#4 Motley Crue - Too Fast For Love: Birth of Glam Metal

ROCKTOBERFEST: A Countdown of the 31 Most Bitchin Glam Metal Albums

#4 Motley Crue - Too Fast For Love (Released 1981) Platinum #77 Billboard 200

Ode to Sticky Fingers. You can actually like Vince Neil's Crotch on Facebook. I have. Have you?

Vince Neil (Egg-Burrito Crotch) - Vocals

Mick Mars (P.I.M.P.) - Guitars

Nikki Sixx (What's a shower) - Bass

Tommy Lee (Fat Chick Thrilla)

The year was 1981 and a ragtag bunch of 3 Sunset Strip miscreants and their older, hired gun axe-slinger recorded the album that changed the world of music. Not many bands can say they created a whole genre of music, but Motley Crue can claim to hold that distinction. With the release of Too Fast For Love, Motley Crue took glam rock, punk rock and heavy metal and mixed it into the complex, filthy genre of glam metal. But first for this all to be realized someone had to die. That person was a guy named Frankie. Born from this man’s death was Nikki Sixx, the true persona of Frankie. You just got to love glam and their flair for the dramatic. So lets begin with the Ballad of Nikki’s alter ego and his death. On with the show…

The riffs are so heavy, distorted and raw. The bass is fuzzy. The drums are loud and driving. The vocals alternate between sneering and screaming. The mix is unpolished. There is nothing pretty about this album and that is the point that the pop metal albums missed. Yet there is something irresistible of the Dirt shoveled by this band. It is the earnestness of living on the streets. The album is a true snapshot of 1980-81 Hollywood. On all the other albums, Motley Crue plays characters and because of who I am I see the beauty and magic in that artificial construct.  If something had to be real in order to offer the world value, economists, fiction authors and anything involving theoretical models would be out of jobs. But for this one album, the Crue are who they are. A struggling, crude band that don’t really know how to play their instruments, but God fuckin Damn all the haters because they are making it and they are dragging everyone kicking and screaming to the streets. That is what I care about. Show me some damn heart and I will love you. Fuck the chops where is the heart.

Or as the members of Crue would say where are the HUGE TITS!!! What Does everybody want? HEAD! HEAD! HEAD! What else? CRUE! CRUE! CRUE! CRUE!

Shut up, Martin! The Boys in the Crue dont care about waxin philosophic! Show Your Tits!

I speak a lot of urgency when writing these reviews and that is what so many “rock” bands miss from today’s music. Their music isn’t urgent. The band members aren’t conveying the idea that you need to listen to this NOW because if you don’t you are missing something cool. On the Crue album, you have no idea what will happen next. Is Vince going to start just showing off his screamin ability like in “Come On and Dance”.

Seriously listen to Vince go during the last minute or so. Jesus, why couldn’t I get to see that live. 

What riff will Mick Mars play next (Take Me To The Top) or in his whirlwind solo in Piece of Action? What interesting subject will Nikki Sixx pen next (Merry Go-Round)? How will Tommy Lee take over songs (Piece of Action)? When is the last time you listened to an album and were taken on a roller coaster ride? That is what Too Fast For Love offers a wild, unbridled and dynamic look at life on the sordid streets of Hollywood. I like formulae as much as the next human because I like consistency and safety. This is an album of individualism that was a man’s vision, who brought along three other men to create an album about the human condition. This album represents a triumph for individualism against the forces of stagnation. Now Take Me To The Top, Mick…

The first song off the album was penned specifically for Vince Neil’s unique delivery. Besides singing for Crue, Neil was destined to fuck, drink and sing Sweet and Cheap Trick covers. Sixx, a huge fan of these bands, crafted Livewire for this preening, reedy voice. Livewire pre-dates Thrash metal by a good two years, but it would stand to be the fastest, heaviest, thrashiest song LA would produce until Metallica and Slayerrrrr would arrive on the scene. This Motorhead meets Cheap Trick track is infectious. It begins with that speed metal riff that smokes and sounds exactly like the song title, a Livewire. When Vince screams “SHOUT!” we are off the races with a killer double-bass attack. Vince screams like his life is dependent on it. The song introduces the idea that is consistent through every Crue song, Nikki writes the song so that everyone knows exactly what the song is called so Livewire is the most common lyric. The breakdown (there is no solo as this was supposedly a punk song) is awesome lyrically as Neil cocky as ever proclaims “You better lock your door because I am on the PROWL tonight.” Before we hit the big finish complete with plenty of cow-bell and high-wattage riffage. 

There is only one video from this album and it is for Livewire and it illustrates every trick from the Crue playbook at the time. Right off the bat, there is a skull with a pentagram on it. Immediately, there is an edge to it. You are NOT supposed to watch it. Then that speed metal riff hits. With the exception of Motorhead, just the idea of that riff was so completely foreign to the human mind. It is so loud and aggressive. Then all the theatrics. Mick drooling blood. Nikki setting his pants on fire. Vince bradnshing a flaming sword. Tommy being chained to a chair in S&M fashion. The black and red leather, the chains, the ghoulish make-up, the candles, skulls, the pentagrams on the bass drums. All these come together to create the total Crue package. Glam metal never was an audio genre. A glam metal can be excellent by itself, but glam metal is truly an audio-visual genre. It is like Shakespeare. You can read Shakespeare and enjoy it and capture value from it. But to truly appreciate it you must see it unfold before your eyes and it is exactly the same way with glam metal. Hey Shakespeare was crafted for the masses too with its tawdry jokes and so when the Crue is singing about women’s legs in the air they are just continuing the tradition. Sorry girls these four men are Too Fast For Love (very Cheap Trick)…    

The next song, I am picking and this is like picking between my children is Public Enemy No. 1. The riff is melodic as it is raw. This is a perfect example of a British glam rock song taken distorted and injected with sleaze and made into a glam metal song. There is of course the requisite cowbell. I love a song when the lead riff is the same melody as the vocal melody. I am such a sucker for that. I also love the lyric, “Coming home as fast as the speed of sound”. I love how the pre-chorus crescendos cogently into the chorus of “Public Enemy No. 1”. The solo features Mars’ distinctive dirty playing. There is no finger-tapping, no technical flare. Mars actually a student of Hendrix, Beck and many blues-rock guitarists brought a very different style to Southern California then the Van Halen, Rhoads, and speed metal guitarists had. This combined with Sixx’s love for glam led to this unique sound.

Let’s slow it down with what I think is Crue’s most beautiful song, Starry Eyes. I don’t what it is early glam, but they had a knack for making hypnotic choruses.  The gong just goes off and I am in a trance. Vince’s voice just drips with emotion and vulnerability. The Crue are often the cocky braggarts that cannot be beaten, but when Nikki shows that vulnerability, it can truly be beautiful. The rhythm section just keeps that pounding in time. The riff is a buzzsaw, but is hypnotic itself just going up and down. While, Vince repeats Starry Eyes over and over again, but even in itself simplicity there is elegance because of his delivery. 

Finally we end this lengthy review with the song that single-handedly crafted the genre of sleaze rock. The lyric “use you up and throw you away” will forever be the sleaziest lyric of all-time. The riff just builds and builds. Vince begins in a preening, seductive whispering. Then he goes into his falsetto, while the tension builds in the music. Then Tommy just lets it all out and music just lets out in the climax while Vince screams “Get a piece of your action! Uh huh!” I love how he lets out on “uh huh”. The solo on this one is absolute roller-coaster that ends in a really cool climax that I do not want to ruin so just go listen to the song. This one is definitely in my top 5 of all-time favorite Motley Crue songs. 

After the verbal blowjob, I just gave Crue what they fuck could top this album. Let me say that this is definitely one of my favorite albums of all-time in any genre. I firmly think if you ever want to pass real judgment on  glam metal, you have to listen to this album once.  LONG LIVE THE CRUE! CRUE! CRUE! CRUE! CRUE!

  

To play us out is a song about a man that got too much, too soon and wound up at the Merry Go-Round.