Mick Mars has shouted down Tommy Lee’s suggestion that his illness is connected with Mötley Crüe’s looming retirement.
It’s the second time the guitarist has denied suggestions from within his own camp that his lifelong struggle with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is forcing him off the road.
Frontman Vince Neil recently said one of the reasons Crüe were aiming to bow out after one more album, a world tour and a movie was that Mars was too ill to deal with the trauma of constant travel.
The guitarist said that wasn’t true. But now drummer Tommy Lee has repeated the suggestion, telling Dedmau5: “Mick has a spinal disease that’s slowly fusing his vertebrae together. It’s treatable but not curable. It’s progressively getting worse and it’s painful for him, so he doesn’t want to tour much longer.
“I can’t say I blame him. The last thing we want t odo is go out running on two cylinders with some hired guy playing guitar. So we want to go out with one bug hurrah and be done with it.”
Mars responded via Twitter: “Once again, any rumours regarding a farewell tour due to me ‘poor health’ is BS. I am doing fine. My AS has never kept me from touring.”
Lee replied by tweeting: “It’s probably not so much about your physical health, it’s more about our mental health as a band. Haha!”
The 61-year-old guitarist has struggled with AS since the age of 19. Last year he said: “It’s one of those things that I call an inconvenience. I have days that are worse than others and there is always some amount of pain with my hips.
“There are some things that are not so cool, but there is one thing that is cool: I ended up bent. I can always see my guitar. If I’d been straight then I would not be able to see myself play.”
-Classic Rock
You must log in to post a comment.