The metal world has seen the hardest hits ever to come out. Of course, the fiercest fights too. The persona on stage could gradually permeate the whole personality of metalheads. Thus not surprisingly, heated fights became an integral part of the metal scene.
That’s what happened between Mötley Crüe’s Mick Mars and the former Ratt guitarist Jake E. Lee. We need to go back about 30 years to learn more about the incident. At the time, Ozzy Osbourne was hitting the road for the Bark at the Moon Tour, and his guitarist was Jake E. Lee. They were rocking the world together, while Lee’s talent had already caught the attention of many circles by then.
Mötley Crüe and Waysted would be the support acts of the tour. Ozzy Osbourne had seen Crüe members on stage about a year ago and was really impressed. That’s why he invited this new band for his own tour. You may have heard Osbourne is one of the first names to be credited for the fame and success of Mötley Crüe, and yes, this tour was the beginning point of all that. Yet, the excitement wasn’t the only emotion there; anger was also with them in their hotel rooms.
Mick Mars, as you know, is the oldest man in the band, and Jake E. Lee, as you might also know, doesn’t have many limits. When Lee called Mars ‘old man,’ Mars was furious and didn’t hesitate to respond harshly. Ugly words were spoken, metalheads fulfilling one of their backstage traditions: fighting hard. In an interview with Tone-Talk in 2019, Lee recalled that day.
“Mick, being the old man, as everybody joked about, he made a complaint,” Lee recalled the day. “I’m not sure what I said. I think I just called him ‘the old man,’… and he did look over at me and said, ‘At least I’m not a slant-eyed Japanese bastard.’ And I did not like that — did not like it. I hadn’t heard it, actually, since I was in grade school.”
The musician continued, “And it pissed me off. I walked over. I was gonna beat the f*ck out of him. And it was Robbin Crosby, who was six-five; he came up to me, picked me up, and said, ‘C’mon, Jake. None of that sh*t matters.’ And he carried me out of the room.”
In the same interview, Lee had another and even more striking statement. He claimed that around the same time, Mars’ bandmates Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee, while Mars was still in the band, invited him to come and play instead of Mars. It is unknown if this was what Mars had heard and got so angry at a word, but Sixx later said it was a pathetic claim. We will never know the true motive behind this feud, but whatever the reason, we will probably see many more such fights.
