With festival tour, Cr ºe still riding on wild side

By John Benson

Apparently, people love their M ∂tley Cr ºe.

Whereas the new millennium finds the majority of glam metal and '80s hard rock acts at one time or another opening for Poison on its annual summer tours (Ratt and Dokken, we’re looking at you!), the “Girls, Girls, Girls” band has managed to transcend its peers.

The first sense that Vince Neil, Tommy Lee, Nikki Sixx and Mick Mars were different came in winter 2005 with the group’s insanely successful reunion tour, which sold out many dates and featured numerous legs. Even more odd was the fact it had been only six years since the group had disbanded.

Now, even though the “Wild Side” foursome is back with its new album, “Saints of Los Angeles,” it’s the group’s new hard rock festival, Cr ºe Fest, which features M ∂tley Cr ºe, Buckcherry, Papa Roach, Sixx:AM (featuring Sixx) and Trapt, that is getting tons of press. The bill is scheduled to play Wednesday at Blossom Music Center and Aug. 31 at the Post-Gazette Pavilion.

So did the success of the reunion tour have the band thinking about marketing its own hard-rock touring festival?

“Not in my opinion,” Sixx said during a recent telephone conference call. “It’s something we wanted to do for a long time. I don’t think that festivals are put together for any other reason than someone had something that they want to say. In our case, we feel something that’s really missing is a rock ’n’ roll festival. A festival that [is about] songs, it’s about showmanship and it’s about lifestyle.”

He added, “You know, we think there’s such cool festivals out there. I mean, I love going to Coachella and Ozzfest, but you don’t see, you know, Aerosmith. You don’t see AC/DC. You don’t see M ∂tley Cr ºe. You don’t see Guns N’ Roses. You don’t see Buckcherry. So for us, it’s about creating a home for those kinds of bands.”

Considering Cr ºe Fest is enjoying above average ticket sales during a summer concert season besieged with lackluster turnouts, does its success confirm that M ∂tley Cr ºe’s decision to create its own festival was the result of prescient thinking?

“We definitely aren’t thinking ahead,” Sixx said. “When people say, rock is back, I always just kind of chuckle and I go, ‘Right.’ It only leads to the people who are trying to create new categories and new niches for album sales and ticket sales. Labels want to create more album sales, [so] they will call Soundgarden alternative, when Soundgarden is really Black Sabbath.

“You can go on and on. Basically, we’re taking music and repackaging it for ways to sell to people so that they feel like they’re finding something new. But it’s never gone away. Whether it was Nirvana or Queen or M ∂tley Cr ºe and the Rolling Stones. It’s never gone away. Rock has always been here.”

For a band that has survived so many hills and valleys — ranging from Neil’s 1983 car accident, which killed Hanoi Rocks’ singer Nicholas Dingley, to Sixx’s heroin overdose and Lee’s relationship with blonde bombshell Pamela Anderson (sex tape, rocky marriage and spousal abuse charges) — the fact that “Saints of Los Angeles” is slowly fading from the Billboard Top 200 charts appears to be a moot point. It’s Cr ºe Fest that is M ∂tley Cr ºe’s future.

“For us, you know, it’s about what do we want to do right now, because there’s really nothing to prove,” Sixx said. “We’ve done just about everything we can do except for, you know, get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a few other things that probably in the end don’t really make a difference anyway.

“I mean, musically we’ve made so many diverse kinds of records. And we’ve put on such different types of shows. I guess now it’s just about seeing how long we can survive.”