If John Corabi Wrote A Book It Would Need To Cover A Lot More Than A Stint In Motley Crue

After vocalist Vince Neil quit/was fired (it apparently depends on who you ask), John Corabi fronted pop/metal titans Motley Crue on their 1994 self-titled album. Its harder-edged sound marked a dramatic stylistic shift for the band and their attempt to reinvent themselves for a vastly altered industry climate didn't exactly fly off record store racks. Irrespective, the band has often defended the LP since, although in what seems like revisionist history main man Nikki Sixx denounced it in recent years.

Corabi also contributed to the band's 2001 graphically tell-all autobiography The Dirt. With the long-delayed film version of the tome seemingly finally seeing some significant progress, has he been consulted at all? "Nah. To be honest with you, I'd be shocked if I'm even anything, if there's any mention of me even in the movie. I don't really talk with the guys much. I talk to Mick [Mars] and I'll see Vince on occasion in Nashville. I'll get an email or a text or something from Tommy [Lee] once in a while.

"But that's about the extent of it. You know what, it's their history, man. So whatever they want to do is fine. Life is good in John Corabi land. The Daisies have been amazing, it's a great band. We've done three studio records and a live album, we're having a blast. So I'm not really worried about anything. The Motley thing? That's their story. If they want to include me in it, that's awesome. If not, no big deal."

Rock autobiographies have become a lucrative, albeit saturated market, and Corabi seems in no rush to issue one of his own. "I may eventually write a book, but it's not going to be about a Motley memoir, or Scream or Union or Dead Daisies. It'll just encompass my whole life. There's a lot of things about me that people don't know from when I was a kid. Like the fact that at one point my mum and dad were divorced and we were homeless for a year, two years, something like that. So there's a lot to talk about. It just seems like everybody's writing books now, even crew guys. I don't know, if I did do a book... I'd want it to be a good one."

There are many facets to the Nashville-based performer's story. Although musically acknowledging his past with the Crue - recently issuing a live album documenting his performance of the entire aforementioned self-titled album, Live '94 (One Night In Nashville), Corabi has also been able to parlay his enhanced profile into numerous other musical projects. When Neil returned to the fold, Corabi formed Union with ex-Kiss guitarist Bruce Kulick. His other endeavours have included ESP, a stint playing guitar for glam metallers Ratt and most recently, fronting all-star hard rock collective The Dead Daisies.

Corabi's audibly chuffed with The Dead Daisies' new album Burn It Down, the group's first with former Journey drummer Deen Castronovo. "Brian [Tichy] left the band, he had some prior commitments or whatever. So we called up Deen to come in. We went to New York for, I guess, about ten days, we did a bunch of writing, all of us together as we normally do, with [producer] Marti Frederiksen. And then we went back to Nashville, Marti's studio, and we started tracking everything.

"I'm really pleased with the record; it's a bit heavier than I think anything that we've done in the past, but it's not like metal heavy, you know what I mean? I dig it. I think lyrically it's really cool, there's a lot of introspective lyrics and I think the grooves and everything are awesome. We had a blast, man, and once again we did the record in about, literally, the writing, recording process took us about five or six weeks."

Corabi says lyrical inspiration "is right in front of your face most of the time". "It's life. I'm constantly watching and listening to the news. I'm very aware of a lot of things that are happening, not just in America, but everywhere in the world. We just draw inspiration from life, man. Personal relationships, stuff in the news, just a lot of tragedies and a lot of things happening all over the world. It's kind of right there for the picking, you know what I mean?"