Ex-Mötley Crüe Guitarist Unleashes Amid Legal Battle: ‘I Covered For Them’

Ex Mötley Crüe guitarist Mick Mars thinks he’s “probably just going to live another seven or eight years” after recently turning 72, the musician revealed in a new Rolling Stone interview.

“I’m not going to live to be 85 or 90; I just have a feeling,” he said, explaining that the feeling he has relates to the arthritic disease ankylosing spondylitis, which he’s had for most of his adult life that continues to disfigure his body.

Mars added, “I don’t want to, either. My brain doesn’t want this ugly-ass body that’s all fucked up to keep going. I wish I could just take the information out of my brain, put it on a chip and into somebody else, or a robot. There’s still a lot of stuff going on up there.”

In addition to the already-discussed topics of morbidity and mortality, the guitarist claimed that he’d like to be cremated after he dies, but he doesn’t want to be kept in a box in a funeral home.

He continued, “I want them to take [my remains] into an airplane and drop it into the centre of the Bermuda Triangle. I want people to be able to say, ‘Mick Mars is lost in the Bermuda Triangle.’”

During the interview, Mars also discussed the legal dispute he’s gotten into with his former bandmates. Mars sued Mötley Crüe in April (Mars retired from the group in October 2022 and was replaced by Rob Zombie's guitarist John 5 a day later), alleging that they were attempting to “unilaterally” remove and "gaslight" him from the band.

Opening up to Rolling Stone, he said, “When they wanted to get high and fuck everything up, I covered for them. Now they’re trying to take my legacy away, my part of Mötley Crüe, my ownership of the name, the brand. 

"How can you fire Mr Heinz from Heinz ketchup? He owns it. Frank Sinatra’s or Jimi Hendrix’s legacy goes on forever, and their heirs continue to profit from it. They’re trying to take that away from me. I’m not going to let them.”

Nikki Sixx fired back, “We’re sitting there, coming back from retirement, and our guitar player can’t remember songs. We were there watching him physically fall apart, mentally fall apart, his memory fell apart. We really were, with kid gloves, always trying to support Mick.”

Sixx added, "We’ve always stood by his side. But we couldn’t let his side of the stage just be a train wreck. And now he’s only saying these things because he’s trying to hurt us. What’s the point? He’s destroying his own legacy.”

“I carried these bastards for years,” Mars told Variety in April. Earlier in that interview, he stated, “Those guys have been hammering on me since ’87, trying to replace me; they haven’t been able to do that because I’m the guitar player. 

"I helped form this band. It’s my name I came up with, my ideas, my money that I had from a backer to start this band. It wouldn’t have gone anywhere.”

This November, Mötley Crüe and Def Leppard will bring their hard-rocking tour to Australia, performing in three stadium venues across the country's east coast.

Mötley Crüe shared a group message for their Australian fans, writing: “We had an incredible time playing The Stadium Tour in North America, and we truly can't wait to continue taking the show around the globe with The WORLD Tour in 2023. 

"Crüeheads, get ready because we have a few amazing Australian dates set for you!” You can find out more about that tour here.