How Motley Crue Taught Me About Humility

Want to hear a crazy story? I mean, it’s pretty unbelievable that a rock band can teach someone a lesson in humility, right?

Donnie in 1990

The year was 1990…it wasn’t long after I started playing guitar, and it was before I ever even thought about singing. I had been playing drums for several years before that, and was trying to start a new band with a bass player friend of mine who also happened to be my roommate at the time. We were never able to get that band off the ground, but we did manage to attend every cool rock concert that rolled through the area. Remember, this was just one year before Nirvana and Pearl Jam broke onto the scene, so Hair Metal was still really popular in those final days before the insurgence of Grunge. I was a Hair Metal kid back then, and I have the photo to prove it! One of my favorite bands at the time was playing in a city nearby, and we had tickets. It was the one and only Motley Crue, swinging through Baton Rouge, LA on the fourth leg of their Dr. Feelgood tour.

My bass player buddy and I gassed up the car and made the 90-minute trek from Crowley, LA to the state capitol of Baton Rouge. We waited in line, and eventually made it to our seats, which were stage right and toward the front, up on the second level. Lita Ford opened the show and she was great, but the Crue killed it that night! Say what you want about them, but they were a tight band who knew how to put on a hell of a show. Tommy Lee’s drum kit was suspended from the arena ceiling and it moved around the place on a track so that even the folks in the cheap nosebleed seats got to see him up close. He even jumped down into the crowd on a bungee cord and drove everybody insane. A few songs later, he threw one of his drumsticks right in our direction and I caught it! I can still remember pumping my fist in the air along with the music, holding the stick…Tommy saw me from the stage and did the same thing in reply. Ah, the memories.

The real surprise of the night…and the lesson I never forgot…happened a little while later when Mick Mars came out to do his extended guitar solo. He had some lap steel guitars set up, and he started out playing slide licks on those and then moved to playing rock stuff on his chrome-colored Kramer electric guitar. There was a little peninsula that jutted out from the stage into the crowd, so Mick would walk out there and lean over the side, still shredding away. Anyway, almost 10 minutes had gone by at this point…I don’t think even Jimi Hendrix could pull off a 10 minute guitar solo and still keep everyone interested. Mick is a really good guitar player, but you have to understand how people roll in South Louisiana…some Cajuns are not the most patient people in the world. The natives were getting restless. Finally, while Mick was in mid-shred way out at the end of the stage peninsula, some guy in the front row emptied a huge cup of ice-cold Budweiser right in his face! That’s the only time in my life I ever heard 10,000 people gasp simultaneously. Mick threw his guitar across the stage in a fit of rage, grabbed a microphone and cussed out the beer-throwing concert-goer, and then stomped off the stage. We never got to see the cool pyrotechnics they had planned for the end…and I’m pretty sure the set list got changed at that point…but the band eventually came back out and finished the show. It was definitely a night to remember!

I’m not really a big Crue fan anymore (I’d like to think that my musical tastes have matured over the years), but I love to tell that story because it always reminds me that no matter how big my ego gets, there’s always someone or something out there ready to deflate it for me. A little bit of humility goes a long way, and it’s interesting that the biggest reminder for me to humble myself is that mental image of an angry, humiliated Mick Mars with a face full of beer. I felt really bad for Mick that night, but I’m grateful for the unintended lesson about life.

Oh, and did I mention that I actually liked one particular Motley Crue song enough to do a cover version of it? It’s the song “Misunderstood” from their 1994 self-titled album (the one without Vince Neil). My version is more of a stripped down acoustic thing, instead of the epic Beatlesque hard rock way they did it, but I think it turned out OK. This track isn’t available for sale, but as a thank you for being one of my subscribers, I want to give it to you for free – no strings attached.

Download my version of “Misunderstood” here

If you like that song, you’d probably love my Truth & Magic EP (it’s available for pre-order now). It’s my latest album and it’s going to be full of rocking guitars that I think would make Mick Mars proud. 🙂