In a recent conversation with The Rock Experience With Mike Brunn, John Corabi (former Motley Crue singer), talked about his success, saying:
“I learned a very hard, valuable lesson when I was in Motley. Obviously, everybody knows what the [1994 self-titled] record did or didn’t do. The tour was a nightmare. I was the new ingredient, and then I left. And the one thing that I learned was when I left the band, my phone stopped ringing. And it was kind of a harsh reality. I was the guy that was invited to all the parties, the backstage things, ‘Let’s go in a limo,’ ‘Let’s do this,’ ‘Let’s go to the Playboy mansion,’ ‘Let’s do that,’ and then the minute they made the announcement that Vince [Neil, original Motley singer] was back, if I wanted to have a message on my answering machine, I had to call myself. And it’s weird. I just sat there and I went, you know what? It’s really just about waking up in the morning, the fact that you wake up and you open your eyes, it’s a good day; it’s a healthy day.
“I have a small group — not a large group — but I have a small group of friends and family around me that are incredibly supportive of me, but they’re also honest enough with me and just straightforward and we have a great relationship to the point where they can say to me, ‘You know what, Crab? You’re being a f**king idiot. Back the f*ck up.’ And I go, ‘Okay. Mental check. Head check. Boom.’ So I have a beautiful family around me.”
“It’s funny because sometimes I do look at things and I go, ‘Okay, what am I doing wrong? Why can’t I sell records? Why can’t I be like Nikki Sixx? Or Steven Tyler? All these guys. Why am I not driving around in a Lamborghini?’
He added:
“I always tell everybody, if you can draw an imaginary straight, horizontal line and say everything above it is fame and everything below it is obscurity, I’ve literally been scraping my back on that line my whole career.
“But the Motley thing really made me look at the importance of, you know what? You do the best you can, fight for the things that you can change, fight for the things that you can make better, and then there’s just some things, man, that are out of your control. You can’t change it. I can’t change the fact that when I was in [the pre-Motley band] The Scream, I had no idea I was gonna get a call to join Motley. I had no idea that Motley was gonna bring Vince back. And I had no idea that my first record deal — and the Motley record — would come at the height of the music industry completely changing again.”