Neil Says Book, Solo Tour Not the End of Crüe

ByABC News
April 25, 2001, 2:17 PM

April 24 -- "Just because someone does a solo thing doesn't mean the band's ended," admonishes Mötley Crüe singer Vince Neil, who was in fact tossed out of the band during 1992, which led to a two-album solo career until his return in 1997. He's now out on a solo tour of sorts, but this time he says it's just to "have some fun" while Mötley Crüe takes a year off. "I was just bored," says Neil, 40, who initially put together a band of friends for a Kentucky Derby show and watched the idea snowball. "I'm playing stuff from my solo records, Mötley Crüe songs, cover songs like [Iggy Pop's] 'Lust for Life' and '25 or 6 to 4,' the Chicago song. We just kind of do anything. But I promise you, the band isn't breaking up because I want to do some solo dates."

In fact, Mötley Crüe has a doozy of a project planned for this year, even though it's not due to go back into the recording studio until 2002. Next month the group will publish The Dirt, a revealing, no-holds-barred autobiography written with New York Times staffer Neil Strauss. Some juicy excerpts from the tome appear as the cover story in the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine, and Neil promises that the rest of the 427-page tell-all won't disappoint, either.

"We've been together for 20 years, and it's about time we did one," says Neil, whose own misadventures include a vehicular manslaughter conviction after a 1984 car crash that killed Hanoi Rocks drummer Nick "Razzle" Dingley. "With a band like us, there's always stories about each guy, and the book kind of fills in the blanks for people that want to know what really happened. Nobody really knows except for each of the guys in the band. So you get all of it the car wrecks, the overdoses, the women you get the inside scoop, straight from the horse's mouth. Now, whatever you thought was the truth, you can find out if you were right or not."

Neil is also in the midst of planning his fifth annual celebrity golf tournament in memory of his daughter, Skylar, who died from cancer during 1995 at age 4. The outing, which will be held May 3 at Malibu Country Club to raise money for the Neil Bogart Memorial Fund of the T.J. Martell Foundation.