Blindspotting: Mötley Crüe, "Dr. Feelgood"
Some people call him an evil man

The Legacy: The '80s were good to Mötley Crüe. Between 1981 and 1987, they released four albums, each one charting higher than the last; in late summer of 1989, they rounded out the decade with Dr. Feelgood, which went all the way to No. 1. Eventually going platinum six times over, Feelgood also gave the band their greatest success on the Hot 100, with the set's first four singles — "Dr. Feelgood," "Kickstart My Heart," "Without You," and "Don't Go Away Mad (Just Go Away) — all peaking inside the Top 40.
Between all those gaudy sales achievements and the fact that the band members had managed to curb their epic indulgences and go sober, Elektra doubled down on their investment, renegotiating the Crüe's contract to the tune of a reported $35 million, including hefty advances and an improved royalty rate. At this point, two things happened almost immediately:
- Nirvana's Nevermind went to Number One in early 1992, heralding the imminent death of hair metal's commercial dominance
- Lead singer Vince Neil went solo, fundamentally altering the band's sound just when their label could least afford the change
You probably know what happened next. John Corabi stepped in for Neil, taking the group in a very different direction; Mötley took five years to deliver their next record, which only eked out a gold certification; three years after that, Corabi took a hike because he was tired of dealing with the label pressuring the band to fire him and lure Neil back into the lineup. By the time the original foursome reunited for 1997's Generation Swine, the hard rock zeitgeist had moved so far beyond Mötley Crüe that no amount of label pushing would have been enough to get new music past the 500,000-copy mark.
Of course, half a million in sales is nothing to scoff at, and if the suits at Elektra could have seen what was coming for the record industry, they might have been more inclined to be happy with what they had — but when you're used to an act selling five million-plus and they start topping out at a fraction of that, it's usually a pretty good sign that it's time to get out while the getting's (not quite as) good. They've since spent years as a reliably popular touring act, even after subjecting fans to the silly stunt that kicked off their not-farewell tour, but Dr. Feelgood remains their most popular — and overall best-reviewed — work.
First Impressions: As much as I was an AOR kid in the '80s, I never cottoned to the Crüe, to the extent that I'm not sure I ever even thought about why they seemed so unappealing to me. All these years later, I think "unappealing" is probably the best way to sum it — and them — up. While you couldn't really be a rock fan in those days without embracing sleaze to an extent, it was usually extremely clear that whatever flavor of lasciviousness an artist was peddling, it was basically an act that everyone was in on, just a bunch of hook-driven kayfabe with amps that was designed to sell sexual fantasies. Those rules didn't apply to the members of Mötley Crüe — with the exception of since-exiled guitarist Mick Mars, they all embodied a cartoonish perversion of the old saw "I started playing rock 'n' roll to meet chicks," to the extent that you got the feeling they really viewed music as an irritating obstacle that needed to be removed so they could get to the sex and drugs.
They seemed like genuinely unpleasant people, is what I'm trying to say — an opinion evidently shared by Feelgood producer Bob Rock, who reportedly found them to be such colossal pains in the ass that he resorted to having each band member record their parts separately. This typically leads to arid-sounding records, but in the Crüe's case, it was a marked improvement; the first time I heard "Dr. Feelgood" on the radio, I was begrudgingly forced to admit they were actually capable of delivering an unquestionably kickass song. Of course, that was just one small bit of evidence in their favor, dwarfed by the mountains of venereally diseased garbage they'd already foisted on my eardrums, so I never bothered to check out the rest. Until now.
"Dr. Feelgood" is still a pretty damn good time. The rest of this thing? Eh, not so much. Much like Anthony Kiedis, Vince Neil has always been the most loudly annoying thing about his loudly annoying band — a weakling vocalist of such limited utility that a few seconds of his adenoidal screeching is usually enough to ruin anything. He was the right guy for "Feelgood" — or at least right enough to make the thing work — but it's all downhill from there, and fast. "Kickstart My Heart" is probably the record's second-best single, even if it is a dunderheaded anthem to bassist Nikki Sixx's own addiction-fueled brush with death. "Same Ol' Situation" is more tolerable than a lot of Crüe songs, if only because its reliance on gang vocals in spots helps to drown out Neil's mewling, and "Don't Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)" is basically benign, even if it would have been cut from the worst Winger or Warrant albums.
The less said about "Without You," the better.
Those are the singles. The rest of the album contains no hidden gems; in fact, the titles alone tell you everything you need to know about the generally low bar set by the bulk of this dumb band's catalog. "Rattlesnake Shake," "Sticky Sweet," "Slice of Your Pie," "She Goes Down"... they all come across (and sound) like the kind of borderline-parody crap some hapless network employee would be forced to compose if Kojak, Columbo, and/or Quincy, M.D. visited a punk club. Again, there's nothing wrong with sleaze per se, especially in a hard rock context; the difference here is that you're left, over and over again, with the deeply uncomfortable feeling that these clowns meant every last word, or at least the ones they understood. The music is fine, in a late '80s hard rock pro forma sort of way, but hardly ever muscular or interesting enough to justify all that other bullshit. This is undoubtedly the band's most polished and least sloppily performed effort, which is fairly upsetting in retrospect, given that everything leading up to it was so popular.
To listen to Dr. Feelgood start to finish — or repeatedly, as I did — is to understand what it feels like to be a woman confronted with sitting on a public toilet when there aren't any of those disposable seat covers around. While I've certainly heard worse rock records, I don't know if I've ever heard any that left me feeling this queasy.
Favorite Song: "Dr. Feelgood," I guess, although listening to the rest of the album has probably ruined its appeal for me forever. Now if you'll excuse me, I need a beer, a shower, and possibly a good long cry.