Will Motley Crue Be Live Nation’s Next Conquest?

noah | April 15, 2008 11:00 am
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Like the Timex Social Club, I spend a lot of time lamenting the rumors that surround me every day. How do they get started? And where do they get crazy? In Truthmongerer, I’ll try to suss out the kernels of truth in the rumors that are taking up airspace in gossip columns, blogs, and our tips inbox.

THE RUMOR: Motley Crue’s “big announcement” today will break the news that the Sunset Strip lifers have signed with touring megaglomerate Live Nation, and that its first tour under the deal will be the traveling hard-rock circus Cruefest, also featuring Buckcherry, Papa Roach, and Sixx A.M.

TRUTH THRESHOLD: 80%.

LIKELY TRUTHS: Blabbermouth has a fairly detailed itinerary for Cruefest, so that’s probably going off–although what happened to the initial reports that Drowning Pool would be on the tour? (And does this mean that the name-drop of Belle & Sebastian was a ruse to get indie-kid bloggers all het up?)

LIKELY FALSEHOODS: The rumor that the Crue had signed to a three-album, three-tour 360 deal with Live Nation has been floating around since February, and early reports had Vince, Nikki, Mick, and Tommy netting $100 million for their services. In anticipation of today’s press conference, that story popped up again yesterday via the concert-news site Pollstar, but since its initial posting the site has pulled the story. Commenters at Blabbermouth are taking this little bit of Internet censorship as incontrovertible proof that the story is, in fact, true, because “Motley Crue can’t grasp the concept of information leaking at such a rapid rate due to the internet… they seem to have to do damage control only because they were not the source of the news.”

If it is true, it may represent the first major misstep for Live Nation–or the first move of theirs that looks like a misstep out of the gate, anyway. Three albums and three years adds up to a lot of time for a band that actually works well together, and given that all the members of Motley Crue are around the “around 50” mark age-wise, the band hasn’t made a decent album in nearly 20 years, and Vince Neil isn’t exactly known for remembering the words to his songs these days, Live Nation’s “get ’em while they’re old” strategy may finally be showing its first cracks.

MOTLEY CRUE & LIVE NATION? [Blabbermouth] MÖTLEY CRÜE’s ‘Cruefest’ With BUCKCHERRY, PAPA ROACH: More Tour Dates Revealed [Blabbermouth]