Tommyland Read online

  There I was, standing in the driveway, bummed, hugging my fish, and right then, I truly realized what it meant to be married. Stuff like hanging a marlin above the bar was no longer just up to me. Stuff was no longer mine—it was ours—and from then on I’d have to check in before I hung a nine-foot fish in our house.

  Heather and I stayed in that house for a couple of years and my marlin lived in a lonely corner of the garage until one day our housekeeper took him. I’d love to see where the hell she hung him.

  I had some expectations of married life and one of them that worked out perfectly was finding our dream house, the one Heather and I moved into next. I didn’t see the house or Heather a lot because I was always on tour with Mötley, but it was our palace: a hilltop spread on a golf course. When I found it, Heather was out of town working, but I knew right away that it had to be ours because it had what our first house lacked: room for a studio, privacy, and the most amazing panoramic mountaintop view I’d ever seen. The house was just a frame on top of a hill when I first laid eyes on it, but I called her and told her we were going to buy it. I sent her photos and she hated it. I took her to the site when she got home and she hated it. Once it had windows and walls, she changed her tune—in fact, she still lives there.

  Our house was on a golf course, so I got a membership to the club, because, believe it or not, I do play golf. It wasn’t your average membership—you paid sixty grand one time only and there are only two hundred members allowed. The day I strolled down there with my check, I was told I was subject to board review, which was a drama and half, let me tell you. One of the foofy rich guy members got his hands on a tape of me playing live, bashing my drums and pulling my pants down, just cursing, going full-on sack and ass in the wind. Somehow they thought that I wouldn’t be a good addition to the community. When I met with the board they told me that they’d reviewed footage of my performances and found me to be unacceptable. I told them they were crazy, that what I did for a living was entertain, and what they were looking at was not what was going to happen on their golf course. I said, “Every day I drive up to my beautiful three-million-dollar home, right here on your course, and usually I see some old man with his dick slung out peeing by a tree. What’s the fucking difference? I’m disgusted by looking at that every day.”

  Eventually, they let me in and they didn’t fuck with me after that. Well, I followed the rules, and as you all know rules are meant to be broken. At the time Nikki Sixx lived just below us, down the hill, directly across from our house on the other side of the course. I had a Harley at the time and one day I just thought, “Fuck it,” I need to get over to Nikki’s quick, so I took the shortcut, across the golf course, tearing up the grass. It felt great, burning rubber through the most perfect rolling green fairways I had ever seen. I finally felt like I got my sixty fucking grand’s worth.

  I used that golf membership to entertain my musician friends, whom the country club hated. Nikki never did golf because he’s the biggest antisports guy ever. He never got tired of telling me what a big fag I was for playing golf. He didn’t realize that what I liked the best was just getting the fuck outta the house and seeing trees, grass, birds, ponds, and sand, all the while drinking beer and driving the cart around like Mario Andretti.

  Over those seven years, Heather and I learned to live with each other and compromise very well. At the time of this writing, I can honestly say that we’re still very close friends—and in this business and in this world, that says a lot. I see her once in a while, we talk all the time—and that’s amazing. I think that says how very, very cool she is, and I wish that everybody who has ever loved each other could follow our example. She’s still so beautiful and she’s what she’s always been: a great big sweetheart.

  We did get divorced in 1993 though. Both of our careers were at their height during our marriage. We talked about having kids a lot, which is something that I’d always wanted, but she wasn’t really feeling that. I love kids, and when Nikki Sixx and his first wife, Brandi Brandt, had them, I wanted them more than ever. I’d be over at their house crawling around on the floor with the kids for hours.

  When I truly saw that Heather and I weren’t going to have children, I started to lose interest in the relationship. And all I can say is that as soon as that started happening, I didn’t know what to do. I started wandering emotionally and after that, my eyes started window-shopping and my dick started to talk.

  THAT’S RIGHT. AND I’M LIKE E. F. HUTTON: WHEN I TALK, PEOPLE LISTEN.

  I started doing crazy shit, like letting temptation be my copilot.

  I was monogamous and true for seven years and in that time I had forgotten all about the stripper and porn star telephone network. Here’s how it goes down: When someone with any degree of fame fucks around with a stripper or porn star, the girl immediately—and I mean immediately —gets on the phone and brags to everyone she knows. When I slipped, I really went for it. I did it with a porn star, on location, at a shoot, on break, between scenes.

  Like so many scenes from my life, it started innocently enough. I got a call from Ron Jeremy, who was shooting a feature in a house just up the street from where I was mixing the self-titled Mötley Crüe record at A&M Studios in 1993. When we’re on break, I go up there to visit Ron and just watch—why the fuck wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t you?

  HELL YEAH, I’M READY FOR MY CLOSEUP!

  Believe it or not, I had never been to a porno shoot. There’s fucking going on everywhere and after I’m there for about five minutes, I spy this hot blonde, and just out of curiosity, I ask Ron her name. He doesn’t tell me, he just tells me to go to the bathroom and stay there. Two minutes later the hot blonde comes in, fucking rips my pants off without saying a word, and sucks the fuck out of my dick.

  HELL YEAH, SHE DID! I LOVE HER. THE BLOOD RUSHED TO MY HEAD SO FAST THAT I BLEW CHUNKS!

  WHAT’S HER NAME AGAIN?

  After I cum, she bails immediately, metal style, and there I am with my pants down feeling like a groupie, wondering what the fuck just happened. It was epic; she fucking worked me and left.

  WHEW. I GOTTA LIE DOWN. YO, CAN I GET A HAM SANDWICH AND A CIGARETTE?

  It was an all-pro blow job but, damn, that was the nail in the coffin of my marriage. Before I’d even zipped up my pants, the porn star telephone network had broadcast the news. I watched this happen with other band members, but I never thought it would happen to me.

  I leave the porno shoot and go back to the studio to start working again. It took less than an hour for the network’s news flash to reach my wife. When it did, she phoned the studio with an urgent message. “Hey baby,” I say. “What’s up? Is everything okay?” She’s says, very matter-offactly, “Were you just at a fucking porno shoot?” My first reaction is denial. “Porno shoot? What porno shoot?” I ask. Then say, “No, no way.” Heather says, “That’s interesting. The girl who does my makeup is best friends with the makeup artist who does all the porno chicks and she said you were up there at the shoot today. She said she saw you go in the bathroom with some blond chick. Did you fuck some porno girl?” Uh-oh, I’m fucked. I’m a really bad liar, but I try my best anyway. I say, “What are you talking about?” Heather saw right through that shit—anyone could have. She’s all calm, cool, and collected, and she says, “I don’t fucking believe you. You’re a liar. This is fucked.”

  Click. Dial tone. Divorce.

  7 STATE OF TOTAL DISREGARD

  a.k.a.

  YOU KNOW WHAT? FUCK IT!

  Fuck it, is right—I’ve always felt that way about life, about dares, about doing what I was told not to do. But after it was clear that Heather and I were getting divorced, my motto was Fuck it with a capital F —I didn’t give a flying fuck about shit. That period of my life lasted, I’d say, from the day that blow job blew up my home life until we finally signed the papers in 1995.

  I HAVE FELT GUILTY FROM TIME TO TIME ABOUT URGING YOU TO HIT THAT PORNO SHOOT, TOMMY. MY BAD. YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE LISTENED TO ME.
MAYBE YOU SHOULDN’T LISTEN TO ME MORE OFTEN… . AH, WHATEVER. YOU KNOW WHAT? FUCK IT.

  I was mad at myself for ruining the best relationship I’d known up until then and I was mad at Heather for not wanting to take time off work for what I thought was the real reason two people get married—to make a family.

  I didn’t know what else to do, so I got really loose from the moment Heather hung up the phone on me. I knew I wasn’t going home that night, so I figured I might as well go big. I call Ron Jeremy and tell him to bring the girl who blew me down to the studio with as many of her friends as she could pack into the car.

  I was in the studio that night working on Mötley Crüe, the one album we did with John Corabi on vocals. We were mixing that night and Corabi, a few roadies, our producer Bob Rock, my friend and sound editor Scott Humphrey, and the studio staff were there. Four girls show up and one of them possesses one of my favorite traits in a woman: yes, my favorite, a squirter.

  FUCKIN’ A, CHIEF! WHERE’S MY RAINCOAT?

  The girls come in and lie across the half-million-dollar SSL recording console in our studio and start ramming one another. They are already drunk and they’re splashing their vodka-and-cranberrys all over this expensive piece of equipment while the studio engineers freak the fuck out. These guys are frantically wiping up the booze trying to save the equipment and their jobs without missing the show. They were watching a porno—and it wasn’t on TV and when Ol’ Faithful shot her stuff all the way across the room and into a bowl of fruit, coating the board and everything else in range with her rocket juice, none of us could believe it.*

  I knew that in the studio next door Nine Inch Nails was recording The Downward Spiral. I had met Trent Reznor before and I was friends with his bassist Danny Lohner. I knew it was Danny’s birthday and here in front of me was the perfect present.

  If you read the credits of The Downward Spiral you’ll see a special thanks to Tommy Lee on “Big Man with a Gun” and here’s why. The beginning of the track is the sound of one of those very same girls cumming. They reversed it and fucked with the tone of it, but if you listen closely, you’ll hear her. I bring the girls across the hall into the Nine Inch Nails studio, lay them out on Trent’s grand piano, and say, “Dudes, set up the mikes, get some grapes, roll the tape, and have a seat. You’re not gonna believe this.” The girls take grapes and stick them in the squirter’s pussy only to suck them out and stick more in. Soon enough, here we go, I can tell it’s squirt time again, so I turn to everyone and say, “Dudes, you’d better duck.” This time Ol’ Faithful hits the wall and everyone freaks. And that was just the appetizer course, because the girls keep playing with her and fifteen or twenty minutes later she’s screaming again, which is the cue for the spew. Woah, hey, woah, here it comes—juice flies everywhere. I had been around the world many times. I’d looked high and low, and finally I’d found another squirter. She was the only other one I’d seen since my first girlfriend. It was a mindfuck of a day, and all I could think was, “You lose some, you win some. I lost a wife but I found another squirter.”

  A few days later I moved my shit out of the house I shared with Heather and into a beach house I rented for myself. It cost me seven grand a month and it was right on the sand in Malibu. It was where I needed to go to air my head out and start over. I was in a lot of pain, so fuck it, I lost myself in pleasure to forget about it and embarked on a completely illegal summer. Here’s some evidence from the files: One night I was sitting around with about four buds—all of whom have already thanked me for not naming them here. We had been drinking, we were all fucked up,

  DUDE, CALL A PORNO CHICK. I LIKE THEM.

  so fuck it, I call a porno chick.

  When she arrives at my summerhouse of sin, she finds five really horny, really fucked up guys there. She sits and has a few drinks, then a few more, and then one or two more after that. My bed at the time was a huge canopy contraption that looked like an old carriage that Cinderella would ride to the ball in. It was perfect for our purposes. She walks into the bedroom and has us tie her up by her feet, so she’s hanging from the epicenter of the love sled. She’s dangling upside down and can be conveniently spun in a circle to better suck everyone’s dick. She was weightless, free to just go ’round and ’round, take everyone’s manhood, sample the all-you-can-eat cock buffet, and ride the penis-go-round until the carnival shuts down, and everyone on the ride gets off.

  One of my shameless nameless bros declares, “I am the ringleader,” and leads us into the fun house by wacking her bottom with my big fat leather paddle. She moans and she loves it. Then, all of a sudden, the circus pitches the big top—and here come the clowns to make her laugh as the ringleader becomes the lion tamer who uses a soft whip to increase her pleasure. She’s begging to be spanked more and spanked harder—perfect for the freakshow.

  After the final bows and the spotlights go out, the tent comes down and she bails. Fifteen minutes later the phone rings and it’s her, calling from her car. She says, “Hey, Tommy, I just wanted to call you and your friends and tell you that I had the best fucking time ever. I fucking love you guys! Let me know when the next party is!” We couldn’t wait to invite her back with a few of her friends for a three-ring extravaganza. I love the circus, always have.

  8 STATE OF THE CRÜE

  a.k.a.

  WHEN WE STARTED THIS BAND, ALL WE NEEDED WAS A LAUGH; YEARS GONE BY, I’D SAY WE KICKED SOME ASS

  When I was about thirteen or fourteen I was the chosen guinea pig among my friends to go into the store and steal candy. It turns out that I was really good at it—I stole pounds of it, I’d wear a big down jacket in the middle of summer and let my buddies fill every pocket, the hood, the insides, and even my underwear. When I could barely walk straight, I’d stroll out of there with candy falling down my ass. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was great training for feeding my other family later in life.

  In 1980, Mötley Crüe nailed down its lineup: Me, Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil, and Mick Mars. Mick is older than we are, so he had no interest in living with the rest of us. He was smart—the rest of us were still in our late teens and we were disgusting, insane party maniacs. Mötley was no overnight success story and while we waited for the world to notice how much we kicked fucking ass, Nikki and Vince and I lived in a nasty-ass house in Hollyweird, right off Sunset Strip. We played shows in clubs, we never took out the garbage, we never cleaned up the empties, we had nasty sex, we never did dishes—and we only had one dish to do. We killed the armies of cockroaches climbing all over our walls with a lighter and a can of hairspray. We had no food because we had no money. And when we did have money, we sure as fuck didn’t spend it on a meal when we could spend it on the essentials—more liquor and more hairspray.

  We were part of the Sunset Strip scene that spawned bands like Quiet Riot, Ratt, Poison, and a bunch of other motherfuckers. But back when it was getting cooking at the dawn of the eighties, no one did it like we did. Our first album, Too Fast for Love, was something the other bands weren’t doing. Everyone was stuck on the Knack and “My Sharona.” Every band—all my friends—were cutting their hair off, wearing skinny ties, and jumping on that bandwagon. Cool song, but fuck. It was either that or they were into something very different, like Black Flag.

  We were definitely the kids doing our own thing, going against the grain. Nikki was writing songs that were poppy and all I heard was ways to make them heavier and more rhythmic. And as much as we changed over the years, those two elements remained the same. We recorded our first album in ten days—at least that’s how it felt to me. We were recording in the Valley (I think).* The album was recorded live, off the floor, with all of us in one room. It’s a lot of people’s favorite and I get why: It’s raw, it’s fast, and it’s us in the early days. Sonically, it’s my least favorite record because anyone who knows about recording can tell that it was done way too quickly. We didn’t have any money so we didn’t have a choice. In fact, to get free studio time I fucked a female engin
eer every night for a week or so after we finished recording. It wasn’t easy, but it had to be done.

  JUST CLOSE YOUR EYES, DUDE, I GOT THIS ONE. I’M A TEAM PLAYER TOO, YOU KNOW.

  I took many for the team over the years, but she was the roughest.*

  Our early shows were ridiculous: We had alcohol-burning funny cars,† fake blood, mannequin heads, and any other cheap horror props we could think of that would freak people out. We’d walk around all the time, in stiletto heels with makeup on looking like chicks, so we got in fights with people just about everywhere we went.‡ We used to set Nikki on fire while he played bass by rubbing pyro gel on his legs that Vince would light with a torched sword. It was fun practicing that routine in our apartment. We’d dress all in leather and rock like we owned the fuckin’ joint—and we did. And afterwards, we’d invite the entire show back to our shitty little apartment just off the Strip. It’s amazing that that shit shack didn’t just fall down, because after not too long there wasn’t much left. Our door was smashed in because the cops had kicked it in so many times. Even if the door did close or lock, you could still just get in through the front window. It was smashed by a fire extinguisher heaved through it by my old girlfriend (the squirter). I don’t remember what I did, but she was craise.* We didn’t have much besides a stereo, a couch, and some records on some crappy little entertainment center, but trust me, she trashed all of it that day. Our bedrooms weren’t much better: The mirrored closet doors in the room I shared with Vince were toast. One of them fell on David Lee Roth’s head one night, and I’m proud and amazed to say that when the door hit his dome, he didn’t flinch, he didn’t stop rambling about whatever the fuck he was talking about—and he didn’t spill a speck of the cocaine he wasn’t sharing with anyone.