Motley Crue won a crucial judgment in a case pitting the band against its founding guitarist, Mick Mars, with an arbitrator ruling that the group was within its rights to dismiss him as an officer in their business affairs as well as band mamber, for cause, once he dropped out of their touring due to health issues. Moreover, the judgment declared that Mars owes his former band hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In a ruling obtained by Variety, the arbitrator, retired federal judge Patrick J. Walsh, determined that Mars owes his former bandmates about $750,000 in advance money that he had taken for a tour he ultimately dropped out of. But the group owes him just over $500,000 for his quarter stake in the band after he was fired, so the balance Mars must pay his ex-Cruemates comes out to about $244,000.\
Walsh acknowledged that sentimentality was a factor he was leaving out of his decision. “Mars proffered uncontroverted testimony that other rock bands, like Earth, Wind & Fire and The Beach Boys, have provided for their founding/legacy members even after they stopped performing with the band. I do not doubt that that is true and, had the parties agreed to such an arrangement, whether formally or informally, I certainly would have upheld it,” the judge wrote. “But they did not. And I am not at liberty to simply create such an arrangement out of whole cloth. Mars argues that it is immoral for him to be cast aside after forming the backbone of this group for more than four decades merely because his age and AS symptoms precluded him from performing. I am not unsympathetic to this argument but it is not for me in the context of this arbitration to weigh in on the morality of the band’s decision.”
The bad blood and legal wrangling first came into public view in 2023, with arguments and counterarguments from the combatants that not only got into legal and financial niceties but also involved conflicting accounts of who had or had not been allegedly miming to tracks in concert. Mars maintained that, even though his health caused him to retire from the road, he was still available for recording and residency purposes and should get a full share of the band’s profits. The three remaining members argued that by retiring from touring, he had made a decision to leave the group, period, especially since they had no plans to make further albums or do anything but tour.
In a statement Thursday, Mötley Crüe’s lead attorney, Sasha Frid of Miller Barondess, LLP, wrote, “This dispute was about protecting the integrity and legacy of one of the most successful bands in rock history. With the arbitrator rejecting every claim and enforcing the parties’ agreements as written, the band has been fully vindicated — legally, financially, and factually.”
Mars’ lead attorney, Ed McPherson, could not immediately be reached for comment by Variety. But in a statement to Billboard, the lawyer said that Motley Crue had been “fortunate to find an arbitrator who knows so little about the music industry and so little about the law.”
Walsh noted that Mars had proposed, “at his insistence,” a 2008 agreement stating that anyone who did not go on tour would not participate in a stake in the band. That proviso came into play as a result of periods in which Vince Neil and Tommy Mars had both individually left the band for a time (in 1992 and 1997, respectively), and the others did not believe they should be compensated with their 25% shares while absent from carrying out touring duties.
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“It seems inequitable that three members of a band would be subjected to the hardships of the road yet all four would share in the spoils,” Walsh wrote.
The arbitrator’s decision is still subject to confirmation by the L.A. County Superior Court.
In its statement about the case, Miller Barondress LLP said: “While the arbitration was pending, Mars launched a public media campaign accusing the band of not playing live — claims he repeated under oath. Most notably, he asserted that Nikki Sixx’s bass and Tommy Lee’s drums were prerecorded, striking at the core of the band’s professional credibility… Those accusations collapsed under scrutiny. Faced with extensive live performance recordings — and testimony from his own retained expert, a New York University professor specializing in music technology — Mars was forced to admit under oath that his statements were false. His expert confirmed that the band performed live, and Mars formally recanted his prior claims during sworn testimony.”
The arbitration ruling does not detail this alleged recanting by Mars. But the judge did render an opinion that the other band members were correct when they maintained that Mars was no longer able to perform at a high level in his performances on their final stadium tour. The three remaining members had obtained affidavits from crew members (no pun intended) that Mars’ playing was haphazard, and Walsh seemed inclined to believe those, along with forming his own opinion based on tapes provided by the band.
Wrote Walsh, “Mars performed in 36 shows between June 16, 2022 and September 9, 2022. During these shows, the other band members as well as the band’s technicians and other staff noticed that Mars’ playing was off. At times, he would forget what song he was playing, play the wrong song, or play the right song but the wrong part of the song. This caused concern among the band’s members and the band’s management. Their solution was to have sound engineer Brent Carpenter closely monitor Mars’ guitar playing during the show and, when he strayed, turn the volume on Mars’ guitar down and the volume on a pre-recorded track up. At the merits hearing, Motley Crue played a number of excerpts from various concerts in which it was plain even to the untrained ear that Mars’ guitar playing was off.”
Walsh also cast doubt on Mars’ contention that he had planned to be available for shorter live appearances when he quit touring. “Mars contends that he was available for “one-offs” and/or residencies. But, as the evidence established, there were no residencies or one-offs in the fall of 2022 when the other band members voted him out. More importantly, as was clear from the evidence, even if there had been, it is not reasonable to assume that Mars could have simply parachuted onto the stage and resumed his role as lead guitarist for the band after a lengthy period off the road. The band members, including Mars, explained that the band does not simply go on stage and improvise. The band members practice/rehearse together for months prior to a tour and then play together on stage as a band for dozens and dozens of shows over the course of a year or two. Mars’ suggestion that, even though he would not have participated in any of that for an extended period of time, he could have simply rejoined the band and taken up where he left off makes no sense. This is particularly true based on the fact that, even after rehearsing for months and playing dozens of shows, Mars still at times had difficulty playing the right songs at the right times.”
After recounting two interim decisions that had been made earlier in the case but not made public till now, Walsh concluded, “In this third and Final Award, I now find that the value of Mars’ shares in MCI is $505,737 based on the opinion proffered by the band’s expert Jeff A. Neumeister. (Mars elected not to submit any evidence regarding valuation.) I also now find that the total recoupment that Mars owes the band is $750,030, based on the fact that the band has performed 69 shows since Mars left the band and that each show resulted in a recoupment of $10,870 per band member. Subtracting the $505,737 the band owes Mars for his shares in MCI from the $750,030 he owes the band for the recoupment results in a net award of $244,293 in favor of MCI and against Mars.” The order was issued on Jan. 13 but not made public until now.
In an April 2023 exclusive interview with Variety, Mars told his side of the story up to that point and why he was filing suit.
His reason for taking leave from touring, he explained, was crippling pain from the debilitating disease he has had since age 27, Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS), described as “a chronic, inflammatory form of arthritis that mainly affects the spine and pelvis.” Mars said in his suit that he is no longer able to move his head from side to side as a result of the disease. “Over the years, this disease caused Mars’s lower spine to seize up and freeze completely solid, causing scoliosis in his back, and also compressing his spine downward, so that he is now at least three inches shorter than he was in high school. His spine is now completely seized from pelvis to skull, a condition known as ‘bamboo spine.’”
“Those guys have been hammering on me since ’87, trying to replace me,” Mars told Variety at the time. “They haven’t been able to do that, because I’m the guitar player. I helped form this band. It’s my name I came up with [the Motley Crue moniker], my ideas, my money that I had from a backer to start this band.” While the other members accused him of forgetting his parts, forcing them to rely on tapes at times, Mars countered that, on their last tour together, “Nikki’s bass was 100% recorded. Tommy’s drums, to the best of my knowledge, there was a lot.” In their last days of touring, Mars said, “I have a pretty good feeling that they wanted me gone anyway. Because they’ve been wanting that since forever. It’s just frustrating for me. I’m pretty upset that they’re even pulling this crap, when I carried these bastards for years.”
In return, Motley Crue’s manager of three decades, Allen Kovac, also spoke with Variety, saying at the time: “Mick is not the victim. The victims are Motley Crue and the brand, which Mick is so prideful of… What’s upsetting to me is not Mick, but his representatives, who have guided Mick to say and do harmful things to the brand he cares about so much, Motley Crue. He has a degenerative disease and people are taking advantage of him. It’s called elder abuse… Mick hasn’t been treated badly. In fact, he was treated better than anyone else in the band, and they carried him and they saved his life.”
Motley Crue is set to embark on a 33-city tour in July, dubbed the Return of the Carnival of Sins Tour, marking the 20th anniversary of their 2005-2006 Carnival of Sins tour and the band’s 45th anniversary.
From Variety US