In the new issue of Classic Rock, Nikki Sixx recalled Bob Rock trying to fix Vince Neil’s vocals.
Mötley Crüe’s 1989 album ‘Dr. Feelgood’ was the first album the band recorded while sober, after Sixx’s overdose scare. The band worked with Rock as the producer. The bassist remembered that period, “He’s pushing Vince [Neil, vocalist] to sing better. Nobody had done that before.”
Sixx discussed how Rock also challenged other band members, “He’s pushing Tommy [Lee, drummer] to change up the beat. He’s pushing Mick [Mars, guitarist]: ‘I want to re-do the guitars, double them, triple them, quadruple them…’ Bob focused on the little things. You do enough little things right and you make big change.”
Nikki had to meet the producer’s demands too. Rock asked him to try rewriting the lyrics to a new song that Mick Mars had created a powerful riff for. He explained, “I had a little room that I’d go in and sit on the floor. No computer to pull information from, just books and magazines.”
“I’d work on lyrics then come out and show Bob, who would be like: ‘I think you could do better.’ I’d go back in the room, come back out again. Bob would go: ‘You’re halfway there.’ Eight times I rewrote that song. He kept saying: ‘More Springsteen! More Ian Hunter! You know how to do this. You’re a storyteller!'” the musician revealed Rock’s words.
The approach worked. The song Rock pushed Sixx to rewrite became the album’s title track, ‘Dr. Feelgood,’ a song about a drug dealer and his shady associates. “I love the ‘Dr. Feelgood’ album. It was the first time I was sober,” Sixx previously told Bass Player about the record.
He went on to say, “I really am proud of my bass playing; I’m proud of the albums we’ve made; I’m proud of the tones. I’m proud of the fact that I wrote those songs, and I was able to go, ‘What does this song need?’ Not, ‘What do I need?’ but ‘What does the song need?'”
‘Dr. Feelgood’ became their best-selling and most popular album, with six million copies in the U.S., as reported by RIAA.
