Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee recently shared memories from the band’s infamous 1984 run supporting Ozzy Osbourne on the “Bark at the Moon Tour“, revealing how manager Sharon Osbourne was forced to personally intervene to stop the young group’s excessive backstage partying.
During a recent appearance on the “Zach Sang Show“, the drummer detailed the chaotic atmosphere that prompted management to step in and shut down the fun.
“Put it this way, Sharon was not happy with us,” Lee explained, noting that she would frequently be called out to the road to deal with the band’s behavior. “The Mötley guys are bringing s**tloads of girls backstage after the show and there’s all these girls running around back here and it’s a f**king party everywhere. And Sharon‘s like ‘nope.’ She would fly out immediately.”
To regain control of the backstage area, Sharon Osbourne implemented a strict punishment for the opening act.
“She took all of our after-show passes from us. We were no longer allowed to have any guests backstage. She cut us off,” he recalled.
In typical rock and roll fashion, Mötley Crüe did not take the new restrictions quietly and decided to protest the sudden lack of backstage access with custom merchandise.
“We made special shirts that was like a smiley face with a bullet hole in it and it said the ‘no fun tour,’ cuz she came out and just literally shut it down,” Lee revealed.
Looking back on the situation decades later, the drummer admitted that the strict intervention was completely justified to protect her husband and client given the circumstances. “It was bad for Ozzy to be around,” he confessed.
The 1984 trek remains one of the most notorious tours in heavy metal history, heavily documented for the intense debauchery that occurred offstage. The most legendary incident from the run involved an escalating gross-out contest between Ozzy and Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx after the musicians reportedly ran out of c***ine.
Sixx famously chronicled the bizarre encounter in the band’s 2001 collaborative autobiography, The Dirt, detailing the moment the legendary frontman resorted to snorting a line of live ants off the pavement.
“And as I thought, ‘No, he wouldn’t,’ he did. He put the straw to his nose and, with his bare white a** peeking out from under the dress like a sliced honeydew, sent the entire line of ants tickling up his nose with a single, monstrous snort,” Sixx wrote. According to the book, the stunt was immediately followed by Ozzy urinating on the ground and licking it up.
