Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee opened up about the band’s upcoming tour and the deeply personal reason he keeps coming back to the stage, in an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience.
When asked whether the band was heading back out on tour, Lee reflected on the exhausting length of their previous run with Def Leppard before sharing what truly drives him to keep performing.
“Yeah. Coming up mid July we’re out. I’m so pumped because I’ve actually um we’ve been home. We just did this big stadium tour with Def Leppard and we went all around the world. That tour was f*cking two and a half years long. It was that’s insane,” Lee said. “And I started to realize I’m like, ‘F*ck, I can’t remember the last time I’ve been home like with a with a break.’ Like, we intentionally were like, ‘Let’s just f*cking take a year or more than a year off.’ It wasn’t until 2016 was the last time we had like taken a break. So for me um it’s just been f*cking wonderful. I actually enjoyed the whole last summer at home and you know now going into summer now we’re getting ready to go back out but just having that time at home was really f*cking cool.”
Lee went on to describe the push and pull between life on the road and time at home.
“So, I’m super pump. The grass is always greener, dude. You know, when you’re out there f*cking ripping it, you’re like, ‘This is f*cking rad,'” he continued. “And then after a while, you’re like, ‘I’d shoot my own mom in the back to sleep in my f*cking bed,’ you know? Then when you’re at home too long, you’re like, ‘Dude, I got to get out of here.’ That’s a weird balance. You’re happy until it’s too much and then, you know.”
He then described the moment that crystallized why he can’t walk away from performing — watching a new generation of fans experience Mötley Crüe for the first time.
“Let me just tell, there’s nothing better than… Imagine this. Let’s trade places for a second. You’re back there. You’re playing drums and you’ve been doing this for a while. Long enough to see this is the best in the world. You see your fans all of a sudden your fans have had children. Now their children are on the shoulders of their of their parents who were your fans. Now they’re bringing their kids to the show and their kids are on their dad’s shoulder going shout shout with the devil horns up and you’re like you’re sitting there going like dude that kid what is he 10 and he’s just like he’s air drumming,” Lee said. “Just to to see that you’ve I don’t know just you’ve done a a full circle to where now it’s a whole another generation that’s just now seeing this for the first time and you’re sitting back there playing going like that’s pretty incredible. That doesn’t get old, man. To watch that happen is probably the reason why I love it.”
“So much that really like puts a f*cking nail in it. You know what I mean? And that can only be achieved through time,” he added. “So that’s nothing I’ve ever experienced until recently in the last few years. You look out and you see a whole bunch of kids, man, and they’re all just checking it out for the first time, maybe. And you’re like, dude, this is wild.”
The timing of Lee’s comments lines up with a major return to the road for the band. Mötley Crüe is set to kick off their summer run in just a matter of weeks.
The tour is titled “The Return of the Carnival of Sins.” It spans 33 cities across North America and is produced by Live Nation. The run officially begins on July 17, 2026, in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania, at The Pavilion at Star Lake. Extreme and Tesla will serve as opening acts on the road.
The tour name is a nod to Mötley Crüe’s original “Carnival of Sins” tour, which ran from 2005 to 2006 and became one of the band’s most celebrated live productions. The return of that title signals the band’s intent to deliver a similarly high-octane spectacle for both longtime fans and the new generation Lee described from behind the kit.
Alongside the tour, Lee has also been promoting his latest solo album, “Tommyland Rides Again.” The dual focus on solo work and a full Mötley Crüe touring cycle underscores the restlessness Lee described — a feeling that makes staying home for too long feel just as uncomfortable as never leaving.
Demand for the tour has already proven intense. Tickets sold so quickly upon announcement that the band’s official site was temporarily overwhelmed. Mötley Crüe confirmed that tickets returned online after the initial surge, a sign that the appetite for the band’s live show remains as strong as ever heading into the summer.
