Red, White & Crüe -
Motley Crüe
by Mike D'Ariano
4/2005

In the sixteen years since my personal favorite Motley Crüe album, 1989's Dr. Feelgood, the band has released ten albums and/or boxed sets. Only one of those was a new studio album by all four original members of the group, 1997's Generation Swine. The other studio albums of that era were New Tattoo, and the band's self titled album, which were recorded minus Tommy Lee and Vince Neil respectively. Entertainment or Death, a double live effort spanning the decade that the original band was together was the only other release that was made up entirely of previously unreleased material (it was all previously released songs, just unreleased live versions). The other 6 albums were all collections of previously released material.

Decade of Decadence was a rarities album. Supersonic and Demonic was a second rarities album, which included the tunes from Decade of Decadence (which had gone out of print and was now….rare). Music to Crash Your Car To Vol. I and II were boxed sets consisting of entire albums and rare tracks associated with them. Volume III is supposedly in the works. Finally, Greatest Hits and 20th Century Masters were both straight ahead greatest hits albums.

To compliment their surprisingly successful reunion tour, which sold out Madison Square Garden in under an hour and recently added another 55 nationwide dates, the band has released Red, White & Crüe which is….you guessed it, yet another greatest hits package! This time it's a double disc package specially priced as one CD.

Since this set is chronological, the first disc, which features 20 songs, contains more or less all of the actual hits in the band's catalogue. All five of their classic albums (Too Fast For Love, Shout at the Devil, Theatre of Pain, Girls Girls Girls, and Dr. Feelgood) are represented on this disc. The only song from the classic era not on disc one is "Home Sweet Home" which is included on disc two because the version used is a remix version from Decade of Decadence instead of the original from Theatre of Pain. Including the alternate "Home Sweet Home", there are three tracks included on Red White & Crüe from Theatre of Pain, which is the lowest number of tracks supplied from one of the early albums. There are four tracks from Too Fast For Love, Shout at the Devil and Girls Girls Girls and five tracks from Dr. Feelgood included on this set. Rounding out disc one is one never before released (on CD) track from the early days called "Black Widow".

So basically, for those of you old enough (or young enough) to remember Dial MTV, which was basically TRL's grandfather, all of the songs you called up to request are on disc one. Disc two, is a different animal.

The second disc features not a single song which could be considered anything more than a fringe hit (i.e. die hard Motley fans liked it and no one else did), and ironically is made up largely of the bonus tracks from previous greatest hits packages! "Anarchy in the U.K.", "Primal Scream", "Home Sweet Home ('91 Remix)" "Bitter Pill", and "Enslaved" were exclusive tracks to the Decade of Decadence and Greatest Hits albums when they came out.

In the same vein, but a little more confusing are "Bittersuite" and "Planet Boom." These two songs were from the unreleased EP. Quaternary when they became exclusive tracks on Supersonic and Demonic. The EP. has since been included in the Music to Crash Your Car To Vol. 2 boxed set.
In addition to those seven previously exclusive tracks, the second disc of Red White and Crüe contains three exclusive new cuts of its own, which will surely round out the band's next greatest hits project. The new tunes are the very enjoyable "If I Die Tomorrow", the moderately enjoyable "Sick Love Song" and the hardly listenable cover of the Rolling Stones "Street Fighting Man" which is interesting for no other reason than the fact that it makes Red White & Crüe one of the only albums I know of that contain songs by both the Stones and The Beatles (Motley's 1982 cover of "Helter Skelter" is included on disc one). Another interesting note on the new tracks - rumor has it that Tommy hates "Sick Love Song" and didn't play on it. Supposedly Josh Freese, who is or was in the current version of Motley's arch rivals, Guns N Roses plays on the track.

The other tracks from disc two are drawn from the band's three most recent studio albums. Three cuts come from Generation Swine (1997), giving it as many representations here as Theatre of Pain which any Crüe fan will tell you is ludicrous. Two cuts come from the Tommy-less but fan accepted New Tattoo (2000) album and two cuts come from the Vince-less and fan despised self-titled album (1994).

To be fair, while I question the need for this album to be a two CD set (or the need for it to exist at all for that matter), the fact that it's priced as a single disc renders that point mute. All in all, no matter how redundant, this is the best collection of Motley Crüe's music available to date, and if you don't have all of this stuff already, it's well worth owning. If you're like me, and you already own 33 of the 37 songs, perhaps you should think about downloading the handful of tracks you don't already have, or just roll your eyes at the whole thing and be content with the stuff you already own, knowing in your heart that it's the best material Motley will ever produce.

Track listing