During a recent appearance on the January 19th episode of SiriusXM‘s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk,” MÖTLEY CRÜE’s Vince Neil shared his thoughts on returning from retirement to play shows as part of the CRÜE’s 2022 summer stadium tour with DEF LEPPARD and POISON.
The 62-year-old singer responded: “We sat around for — what? — five years without doing anything. I was always [doing shows] with my solo band, but I thought it’d be fun. I was in. They said, ‘We’re gonna get together and do some stadiums.’ And I was, like, ‘Okay, that sounds pretty cool.’ ‘The Stadium Tour’ got us out to more people, so it was a lot of fun.”
Neil has faced accusations of lip-syncing all of his vocal performances on The Stadium Tour, particularly from ex-Crue guitarist Mick Mars, who contends in his lawsuit against the band that everyone except him used backing tracks. TMD reported instances of Tommy Lee, Nikki Sixx, and Neil allegedly faking it during concerts in both 2022 and 2023, as evidenced by videos posted on YouTube. Ex-Crue singer John Corabi, corroborated Mars’s allegations about the “backing tapes” and accused Nikki Sixx of using them as well.
Despite criticisms labeling the Crue’s comeback as a mere cash grab, Neil defends the decision to return to touring, stating:
“We owed it to ourselves to have that conversation, ’cause if three of us were, like, ‘Let’s go do it’ and the fourth was not, that’s what the contract was about,” he explained. “We couldn’t leave two guys behind and go out and have two versions of MÖTLEY CRÜE. So it was an exciting time, something to celebrate. And if there was any hem and hawing, it was around the idea of going and doing arenas. We’ve done arenas, we’ve done festivals. We just felt like it isn’t gonna get any bigger than how we ended it. And then came the, ‘No, no. They wanna do stadiums.’ And we were, like, ‘Ah, well, that’s a little different conversation.’ ‘And DEF LEPPARD wants to do it with you. The whole thing.’
He continued:
“So then it was us and DEF LEPPARD talking, and what do they see. We’ve played many shows together before, so it was fantastic. And then I think eight [shows] went on sale and sold out, eight more sold out, eight more sold out, and everyone was, like, ‘This is gonna be a great run.’ And I figured that was gonna be it. And then COVID came and knocked it on its heels, like everybody else, or a lot of people. And then we decided not to tour [in 2021] because we weren’t comfortable enough yet personally, and maybe it wasn’t the right thing for the fans, in our opinion, or for our crew. So during that time, we got to start talking more [about], ‘What’s Europe look like?’ ‘You know what? We love Japan. Wow. What a show in Japan.’ MÖTLEY CRÜE and DEF LEPPARD. And those are huge shows in Australia.”