The veteran Crüe guitarist claims that immediately after he retired from performing, his former comrades tried to have him removed as a substantial investor in the band’s many enterprises.
Mick Mars, the guitarist for Mötley Crüe, has filed a lawsuit against his bandmates, alleging they were attempting to defraud him of money. Since he continues to suffer from Ankylosing spondylitis, a kind of spine arthritis, the guitarist, whose actual name is Robert Alan Deal, declared in October of last year that he would stop traveling with the band.
Mars emphasizes in his recently filed complaint that he could still record in the studio with the band but that he just couldn’t go on the road with such a crippling disease. According to the lawsuit, Mötley Crüe announced last October that he would reduce his share of income from 25% to 5%. The 71-year-old continued by saying that the group’s legal counsel made him feel as though he should be thankful just to obtain anything at all since they had planned to “unilaterally” kick him out of the band.
The court document states that Crüe’s management later increased the offer from a 5 percent to a 7.5 percent ownership in the band’s 2023 tour, with Mars’ continued divestiture from the group and their companies as a condition. The band allegedly tried to keep the disagreement hidden by taking Mars to arbitration when he refused to sign the contracts.
Additionally, the guitarist claimed that band bassist Nikki Sixx “gaslighted” him about his declining guitar abilities and that Sixx didn’t “play a single note on bass” on a recent tour in response. He insisted that Nikki had already recorded all of her lines.
These recent events come less than a month after renowned drummer Carmine Appice disclosed that he had discussed Mars’ departure from Mötley Crüe with Mars: ‘When I was on ‘The Stadium Tour,’ I was not happy,’ Mars told me,’” Appice said to Ultimate Guitar’s Andrew Daly.
He also added, “Basically, everything was on tape; it was all planned out and ultimately a lot of crap. And Mick is a pretty good player, and so to now let him loose and play the way he wants, that was never going to work for him. The truth is that everything has been weird for a while with Mötley Crüe, and Mick didn’t like that everything was on tape. Mick told me that people that came to see it could tell that it was all pre-recorded and that everything was on tape.”
Appice continued, “When you play in a stadium like that, you can hear a lot of things come to the monitors or what doesn’t. And with Vince’s [Neil] vocals, bass, drums, guitars, and all the other stuff, it was obvious that it was all on tape. And Mick was pissed off and said, ‘I can play these things. I want to play them. I don’t want to make believe I’m playing them.’ So, I think that’s one of the reasons why he said, ‘I’m done.’ Sure, the disease that he has doesn’t help, and it doesn’t make life easy on tour, but Mick can play all the licks, and he was allowed to.”
Mars has battled the excruciating degenerative disease Ankylosing Spondylitis (A.S.) for decades; as a result of this condition, the guitarist eventually decided to stop touring.
Although the complaint admits that Mars made a few errors during the band’s 2022 tour, it blames them for malfunctioning in-ear monitors. In the end, Mars has requested (opens in new tab) to be granted legal expenses, additional litigation costs, and access to the band’s financial records. Variety(opens in new tab) reports that there are no claims for damages in the lawsuit.
