before being revived with an adrenaline injection — the experience he later described in graphic detail in The Dirt and which directly inspired Kickstart My Heart. The entire band entered rehab in early 1988.

Dr. Feelgood (1989), produced by Bob Rock, was the commercial and creative peak — their first and only album to reach number one on the Billboard 200, where it spent 109 weeks and sold over six million copies in the United States alone. The title track, Kickstart My Heart, and Without You were all massive rock radio hits. The album represented a fully sober band operating at the height of their collective ability, and it remains the definitive Motley Crue statement. Vince Neil was fired in 1992 and replaced by John Corabi for the self-titled 1994 album before Neil rejoined for Generation Swine (1997). The band's collective autobiography The Dirt, written with Neil Strauss and published in 2001, spent ten weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list and remains one of the most luridly honest documents of rock excess ever published. A Netflix film adaptation was released in 2019.

The band retired from touring with a New Year's Eve 2015 farewell show in Los Angeles, then returned in 2019 in conjunction with The Dirt film. Their 2022 stadium co-headlining tour with Def Leppard was one of the largest rock tours of the year. Mick Mars retired from touring in 2022 due to his long-running battle with ankylosing spondylitis — a degenerative spinal condition he has managed throughout his entire career — and was replaced on tour by Rob Zombie and Marilyn Manson guitarist John 5, who became a permanent member by 2023. The band has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Wayne Dennon photographed Motley Crue as part of an archive that documents rock at its most theatrical and consequential. Motley Crue were the band that every authority figure in the 1980s pointed to as evidence of what was wrong with rock and roll, and they responded by selling 100 million records.