Doc McGhee – full in bloom

Jake E. Lee, Mick Mars, Doc McGhee, Ozzy & Sharon Osbourne Remember the 1984 Bark at the Moon/Shout at the Devil Tour

Metal Edge: Take a trip back to 1984 with Ozzy, Mötley Crüe, Jake E. Lee and more as they recall the insane ‘Bark at the Moon’ tour.

You can read the entire feature @ this location. An excerpt has been provided below.

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MIKE BONE (executive, Elektra Records) Shout at the Devil was selling like gangbusters. I was the head of promotion at Elektra, and the guy who was my predecessor was this guy named Lou. One day Lou comes into my office and he goes, “Hey, Bone, look at this. This Mötley Crüe record just clicked past 500,000. We’ve got a gold record here! We should go and show this to the band.” I said, “Yeah, they’re out on the road.” They were in Binghamton, New York. [Manager] Doc McGhee had them opening for Ozzy.

That night we were in Binghamton, they were staying at some cheap motel, a Ramada Inn or something like that. And because we were the opening act we got back to the motel relatively early. There was a restaurant there, and Lou and I were gonna have a beer with the band and then get in our car and head back to the city. So we’re having a drink, and while we’re doing this, buses are pulling up to the hotel, and they’re dropping off all these ski people in their ski outfits who are coming from New York up to Binghamton. So now on one side of the room are the ski people with their knitted caps and everything, and on the other side is Mötley Crüe and their road crew and some groupies. And Vince has this girl at the bar, and he takes her underwear off and . . . Let’s just put it this way, he used a longneck beer bottle on her. In the restaurant, in full view of everyone, including the skiers. This girl’s friend was right there with her as this was going on, and she says, “I can’t believe you’re letting him do this to you!” And the girl looks at her friend and she goes, “I’m with Vince Neil of the Mötley Crüe!” I’m like, “Oh boy, let me finish my beer and get out of here…”

MICK MARS (guitarist, Mötley Crüe) I remember Ozzy just had his daughter Aimee and I remember seeing her as a tiny, tiny little baby. Sharon had just had that kid when we were doing that tour. But Ozzy was still fuckin’ up everywhere. He’d come up to our bus singin’ “Iron Man” but he was singin’, “I… am… krelly man.” And he’d have about half an ounce of cocaine in a baggie and he’d come on the bus and cut out a bunch of cocaine lines and stuff. We called ’em Texas power rails. And the next thing that I know is, I was go- ing to my room, the other guys went to the pool, Nikki pissed, and Ozzy started snorting ants.

JAKE E. LEE (guitarist, Ozzy Osbourne) I was there for the whole snorting-of-the-ants thing. I think my version’s a little bit different than anybody else’s, but I also was the only guy that wasn’t drunk. I’ll just tell you the way I remember it. We’re at the hotel swimming pool during the day and Ozzy was there bragging about how fit he was getting. Because my martial arts instructor was out on tour with us as Ozzy’s bodyguard and trainer. And I think it was Nikki who said, “Yeah? How many push-ups can you do?” And so they had a push-up contest. Ozzy did about three, I think. Then they had a sit-up contest. Ozzy lost that, too. Then Nikki said, “Well, let’s change the rules.” And Nikki was out there with a girl that he had met the night before. She was lounging in the sun and Nikki pulls his dick out and starts pissing. She didn’t like it, she ran off. It was getting weird, because there were families out there at the pool.

Then Ozzy was sitting on the concrete and we were looking at him to see what he was going to do. And he had this funny look on his face, and that’s when I could see that he was pissing in his trunks while he was sitting down. There’s this pool of piss forming around him, and because he was quote-unquote in physical training, he must have been taking a lot of vitamins because I remember his piss was almost fluorescent. So Nikki’s kind of looking at him, like, “I dunno if that beats me…” And then Ozzy got on his hands and knees and started licking his piss up. That’s when I gathered my things and I said, “Okay, I’m out.” And as I was walking away I saw him snorting something on the ground, which I assume was the line of ants. If they did anything after that, I don’t know and I kinda don’t want to.

The arenas were always full when Mötley went on. Nobody wanted to miss them. They had a great audience reaction. And definitely a lot more girls were interested in meeting Mötley Crüe after the show than they were in coming to the Ozzy bus. You could tell they were going to be huge.

OZZY OSBOURNE I was well established but Mötley Crüe were coming up fast. It was a good package. But it was one of the most dangerous tours I ever did. I said that to Doc one day, “It’s getting so crazy… ”

SHARON OSBOURNE A lot of it has obviously been exaggerated. But it was nothing new to me. It was like, “Been there, done that. Move on, kids.” I was brought up at a time where there were real gangsters in the music industry, and people had guns and artists had guns and it was a much tougher business. I’d been around all of that and all the groupies and all the insane behavior. So it did nothing to me. It was just like, “Oh, fuck off.” I was just trying to keep my husband alive.

DOC McGHEE I don’t think there was anyone in Mötley Crüe that went, “If we do this, that’s going to be cool and people are going to… ” You know what I mean? These guys weren’t bad guys and they didn’t do it to be rock stars. They did it because that’s what they did.

You can read the entire feature @ this location.

VWMusic: From his hotel in Helsinki, McGhee recently chatted with VWMusic via phone regarding his quarter-century-long tenure as the unquestioned coach of KISS. You can read the entire interview @ this location.

INTERVIEW EXCERPT:

Throughout The End of the Road Tour there has been near-constant speculation if Ace, Peter, or Bruce will be joining the band on stage. Are any of these guys going to come and play, or will it just be Paul, Gene, Eric, and Tommy standing together on that final night?

Doc McGhee:

Honestly, I don’t know. You can invite them, but they may not come. They may come, they may not come, and we might not invite them. We’ve talked to them, and we’ve talked about it. Well, we don’t talk to Peter, but we do talk to Ace. We haven’t talked to Peter in a long time. But you know something? They were part of it, they aided in starting this band, and they should be part of the end of this. They started this, so in some way, they should be able to share that spotlight on the way out. Now, regardless of if it happens or not, you’re not going to get six guys up there in makeup. That’s not going to happen.

There’s an interesting quote floating around out there that basically says, “The reunion era killed KISS as a creative entity.” I personally don’t agree with that, but I wanted to get your two cents as well.

When you’re at the top, everybody wants to take shots. So they go, “Well, they’re not being creative,” or they say, “They aren’t doing what they did when they recorded Revenge.” Now, I personally thought Revenge was really good – if was really good if it wasn’t KISS doing it. This wasn’t The Beatles going from “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” to Sgt. Peppers. [Laughs].

Look at other really successful bands who have had great longevity, and I’ll use ACϟDC as an example. You don’t see ACϟDC changing their sound, do you? Although I really like ACϟDC, you can’t deny that they stay true to what they do and that’s what I thought KISS had to do. Whenever bands and artists make really big changes, it’s pretty much because they’ve had such an amazing record that they can’t duplicate it. But with KISS, you never had that one massive record, or that one single massive song that we couldn’t beat. Instead, we have a lot of great, classic songs that mean so much to a lot of people.

I know it sounds corny, but it comes back to the idea that you can be what you want to be. That’s how KISS got there. They couldn’t compete. They didn’t feel like they could compete in blue jeans against the rest. So they went the route of alter egos, and they did that so they could go and be that person that they wanted to be, and it was awesome. To this day, Gene, Paul, Tommy, and Eric own those characters when they’re on stage. They fucking work them, and people believe them. That’s what has kept KISS alive.

You can read the entire interview @ this location.