Hot, Young, Running Free! Are Motley Crüe the band they used to be?

Oh yeah. Motley Crüe are wild living guys, you better believe it. Surely you've read about it and seen their crazy suits and cartoon hair. I mean, I know a girl who gave Mick Mars a bottle of whisky and he drunk the whole bottle right there and then. He collapsed of course, but what a crazy guy.

And wild guys stay at wild places... well, Holiday Inns. But this one's in Chelsea. Yeah, crazy. And they have fun managers who meet you and say, "Hey, I'm real sorry but the guys have been here a few days and they've trashed their rooms, we'll have to find somewhere else to do the interview. I mean, these rooms are so small you have to step outside to change your mind." Crazy dude.

Of course, the slightly less crazy staff of the Holiday Inn can't actually find anywhere else for us to do an interview, so we have to resort to Mick's room after all. And you should have seen it. Like, you know, the bathroom door was like WIDE OPEN, and there was at least two cigarette butts in the ashtray. And it was only half past 12. Real crazy. The rest of the room was spotless of course, but they mustn't go too far.

It must be really hard work living up to a reputation like Motley Crües. Guitarist Mick Mars and bassist Nikki Sixx are clearly nice enough blokes, but the strain of a heavy reputation was obviously taking its toll on this particular English winter's day. Mars looks distinctly older than his pictures suggest while Sixx seemed downright sensible, explaining the method behind the apparent Crüe madness. They choose their instruments carefully, calculate which studios are right for which sound, absorb the best of 70s British Pop and re-hash it for the 80s Rock fan.

"I like the melodies of The Sweet, the loose feel and groove of T. Rex and the lyrics of Mott The Hoople," reflects Sixx.

To three million record buying punters they've combined these superbly, though to be honest I'd prefer to dust off the inspirational material and give that a spin instead. Meanwhile, Mars has a little more detail on the development of the Crüe sound.

"After we've done the routining, we search out which is the best room for which instrument, which is why we ended up with three studios."

Sixx: "We recorded each of the instruments in different studios, but the way we made it feel that we just rocked it out was by actually all playing together in the first place. We took Mick and me off the track when we did the drums, went to another studio to do the bass and I played with the drums on tape but with Mick and kept the bass, took Mick off and went to another studio and Mick played to me and Tommy (Lee, drummer) who were already on tape."

Fairly modern methods for what is basically an 'old school' band, but how hi-tech do they get? Are there any computer codes and click tracks involved?

"We sometimes use click tracks for strange timing changes, like on We Need A Lover Tonight we used a click for the bit that speeds up. So we actually sped it up while Tommy was playing and he kept in time with it."

Tommy did his drums parts in Pasha Studios, which as an all-purpose studio apparently wasn't up to much but was great for the drums.

"We just put wood up all over the walls and got a real great heavy drum sound. Tommy took up the whole studio because it's so small and we ran a PA system off him into another room where these secretaries were and recorded what came out of the PA. It was like recording him live through a PA stack. This and the sound of the individually miked kit was mixed in with the sound of a Linn that was being triggered as he was playing the kit."

With the drums down it was over to Cherokee Studios for the bass.

"That was where we recorded the whole Shout At The Devil album, and we did it there because it's a great room for bass; it's really big and it has a real good wood floor on it and you get good resonation out of it. You keep your brightness but it doesn't bounce too much because it's got carpet on the walls. We miked up a cabinet and DI'd. I played through two SVT heads and two SVT cabinets, which is the same as my live gear only I use a lot more.

"I play Hamer basses — it's a Thunderbird shape with a long scale neck and a Jazz pickup in the rear position and a Precision pickup in the front position. What I do with the heads is I get a lot of bass response off of one of the cabinets and on the other one I get a real trebly response and we cross the sound, though really the best sound is probably the DI. We just added the clang for a more live sound.

"I used to use BC Rich basses which were good, but not really good enough. Also Hamer make a range of eight and 12 string basses — the eight string that I actually use is a lot more rhythm guitarey, and when I'm playing that it gives Mick a lot more freedom."

So far, however, he's not been lured by the attraction of a five string bass.

"It's like a whole different world to me — I mean, that extra string. I mean, I don't know what to do with the four I've got now sometimes."

However, even six strings are no problem for Mick who prefers the surroundings of The Record Plant for his parts.

"There are two rooms I play in; I had a Marshall stack in one and a Gallien-Krueger in another small one. The Krueger's a chorus so you can take two mikes and cross them in front of it which puts it out of phase for a bigger sound, but a really clean big sound. The other room is real empty with lots of glass and we put the Marshall in there and put different mikes in different parts of the room.

"Then using a Lexicon on the board, and noise gates of course, we make the guitar sound pretty good."

Mick isn't the first Rock guitarist to have mentioned Gallien-Krueger amps — what's so special about them?

"They're so versatile yet so tiny and they sound so good. It's the first solid state amp I've ever heard that I could put on the cabs of a Marshall stack and have it sound just as good."

Sixx: "A lot of bass players use them now too — they're not right for me but they're lovely little amps. I need a trashier bass sound."

Getting back to guitars, Mars uses a simple format Kramer.

"A single pickup, that's all. The kind of music we're playing there's no need for any more pickups than I've got. I can make it sound however I want it to."

The classic problem of the bass/drums/guitar line-up in a Rock band comes when playing live and the guitarist takes off for a bit of diddly-diddly. How do the Crüe compensate for the drop in rhythm?

Sixx: "On the recordings when he does play rhythm where he's playing lead we usually mix it very low, and like I said my bass sound is very rhythmy and live it doesn't drop at all. It's very similar to the albums and our tones work off each other great. And when he goes out he's usually playing a melody and not this fast shit for no reason."

Sixx also uses bass pedals MIDI'd up to a Roland synth.

"Whatever I decide to put into the synthesiser, like a wind sound or whatever, I can play from my feet. I also have a synth on the side of the stage that I use for some strings during Home Sweet Home, but I can't remember what models they are."

Have you got into using samplers at all?

"You mean sequencers?"

And those...

"You mean Emulators and stuff. I think they're interesting, but like ZZ Top used it just too much all the way through on that record Sleeping Bag. I think if you're going to use something like that you should make it be more interesting rhythmically. But it's so fucking Disco predictable just to let it go de-ga-de-ga-de-ga. If you can get it to do interesting rhythms playing off the bass and guitar I think it's neat. It's so easy just to push a fucking button and let it go through a song, it's not what we're about. We're going to fuck about with this stuff but I don't think it will become an important part of the band."

What about guitar synths?

Mars: "I've got a Roland guitar synth, one of the new ones, but the triggering mechanism on those is not real bright. There's like a third of a second delay which is kind of strange when the sound comes out and a bit difficult to play. We haven't really found the right song to use it on yet, and I don't know if I'd ever think about using something like that live on the stage."

Would you ever use a keyboard player live?

"We already do — Tommy and Nikki. No really, if us four guys can't reproduce live what's on the record then we don't do it."

Sixx: "The bottom line is, it stays us. But who knows what may happen in five or 10 years time..."