“The Dirt”: A Look Into the Life of Mötley Crüe

By carolinianweb on April 3, 2019 • ( 0 )

Emily Hicks
Staff Writer

Do you ever wonder what life is life for rock and roll stars living it up on the road? Or how the fame and fortune changes a band? In the new Mötley Crüe biopic on Netflix, “The Dirt,” the band known as the “World’s Most Notorious Rock Band” is exposed for the good, the bad and the grimy aspects of rock and roll superstardom.

Fans of Mötley Crüe have always known that the band lived it up in some wild ways on tour, but the new Netflix Original biopic released last month digs up some seriously crazy information that the public has just brushed under the rug in the past.

Born Frank Carlton Ferranna Jr., the rock star we now know as Nikki Sixx was not always living the rich rocker lifestyle we know him for today. Sixx was raised by his mother who is alleged to have been an alcoholic. This is argued to be the beginning of Nikki Sixx’s transformation into a rock legend.

After he leaves his drunken mother at home and fails to connect with his estranged father, Sixx later meets drummer and future Mötley Crüe member Tommy Lee who is looking to start a band. After recruiting guitarist Mick Mars and vocalist Vince Neil, the band gets its start. For a while, it seems that the only direction to go in is towards the top. That is, until the pressures of newfound fame and fortune catch up to the world’s most notorious rock band.

During their first tour, the rock band parties hard with greats such as Ozzy Osbourne. After this tour, things take a turn for the worse. In a tragic drunk driving accident, Vince Neil is charged with the vehicular manslaughter of friend and fellow musician Razzle. Neil is sentenced to thirty days in jail, but only serves nineteen.

Around this time, bassist and co-founder Nikki Sixx becomes entrenched in the throes of opioid addiction, which leads him to clash with the other band members. Sixx’s problems with addiction came to a tipping point when he overdosed at the Franklin Plaza Apartments in Hollywood. Today, Sixx is eighteen years sober.

While “The Dirt” does not cover all of the band’s poor decisions, especially not the wildest of them, it does show the atmosphere that fostered the band that shaped rock and roll. Even though the bad-boy rock and roll biopic is kind of a cliche nowadays, the Netflix Original “The Dirt” does its best to put a new spin on the overplayed aspects of rock documentaries.

For fans looking for an easy watch, “The Dirt” is a decent choice. For fans who want the whole truth though, the brutally honest Mötley Crüe documentary “Mötley Crüe: Uncensored” is available to stream on Youtube here.