THE VIDEO Mötley Crüe, "Live Wire," Too Fast for Love, 1981, Elektra
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SAMPLE LYRIC "'Cause I'm alive! / Liiiiiive wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-re! / 'Cause I'm alive! / I'm a liiiiiiiive wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-re!"
EXCESSIVELY DETAILED DESCRIPTION The video opens with an image reminiscent of Scooby-Doo (for me, anyway) -- a semi-transparent, floating skull with a pentagram drawn in red on its forehead floating in front of a lit candelabra. This disappears, and the camera slides over to the right to capture the hand of Mick Mars at the guitar. We then see the hand of Nikki Sixx beckoning before his bass.
We see Mick's hands again, then we see Tommy Lee pound twice quickly on the drums. Next Mick finally gets a shot with his face in it, then Tommy points from atop his drum kit. Then it flashes back and forth between Mick playing guitar and Nikki holding his scary-looking bass behind his head. Before Vince Neil has even jumped down into the dry ice fog, we already know: This video is going to RÄWWWWWWWWWWWWWK.
Vince immediately begins shaking his platinum mane, and then we see Tommy from above. He has a gong behind his drums, so get ready (okay, he doesn’t actually use it). Vince and Nikki jump around a little, and Mick looks scary (duh) as Vince begins to sing. Vince is wearing red leather pants and a matching red leather vest with two large, studded belts, one has black and the other is like all studs. He's also got on multiple studded wrist and arm bands, as well as little fingerless leather gloves that say "Mötley Crüe" on them in the original style which he also wears in "Looks That Kill." Vince shakes his hips in a way that almost makes you forget how he'll look in a few years. But not quite.
Vince also moves around a lot and appears to sing every single word, so yeah, a lot of things are different. In a few of the shots, you can see that there's a big "Mötley Crüe" sign somewhere in back, but only the word "Crüe" (again, done in the original logo style) is visible toward the right. This video has a bunch of mostly red lights in it, and often Vince's hair seems kind of glow-y, but for the most part it's real dark. Also, forgot to mention, Vince has a big choker-style leather necklace on with something hanging from it. It may be more than one, actually.
After a long time of Vince (hey, they wanted him to be the face of the band, after all), we see Nikki. He maybe has some reddish streaks in his hair, and is super pale with bright red lipstick. He's wearing a sleeveless leather top with some chains across the front, big studded black leather fingerless gloves, red leather pants heavily draped with bondage-style chains, and black thigh-high boots.
We then quickly see Mick (who's mostly obscured throughout the video, he's wearing all black though) and Tommy. Tommy's sitting down for the duration of the video, but on his upper half he's wearing a torn, sleeveless fishnet top. Also, in case I forget to mention the obvious: Not a lot of tattoos at this point.
Vince gets really into things! Wow, this video is like a piece of living history. Even Mick hoists his guitar aloft for a moment. Mick has on his scary black cheekbone makeup, which he shows off by making a mean pouty face. We then get an overhead shot of Tommy, who by later standards is barely in this video at all. Mick makes more badass faces, then Nikki actually windmills on his bass a la Pete Townsend. With the build-up to the second verse, Vince makes emphatic movements with his mic, and Nikki continues to emphasize how hard he is rocking by headbanging with his entire upper body. Tommy wails on the drums, and Vince leans in toward Mick as he starts singing again.
Just like with the first verse, we mostly focus on Vince while he sings. He struts around with his mic like a real effing star, it must be said. He also emphasizes his vocals with a lot of, well, pointing, and sometimes he also points with his pinky to make the Dio symbol. Vince sings the awesome lead-in to the chorus with lots of pointing, then we see Nikki, Tommy, and Mick again, but for like two seconds each. It's mostly Vince screaming "I'm a liiiiiiiiiiive wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-rrrre!"
Next up it's the weird break, which Vince signals by sweeping his arm across his body and the lighting crew signals by switching from red lights to blue. Shots of the different band members playing fade into each other as the guitar kind of goes all sludgy for a second. Vince briefly channels David Johansen (this is a major compliment coming from me), then for whatever reason we see a green-lit, heavily-lipsticked Tommy Lee struggling against chains. He uses the Dio symbol to try to break them. This fades into a shot of a green-lit Vince lowering a blazing torch.
At this point, the real Vince begins to scream as the song starts to rock out again. Vince makes the Dio symbol with both hands as fire explodes on either side of him, leading in to what was at that time Mötley Crüe's biggest gimmick: Lighting Nikki's pants on fire. If it weren't for this video, it'd be just another anecdote in The Dirt.
Nikki hoists his bass aloft whilst his pants and boots burn. We then see Vince's hands grabbing either end of a "Live Wire," as he brings them together there's a big flash of green light. It also causes a lot more fog to appear, and when I say a lot I mean a lot. When they go to a wider shot, you can still see Vince, but you can't tell Nikki and Mick apart! (Note: Reading this for the second time, I'm not quite sure why I felt the exclamation point was necessary, but I'll let it stand anyway.)
Even though flashpots continue to spew flames in the background, the fog clears and you can clearly see Vince prancing around and Nikki and Mick leaning against each other up on the drum risers (this is also probably the most Mick's moved in any of their videos). The song only gets more badass as it nears it's conclusion: Vince sings super fast (and still gets all the words), Tommy drums wildly, and Nikki pounds his bass with his fist. Mick even gets in on the act, not so much spitting blood as sort of having a bunch of blood fall out of his mouth.
For the last two little start-stop things in the song, which are more exaggerated than the ones at the beginning, we first get Vince making a cheekbone-emphasizing pout while whipping his head around to the left, twice. Mick makes dramatic faces with his blood, and Vince flails back and forth with his mic stand. For the last one (the one with cowbell), Tommy even does his mouth open, one hand behind head thing!
Vince, Nikki, and Mick, work their way to the center of the stage to strike a pose just as the screen begins to shrink and spin off into the distance, leaving us with a still image of the album cover with a little picture showing the band silhouetted (sort of like how they are in the very beginning of "Too Young to Fall in Love") in the bottom left-hand corner.
THE VERDICT Um, it must be obvious by now, right? This video frickin' rules. I love it. I am having trouble finding any sort of fault with it at all. I guess maybe Nikki hasn't reached his maximum potential hotness yet, he’s still saving that for "Dr. Feelgood."
That's really it though. This video is like an amazing time capsule into the history of the Crüe. I mean, imagine if a video like this existed for Guns N Roses? "Sweet Child O' Mine" is like as studio as it gets ("Concept Version 1" my ass). While this video doesn't have a like insane lack of production values, it still gives you this look at the band's sort of original aesthetic. It's also (to my knowledge) the only video off of Too Fast For Love, so it's the only one where you get the original Crüe sound, which is really, really different from where they wind up later. It's just so raw sounding, I friggin' love it.
I also love the pentagrams and all red/black color scheme, which only really lasts through Shout at the Devil. Nikki still does it for Theatre of Pain, but by then Tommy and Mick are in all-black and Vince is having his brief dalliance with white and pink. Theatre of Pain is however where Nikki begins a multi-album flirtation with polka dots, which I adore. He looks so glam! But oh yeah, this video. Well, it was awesome.