Mick Mars Says His Mötley Crüe Bandmates Didn’t Talk to Him During 2022 Tour

Mötley Crüe and Mick Mars seem to be in the news weekly thanks to their ongoing legal issues. Every week, we seem to learn a new nugget of drama. This week is no exception.

In his recent interview with Rolling Stone, Mars said his bandmates didn't talk to him at all during the Stadium Tour in 2022. He said that sense of being alone made him feel "used, sad, and inferior." Mars also said when that tour wrapped in September 2022 in Las Vegas, he felt "relieved." He added, "I was very emotionally wounded. They weren’t just shallow wounds. They were deep ones; the kind you can’t get over."

The interesting thing about Mars' comments about Mötley Crüe not talking to him during the Stadium Tour is that there seemed to be a lot of anti-social behavior on the road, but for good reason. Def Leppard's Joe Elliott said back in February that due to the tour being postponed so much because of the pandemic, every act on the Stadium Tour was social distancing the whole time. The singer noted, " ... All of us in Leppard traveled separately, which is the smartest decision we made. I didn’t stay in hotels. I lived on the bus, just me and Dale, my driver, in total isolation."

Furthermore, Mötley Crüe's Nikki Sixx took to social media in May 2022  to explain that none of the bands on the tour were having guests hang out backstage. He wrote, in part, "Our fans have waited almost 3 years for this tour. If one of us got Covid and had to cancel the show can you imagine the disappointment?"

Motley Crue, through all of the obstacles (and there have been plenty), has managed to survive for four decades. It's an overwhelming thought when you think about it. Just reading or watching The Dirt gave fans an idea of the absolutely insane things the band has gone through. From drugs to horrific tragedies and everywhere in between, The Crue has seemingly seen or done it all.

The latest chapter in the band involves the exit of Mick Mars. The guitarist retiring from touring with Mötley Crüe in October 2022 seemed to come out of nowhere. Apparently, the band thought the same.

Nikki Sixx told Guitar World, "We never saw it coming that Mick wasn’t going to be able to tour and was going to have to quit the band."

At the time, Mötley Crüe was about to hit the road again with Def Leppard following the success of The Stadium Tour.

Sixx expressed that after Mars' retirement, the band didn't want to let fans, Def Leppard or tour promoter Live Nation down. This then led them to bring in guitarist John 5 to fill in for Mars. Sixx referred to the substitution as "a no-brainer in a horrible situation -- something we did not ask for or want.

Of course, a lot has played out in the press in the aftermath of Mars' retirement. To begin with, Mars filed a lawsuit against Mötley Crüe alleging his percentage of band profits was cut from 25 percent to 5 percent.

He claimed in his lawsuit the band held a meeting to "unilaterally" remove him from Mötley Crüe. He was also allegedly removed from many of the band's various corporations and LLCs.

Additionally, Mars claims bassist Nikki Sixx repeatedly "gaslighted" the guitarist.

Sixx told Mars he consistently forgot chords and fans were complaining about his playing. (Mars claimed in the lawsuit Sixx "did not play a single note on bass during the entire U.S. tour" and accused him of using backing tracks and pantomiming.)

While this issue is still ongoing, let us not forget they've provided rock fans with quite the catalog of songs, with a number of those tunes now considered rock/metal classics.

From the classics to the deeper cuts, here are the 40 best songs of Motley Crue, ranked.