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The original version of the song “Too Fast for Love”
begins with the line “When you’re young and crazy,
life goes on.” Who in their youth was crazier than Tommy
Lee, Mick Mars, Vince Neil and Nikki Sixx, the “bad
boys of rock ’n’ roll” collectively known
as Mötley Crüe?
The year was 1981, and even in its infancy the Crüe
was turning heads up and down the Sunset Strip—and beyond—with
theatrical live performances and aftershow parties that would
become the stuff of legend. “We were young and we were
out of our minds,” Sixx said in the liner notes of the
1999 reissue of Too Fast for Love.
When people look back at the early days of the Crüe,
they often gloss over or leave out altogether one key ingredient,
maybe the most important of all—the music. Though it
is essentially a self-produced demo, Too Fast for Love,
nearly three decades later, remains one of the best hard rock
albums of the 1980s, possessed of an innocence and energy
that the Crüe’s many followers and imitators never
matched.
The songs—10 on the version self-released on Leathür
Records, but only nine of them on the original Elektra release—are
straightforward, to the point, molded from the punk rock that
had emerged during the previous decade, the hard rock sound
and larger-than-life personas of bands like KISS, and tempered
with strong pop sensibilities. No hidden, deeper meanings
here—Sixx’s songwriting is brilliant in its simplicity.
“That album is the essence of ‘right now,’”
he said in 1999. “Right here. Right where we stand.
Right in this studio. Right in this moment with this drink
in my hand.”
It could be argued—and probably not strongly disputed—that
the band members’ musicianship at the time would not
have allowed for anything more complex. Neil’s thin,
high-pitched voice has nothing resembling range. Sixx has
even
gone on record saying he did not think he was a good singer
when he first heard him; what he admired was his ability to
work a crowd. Sixx’s bass does little more than rumble
down at the bottom end, accompanying Lee’s frantic drumming,
which at times might be a little too hyper for its own good.
But listening to the recording as a whole, you don’t
hear flaws. You hear a band with a colossal chip on its shoulder
completely dedicated to itself and the music. It’s so
in the moment that nothing else could ever matter.
It’s all held together by the one element that has
defined the Mötley Crüe sound more than anything
else over the years—the guitar playing of Mick Mars.
He does not have a single songwriting credit on the album,
but the tones produced by the spooky, scary Mars give the
music its bite and bark. Think of the record’s best
songs—“Live Wire,” “Piece of Your
Action,” the title track—and what do you hear
in your head first? The riffs. Overshadowed by the tabloid-fodder
lives of his bandmates, Mars has never gotten the credit he
deserves.
“Live Wire” has been a live staple throughout
the band’s career, but the band virtually ignored the
rest of the album for many years until the 2005 reunion. During
their hiatus, the band members wrote their memoir, The
Dirt, possibly leading to them rediscovering their first
album and reintroducing songs like “Too Fast for Love”
and “On with the Show” to their set lists. The
Crüe undoubtedly produced more polished and accomplished
works as they grew as songwriters and musicians. But the purity
of Too Fast for Love makes it a special record. Sixx
sums it up best: “It was a magical moment that I think
every band has.” Few have moments this magical.
®2009 Live-Metal.net
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