Ratt’s Stephen Pearcy stated that his band deserved a spot on Mötley Crüe’s Stadium Tour if they had reunited, but he speculated that the headliners wouldn’t have wanted to follow their opening act.
In a recent interview with AllMusic, Pearcy was asked if Ratt should have been part of the 2022 tour, including Def Leppard, Poison, and Joan Jett.
“Of course. But I’m not the one… If it was a vote, of course not — I don’t think Mötley would want to play after us. And that’s how it would have settled up,” he responded before mentioning the competition between the two bands. “We still have some kind of competition out there, y’know? We would consider it, like, ‘What? We’re going to open up for you?’ So yeah, we should have. It would have made sense. I mean, I don’t care if you put us third, fourth, whatever — our motto was, ‘Go out there and beat your ass, anyway.’ And if they know you’re playing first, they’ll come and see you first, second, third, or whatever.”
“It will go down again, and we’ll see. Like I said, I tried to get the original guys. We attempted it once, and it was just like, ‘Whoa.’ But you pretty much called it in the book. And it’s like, at the end of the day, I’m the guy left standing, going, ‘Okay, that’s cool. That’s the way it should be: 40-year anniversary.’ And what I’m doing [with my solo band] is playing the record live. The original band never even did that,” the frontman added.
Pearcy also revealed that he had tried to reunite with surviving classic-era Ratt members Warren DeMartini, Juan Croucier, and Bobby Blotzer in recent years, but his efforts were unsuccessful. The absence of guitarist Robbin Crosby, who passed away in 2002, has also made any potential reunion difficult.
“I had made those attempts. And some of my guys, they’re complacent and some of them … it’s not even a matter of not needing to financially,” he said. “It’s a matter of … some of them don’t have the drive that I do. And without Robbin Crosby — who was really important in keeping the band together and keeping us directed — he was the guy who pretty much directed us. I created it, he directed it. I made attempts.”
Meanwhile, Pearcy has continued to perform Ratt’s catalog on his solo tours but hasn’t given up on the idea of a reunion. With the recent 40th-anniversary reissue of Ratt’s debut album ‘Out of the Cellar,’ Pearcy hopes it could encourage the band to join a future edition of the Stadium Tour.
