Mötley Crüe and Las Vegas are kindred spirits – at least reputationally.
But while both have evolved and maybe even tamped down their wilder sides through the decades, they are still soulmates in revelry.
The band returns to Las Vegas for its fourth residency – the aptly named Carnival of Sins in Sin City – for an eight-show run between March 19 and April 3 at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace. Tickets are on sale now via Ticketmaster.
“Not only can you see Mötley Crüe, but you can do all of this other exciting stuff,” the band’s cofounder Nikki Sixx tells USA TODAY. “We feel like we’re part of the Vegas tapestry.”
This is the first time Mötley Crüe, who pioneered the Vegas rock residency with their first in 2012 at the now-defunct Hard Rock Hotel,
is playing the 4,100-capacity venue that has hosted heavyweights from Celine Dion to Garth Brooks and Adele to Def Leppard.
The Crüe is also taking a bow with its recent induction into the Spotify Billions Club with “Kickstart My Heart,” the band’s locomotive rocker from 1989’s “Dr. Feelgood” album that has become the ultimate jock jam frequently blasted in sports stadiums and promo spots. It’s an honor achieved by only about 1,400 songs among the 100-million-plus available on the platform.
This summer, the band – Sixx on bass, Tommy Lee on drums, Vince Neil on vocals and John 5 on guitar – loped through amphitheaters nationwide for the Carnival of Sins tour to mark the band’s 45th anniversary.
To augment the celebration, Mötley Crüe is dropping an anniversary edition of its “Too Fast For Love” album Oct. 30, as well as a limited edition box set that combines the Crüe’s 1981 self-released version of the album with the more polished 1982 major label rendition on Elektra Records. Early live recordings, demos from the band’s first studio sessions in 1981 and a 100-page photo book amplify the package.
The always-engaged Sixx, 67, talked with USA TODAY from his home in Wyoming about the health of frontman Neil, the Crüe song he thought would hit a billion streams first and why the band has nothing left to prove.
Question: What do you think you can do with this residency that you couldn’t with your previous Vegas shows?
Nikki Sixx: We had the Carnival of Sins tour out this summer and the reviews have just been amazing. Live Nation was like, we need that show here. And we said, "Well, you want us to come to Vegas and do a new residency?" And they go, "No, we want you to bring the Carnival of Sins here, to Sin City." So for us, it's really cool because we put so much work and so much time into the tour this summer that we can just take it to Vegas. We're going to add a few bells and whistles, of course. I just talked to (Def Leppard frontman) Joe Elliott (whose band played the Colosseum in February) literally an hour ago and he goes, "You are going to love it."
You’ve been letting fans vote on the set list. What have they chosen that genuinely surprised you?
It was stuff like (1981’s) “Take Me to the Top.” When we play that song live, the whole place erupts. Sometimes on stage, I see these fathers and sons out there, multi-generation fans, and I'm like, how do you guys even know this song?
How is Vince doing health-wise after the big summer tour? (The frontman suffered his most severe stroke in December 2024.)
This was his fourth stroke, so his health is of most concern, as is the health of the band. Vince doesn't want to pull any punches and we didn’t want to do any songs that maybe were too much on him. But he was like, "I’m in." I want to do “Red Hot.” I love these songs. He really came to work and was sounding good pre-production. But once we hit the stage, he really came alive. He just wanted to be the best he could be ... He’s taken a lot of bricks in the face over the years for his vocals live and he doesn't like seeing that kind of stuff. So he really wanted to come in and not only prove to himself but to the fans that he's vocally totally capable.
The Vegas shows will also support the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth. When you think about yourself at that age, what do you wish someone had been able to provide for you that organizations like this can for a lot of young people today?
Young people in general feel confused. They're trying to find their footing somewhere between being a young kid and turning into a teenager. And so much is changing. I wouldn't want to be a teenager now with social media and the peer pressure of that. I mean, I mowed lawns to save enough money to buy a cheap bicycle so we could ride to the park and throw Frisbees and listen to Uriah Heep in Idaho.
There are so many more layers of pressure now.
I don't know what it'd be like to stare at a screen and go, "That's what I need to look like. That's what I need to sound like. That's what I need to write like. That's popular. That's not popular" … These kids need support now more than ever. Love and support and some guidance, because all these kids that I've met that came in off the street and came out the other side are wonderful people.
So “Kickstart My Heart” has joined the Spotify Billions Club. What means more to you, the number itself or knowing that people are still discovering the song decades later?
When you write a song, you put it out and there’s a video and the arena is full of people singing it. Then time marches on and you look down at the set list and “Kickstart” has been on there since 1989 and it’s a song filled with rebellion and a lot of like, wow, I’m alive, because what inspired it was I had a near fatal heroin overdose … Then we hear it’s done a billion streams and I’m like, really? I’ll be watching football and my wife goes, “There’s you’re song,” and I think “Yeah, cool.” But I didn’t realize how deep it went.
Is there a Crüe song that you might have predicted would have hit a billion streams before “Kickstart?”
I would have assumed “Home Sweet Home.” That’s a special song that has had a life all of its own.
After 45 years, do you feel like the band still has something to prove?
I think we only have stuff to prove to ourselves. If it means being completely simplistic and adolescent and bratty and that's what we want, then that's what we'll do. If it means that we're going to try to write the next “Stairway to Heaven,” then that's what we'll do. That's what “Home Sweet Home” was. It was our answer to people trying to pigeonhole us. It’s kind of nice to just be standing here naked with everything coming out of my brain, everything that I'm seeing and everything that I'm reading … Let's just like roll with it. We weren't even supposed to make it a year. So the fact that we're looking down the barrel at 46 years almost makes me feel like I pulled some wool over someone's eyes.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Motley Crue’s Nikki Sixx talks Vegas, Vince Neil and 45 wild years | Exclusive
