Motley Crue 'Red White & Crue Anthology' album

The raucous rulers of the sex-and-drugs-fueled nightlife on L.A.’s Sunset Strip have returned to their old stomping grounds.

All four original members of Mötley Crüe, the glam-metal gods who’ve sold more than 40 million albums worldwide and who paved the way for other seminal rock acts, have reunited for the first time in six years, announcing a new world tour – VH1 & VH1 Classic Present “Mötley Crüe: Red White & Crüe Tour 2005…Better Live Than Dead,” – and giving their fans a live taste of it. Tickets went on sale this past Saturday, December 11th at Ticketmaster and VH1.com.

The event at the Hollywood Palladium began at 6:00 p.m. with a press conference announcing the tour, a new anthology album and the debut of a fresh single and video, “If I Die Tomorrow.” The new tour, it was revealed during the press conference, resulted not only from strong demand by homegrown audiences, but was largely fueled by the diligent efforts of Mags Revell, a UK promoter with Metropolis Music Group, who launched his own grass-roots campaign in the UK designed to get the band to reunite. Taking the unprecedented steps of placing advertising in UK media and putting a hold on concert venues in the UK for June, 2005, Revell’s efforts quickly gained traction with fans all across the world who added fuel to the fire by taking to the internet and spreading the word.

Said Revell, “I honestly did not know until now whether Motley Crue would respond to our efforts. With the help of tens of thousands of fans in the UK and around the world, I wanted to show the band that there was a real demand for their reunion and I took a big risk. This is the band that we all never thought we'd have the chance to see live again and I strongly admire them for responding to their fans. It is the realization of a dream for so many people for whom Motley Crue represents what rock music is all about.”

"Mötley Crüe are a gang of musicians that climbed the mountain of rock to success," Allen Kovac, CEO of Tenth Street Entertainment, said in a statement. "This tour and new music delivers to all those who love one of rock's most passionate and aggressive bands."

Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil, Mick Mars and Tommy Lee, the original members of MOTLEY CRUE, whose stature as the world’s most infamous rock band was made legend in their NY Times best-selling autobiography ‘The Dirt’, will be touring the world in 2005, beginning with arenas in the US and Canada in February. The US portion of the the world tour, dubbed RED, WHITE AND CRUE TOUR 2005—BETTER LIVE THAN DEAD, is being presented by VH1 and VH1 Classic and goes on-sale to the general public this weekend. Beginning today, however, VH1.com are offering a limited number of seats on their website to fans wanting to beat the box office rush.

For dedicated Crüe fans it’s all about the live show. In a marathon Motley Crue Style, the band will launch its world tour in February, starting in U.S. arenas and coming back for an amphitheater tour in August and September.

In conjunction with the tour, the band’s US & International record labels also announced the release of a definitive 2-CD Greatest Hits collection that chronicles the band’s entire career. Scheduled for release on February 2nd, the set, entitled Red, White & Crue, includes three brand-new Crue songs including the first single “If I Die Tomorrow”, which features a highly stylized and autobiographically-driven music video.

“We are thrilled to see Mötley Crüe together again and to be able to sponsor their first tour in six years,” stated Rick Krim, Executive VP of Music & Talent for VH1. “As one of the most influential acts of a generation, what The Rolling Stones were to rock music two decades before, Mötley Crüe opened the door for countless others, and we’re only too happy to reunite them with their millions of fans worldwide.”

The Mötley Crüe saga began in a musical era when rock was still recovering from the emasculation of disco and the punk rebellion has already begun to take root. In 1981, bassist Nikki Sixx left his glam-rock band London and met drummer Tommy Lee, both strung-out adolescents with a penchant for the party life and a knack for creating fist-in-the-air anthems. With the recruitment of guitarist Mick Mars and singer Vince Neil, the band adopted the moniker Mötley Crüe and recorded their first album, Too Fast for Love, a paradigm-shifting effort which stoked the growth of the glam-metal movement based in Los Angeles. Picked up by Elektra, the Crüe released a string of classic albums through the 1980s: Shout at the Devil, Theatre of Pain, Girls, Girls, Girls and Dr. Feelgood, generating hit singles from most of their cover tracks as well as “Smokin’ in the Boys Room,” “Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)” and many others. They were also selling out stadiums, eventually to the tune of over 10 million concert tickets.

Yet the forces that made Mötley Crüe’s kick-ass music so authentic, namely their own reckless lifestyle of excess, gradually took its toll. In 1989 Nikki Sixx was revived after flatlining from a heroin overdose, the most extreme example of the band’s indulgences. The band’s current reunion comes at a time of re-growth for all of its members: Tommy Lee is currently shepherding his best-selling biography, Tommyland, along with a new NBC reality show to debut in 2005; Vince Neil, having toured continuously as a solo artist, has appeared on several TV sitcoms as well as the WB reality series “The Surreal Life”; Nikki Sixx has been touring and recording with Brides of Destruction, writing songs and is preparing to release his autobiographical The Heroin Diaries; and Mick Mars, having struggled since his teens with the chronic, degenerative illness ankylosing spondylitis, has been successfully recovering from hip replacement surgery.

Fans can see Motley Crue on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Friday, December 10th and performing at the Spike TV Video Game Awards on Tuesday, December 14th. A feature film based on the band’s best-selling autobiography, The Dirt, is currently being developed by the band in conjunction with MTV Films/Paramount. The screenplay is being written by Rich Wilkes (XXX).

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Motley Crue - Red White & Crue Anthology