Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx talked about the time they retired in 2015.
“We were wrong in retiring, obviously,” Sixx said of the band’s decision to retire during a chat with People. “We want to just relook at our songs and [incorporate] songs that people have been asking us to play for a long time, maybe some B-tracks, some different tracks, and rethink the idea of an intimate evening with the band,” Sixx said. “We’re in the early creative process, but we just don’t want to repeat ourselves. We want to do something special for Vegas.”
“Those days have come and gone. I think that the life that we lived and the experiences that we got to experience are not repeatable for any generations in the future. We were there at a time — and the time was not what a lot of people think it is, by the way,” the Crüe’s bassist said. “For us, it’s about moving forward. Mötley Crüe is still having hit singles 43 years later, and we’re still touring and doing stadiums, so we don’t really want to be living in the past. You are partially your past, but we are also our future.”
When it comes to why the band decided to ‘un-retire,’ the drummer Tommy Lee said, “That was it. We all said goodbye. That was the dopest 32, 33 years of our lives. We’re out. This is the best way ever to go out — on top. Mic drop, boom, see ya. We’re out. And that was it. We’re done. We didn’t really speak to each other for probably a year. Everybody just went and did their own thing.”
“And here it is four years later, Live Nation asked us if we’d like to do a stadium tour, and all of us were, like, ‘Ehhh…’ And then we thought about it for a minute. We were, like, that is the one thing that this band has never done. Yeah, we played stadiums on festivals all over the place, but our own stadium tour? We were, like, ‘Hold on. Let us think about this. Okay,'” he admitted.
In 2015, the band signed a Cessation of Touring agreement, saying they would stop performing. However, seven years later, they co-headlined The Stadium Tour and The World Tour with Def Leppard, playing for large crowds at music festivals.
The recent interview came right after Mötley Crüe announced a Las Vegas residency for next year, with 11 shows at Dolby Live at Park MGM from March 28 to April 19.
This will be their first return to Vegas since their previous residencies in 2012 and 2013. Vince Neil had mentioned in 2022 that the band was considering another run.
The shows are set for March 28 and 29, and April 2, 4, 5, 9, 11, 12, 16, 18, and 19. ‘The Las Vegas Residency’ will include the band’s biggest hits.
