motley crue tour 1983

Flashback: Motley Crue Rocks the US Festival in 1983

By Gavin Edwards

Gavin Edwards

In May 1983, Mötley Crüe had just signed to Elektra Records, but they were in danger of getting dropped before they even released an album on the label. Who saved them? Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak, who had an enormous wad of money burning a hole in his pocket.

Wozniak, the engineer who founded Apple with Steve Jobs, had taken a leave of absence from the company in the early 80s, not particularly interested in making the transition to upper management. What he did instead was sponsor a sprawling rock concert called the US Festival, which had two blowout years in 1982 and 1983 before it sank under the weight of millions of dollars of deficits.

The ’82 lineup was heavy on the MTV favorites of the time (the Cars, the Police, Tom Petty, Talking Heads), but the following year was split by genres, with separate days devoted to New Wave, rock and heavy metal. Mötley Crüe, who were big names on the Sunset Strip if nowhere else, managed to get a slot on Sunday, May 29 (“Heavy Metal Day”), alongside Ozzy Osbourne, Judas Priest and Scorpions. (Van Halen reportedly got a million dollars to play that day, and spent most of it on an elaborate party.)

The festival was in San Bernadino, California (about 60 miles east of Hollywood) – MTV VJ Mark Goodman described the venue as “hot and dusty and nasty.” Lead singer Vince Neil remembered arriving in a helicopter (his first time in one), feeling amazing because of the Jack Daniel’s, pills and “a blonde head bobbing up and down in my lap.” Then reality sank in: his band was relatively unknown, and their set list was heavy on unfamiliar tunes from Shout at the Devil, which they had just started recording (it would be released that September).

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Even if the thousands of metalheads in attendance were waiting for Van Halen, the Crüe won them over in a 45-minute set that showcased what the band was like at the exact moment they broke out from the Strip. The highlight was the future single “Looks That Kill,” which also served as a self-description for a band very aware of their image. Bassist/songwriter Nikki Sixx, who turns 56 this week, was just 26 then; despite being over six feet tall in his bare feet, he added several inches with enormous platform boots. Guitarist Mick Mars, who in later years would be a virtual statue onstage because of arthritis and spinal issues, was mobile and aggressive onstage. Vince Neil was a yowling vision of Hollywood hairspray and Kabuki makeup. And drummer Tommy Lee was the engine who ensured the band actually rocked. (You can see the complete set here .)

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How did Neil celebrate their triumphant gig? By getting it on with the date of their A&R man at Elektra, Tom Zutaut. Sixx was furious, knowing that Zutaut had the potential to kneecap their career – but when Zutaut found out years later (while being interviewed for the band’s book The Dirt ), he shrugged it off, saying, “If someone was important to me, I wouldn’t take them to a rock show like that. I definitely wouldn’t leave anyone in a trailer with any member of Mötley Crüe.” Less than a year after the US Festival, Shout at the Devil was certified platinum. Steve Jobs may have been responsible for the iPhone and Pixar, but Steve Wozniak can count Mötley Crüe’s career as one of his legacies.

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Revisiting Motley Crue’s 1983 Stint Opening for Kiss

In 1983, Motley Crue embarked on the most notable trek of their career at that point: opening for  Kiss .

At the time, the Crue had only one album under their belts. Initially released in 1981, then pushed into mainstream circulation in 1982, Too Fast for Love had earned the group its first national attention. Even though it wasn't a commercial breakthrough at first, the LP spent more than a year slowly climbing the Billboard chart.

As Motley Crue’s notoriety began to grow, Kiss began to take notice. At the time, the makeup-adorned rockers were in a commercial decline. After closing the ‘70s with four consecutive platinum-selling releases, the group’s first three ‘80s LPs failed to reach similar success. As Kiss set out on their Creatures of the Night Tour/10th Anniversary Tour, the band was met with low audience turnout, with some concerts filling only 30-40 percent of the venues' capacity.

"At that point, we were hurting," Paul Stanley recalled during a 2012 appearance on Nikki Sixx ’s radio show Sixx Sense . "We were in a lull, we were on the West Coast, and we thought, 'Who can help us sell tickets?'"

The answer was Motley Crue. The band had already cut its teeth on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip. While the idea of opening for such experienced showmen may have intimidated some bands, the Crue were energized by the challenge.

“I guess you could kind of look at it as a young band that was so hungry and so in its zone, and we had yet to break, being like a young boxer,” Sixx later recalled . “We just wanted to get in the ring with anybody. The ring was getting on that stage, playing in front of anybody’s crowd. We didn’t care whose it was, because we believed in ourselves and we were in that place. We were in that positive place. Everything we were doing was working internally. We were just pushing it out and kicking ass.”

The Crue were supremely confident, convinced they could hang with any band, regardless of their experience level. “I guess we were naive enough not to go, ‘Whoa, they have all this stuff and we really have nothing,‘” Sixx said. “We were just like, ‘Wow, put us on that stage and cut us loose.'“

The short run wasn't perfect. In the Motley Crue autobiography The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band , Sixx complained that Gene Simmons had chastised the young band for its hard-partying ways. Still, the experience gave the young band a glimpse at what its future rock stardom would hold.

"[Kiss] gave us our first taste of playing up and down the coast and on big stages," Sixx noted . "We’ll always remember that. They’re fond memories.“

Even though Motley Crue opened for Kiss on only a handful of 1983 dates, they included some monumental performances. One, at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles, featured a sold-out crowd celebrating the local group’s rise in stardom. Another was the Crue’s debut Las Vegas performance, the first meeting of Sin City and rock’s most notorious bad boys.

That show occurred on April 1, 1983, at the Aladdin Theater. Across their 10-song set, Motley Crue delivered several tunes from their debut LP - including “Live Wire” and “Merry-Go-Round” - while also previewing songs like “Looks That Kill” and “Shout at the Devil,” which would arrive on Shout at the Devil that September.

To commemorate the Crue’s debut Vegas performance, Iconic by Collectionzz has created a new limited-edition poster. The distinctive design features band members Sixx,  Vince Neil , Tommy Lee  and  Mick Mars  adorning playing cards being held by a satanic hand. The poster, which comes in standard and mirror foil versions, can be seen below.

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40 Years Ago: Motley Crue Release ‘Shout at the Devil’

Even for ‘80s music fans who grew to loathe glam and overly slick commercial metal, Mötley Crüe ’s first two albums, 1980’s Too Fast For Love , and 1983’s Shout at the Devil often got a free pass. The L.A. rockers wrote both when they were still hungry and striving for success and there was more aggression in their sound back then than there was by the time they were playing major arenas on the Theater of Pain  tour.

For rebellious youth,  Shout at the Devil , which came out Sept. 26, 1983, had all the ingredients of a deviant misadventure. The Crüe weren’t as entrenched in metal as Judas Priest or Iron Maiden, but they were flirting with evil, as evidenced by the pentagram on the initial pressing of the album and they were still in their Road Warrior with black eyeliner attire, which was pretty bad-ass for its time, giving them more credibility than other Sunset Strippers who actually looked like chicks.

While the band had self-released Too Fast For Love on their own label, Leathür Records, and secured distribution through Greenworld with future Guns N’ Roses Manager Alan Niven, they piqued the interests of Elektra pretty swiftly and were signed in the spring of 1982.

As such, Mötley had an actual budget for the record and was able to secure Tom Werman to produce Shout at the Devil . Werman had previously worked for Ted Nugent, Cheap Trick and Blue Öyster Cult and knew how to make rock and roll bands sound supersized. Using compositions from bassist Nikki Sixx , including the controversial, devil-horns-raiser “Shout at the Devil,” the razor-edged, infectious “Looks That Kill” and the more radio-oriented “Too Young to Fall in Love,” Werman gave Mötley Crüe a sound as strong as their image.

“Some people said we were Satanic and angry,” vocalist Vince Neil told me in 2010. “We always thought that was funny, but we were like, ‘Hey, if it gets us attention let’s go with that.’ We were so starved for stardom that we were willing to do whatever it took. But there was no anger at all. We were just having fun.”

Motley Crue, "Looks That Kill" Music Video

At the same time as the Crüe were drinking excessively, doing tons of blow and having as much sex as possible, Elektra decided to portray them as a rock 'n' roll timebomb, and proudly announced to the press when the band was arrested in Edmonton International Airport for wearing their spiked stage gear while walking through customs. Another time, Neil tried to board with a suitcase full of porn.

“That was no big deal, but the record people sure wanted to make it look like something crazy had happened,” Neil said. “The chains were part of what I was wearing onstage and as for the porn, I had a couple magazines they found and took away. That was it. But the thing is they you didn’t really have to look very hard to find something outrageous to say about us because most of it was true.”

Mötley Crüe entered Cherokee Studios in Hollywood, Calif., in April 1983 to start working on Shout at the Devil and initially had little idea what to do in a professional recording environment. Werman guided them through the process, explaining how there was no need for everyone to record their parts at the same time and that even after everyone was done recording they could go back and edit over what they had done and fix mistakes.

As focused on partying as they were, it didn’t take the band long to grasp the concept and everyone wanted the record to be as good as possible. In the end, Shout at the Devil was a wicked little album. And partway through the recording process, the band decided to ratchet up the evil by including a gangbusters cover of The Beatles “Helter Skelter."

Motley Crue, "Helter Skelter" (The Beatles Cover)

Contributing to the pre-release hype was the concert extravaganza The Us Festival, the last day of which featured a balls-out metal lineup co-headlined May 29 by Van Halen and Scorpions. “We were just kids. Shout at the Devil hadn’t come out yet and all of a sudden there were 300,000 people there screaming,” Neil recalls. “It was like we went from playing clubs to doing something majorily big. We were on the same bill as Van Halen, Scorpions, Ozzy, and Judas Priest; that really blew us away.”

Mötley Crüe finished up Shout at the Devil in July 1983. It didn’t take long for disgruntled teens to connect with the release, which sold 200,000 copies in two weeks and reached as high as No. 17 on the Billboard album chart. Shout at the Devil went gold in January, 1984 and was platinum less than a month later. By January, 1985 it was double platinum. And in May 1997, it went quadruple platinum.

Motley Crue, Live at the US Festival (1983)

“I can’t say I think it’s the best album we ever put out,” Neil says. “But it was definitely a record for its time. When we finished it, we were all really proud of what we had done and I think the songs had stood the test of time, which pretty much says it all.”

Mötley Crüe reissued Shout at the Devil in 2003 with five bonus tracks, including the previously unreleased “I Will Survive.”  The other four cuts were demos of album tracks.

Loudwire contributor Jon Wiederhorn is the author of  Raising Hell: Backstage Tales From the Lives of Metal Legends , co-author of  Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal , as well as the co-author of Scott Ian’s autobiography,  I’m the Man: The Story of That Guy From Anthrax , and Al Jourgensen’s autobiography,  Ministry: The Lost Gospels According to Al Jourgensen  and the Agnostic Front book  My Riot! Grit, Guts and Glory .

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Behind the Poster: Mötley Crüe, Las Vegas, 1983

Jul 24, 2020

By Brian Kane

MÖTLEY CRÜE 's short-lived tour opening for KISS in early 1983 was the band's first real opportunity to play on big stages on the West Coast. KISS was undoubtedly a tough act to open for, as they had already reached the heights as one of the world's biggest bands and arguably the most spectacular concert attraction to date in rock history.

But MÖTLEY CRÜE didn't see it that way, as bassist Nikki Sixx explained. "I guess you could kind of look at it as a young band that was so hungry and so in its zone and we had yet to break, being like a young boxer," he said. "We just wanted to get in the ring with anybody. The ring was getting on that stage, playing in front of anybody's crowd. We didn't care whose it was because we believed in ourselves and we were in that place. We were in that positive place. Everything we were doing was working internally. We were just pushing it out and kicking ass. I guess we were naïve enough not to go 'Woah, they have all this stuff and we really have nothing,' We were just like 'Wow, put us on that stage and cut us loose.'"

The Aladdin Theater in Las Vegas opened on April 1, 1983 (April Fools Day); and the very first concert was KISS with MÖTLEY CRÜE . It was the first time MÖTLEY CRÜE performed in Las Vegas. They hit the stage with early anthems "Live Wire" , "Take Me To The Top" , "Shout At The Devil" and "Looks That Kill" .

To complete the circle, the band would be asked back to Aladdin Theater to close the venue on November 25, 1997. We thought, what better way to kick off our first limited edition screenprint for the legendary MÖTLEY CRÜE than with this classic show, featuring a Vegas-inspired design by Andrew Alekseev .

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• September 3, 1983 Setlist

Mötley Crüe Setlist at Tucson Convention Center, Tucson, AZ, USA

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• Song played from tape In the Beginning Play Video
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• Piece of Your Action Play Video
• Looks That Kill Play Video
• Helter Skelter ( The Beatles  cover) Play Video
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• Knock 'em Dead, Kid
• Looks That Kill
• Shout at the Devil
• Too Young to Fall in Love
• Piece of Your Action
• Guitar Solo
• Helter Skelter by The Beatles

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Mötley crüe gig timeline.

• Apr 03 1983 San Francisco Civic Auditorium San Francisco, CA, USA Add time Add time
• May 29 1983 US Festival 1983 San Bernardino, CA, USA Add time Add time
• Sep 03 1983 Tucson Convention Center This Setlist Tucson, AZ, USA Add time Add time
• Sep 16 1983 Bronco Bowl Dallas, TX, USA Add time Add time
• Sep 17 1983 101.5 KGB Sky Show VIII San Diego, CA, USA Add time Add time

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