It’s almost natural for any hair metal band to absolutely despise the grunge movement that came in and killed everything off of Sunset.
If you were to ask Nikki Sixx though, he wasn’t all that down on the people who were taking his place, recalling after the fact “I announced [Nevermind’s] release on Headbangers Ball. I said ‘Here is an important rock album.’
I never understood bands saying that Nirvana had anything to do with derailing their career.” He may have kind feelings towards the leaders of grunge, but the post-grunge stripe of rock music is a much different story.
Around the time that Mötley Crüe were putting together a tour in 2009, Godsmack was put on the bill, and apparently, frontman Sully Erna didn’t have the best time, with their drummer later saying:
“That Motley tour was great. There was some conflict of ego, maybe, that started before the tour even started between my singer and their bass player.
And then later on, Nikki Sixx said Godsmack didn’t have fun on the tour. Whatever — we had fun on the tour. It was just there were certain things that pissed Sully off, and so he pissed Nikki off, and those guys are very strong-willed dudes.”
It would be fine to just let bygones be bygones, but Sully went a little bit further on the band’s next album, writing the song “Cryin’ Like a Bitch” shortly after coming off of the Crue tour.
Erna would say after the fact that the song was “more about just being fed up with prima donnas and certain rock stars in this industry that still feel they can push people around and are still relevant even though it’s been about 20 years since they’ve had their big moment.” Youch.
If you know anything about Nikki, you know that he wasn’t going to roll over on something like that, eventually going off in the press when one of Godsmack’s publicists reached out for one of the band members to be interviewed on his radio show, saying “I told them, ‘Over my dead body.’
And they said, ‘Well, you know, they wanna be on the show because their record’s coming out.’ And I go, ‘Did you forget the fact that they wrote a song about me called ‘Cryin’ Like A Bitch’ and that there’s probably 15 festivals that Mötley Crüe is headlining and that we said if Godsmack’s on ’em, we’re not doing them?” He went on:
“Dude, have some credibility. I’m so embarrassed for you. At least you can go, ‘We’ve got a new record and we don’t wanna be on that guy’s radio show.’ And he said, ‘Well, we actually need some help now.’”
The Crue might be a lot more sensible these days after their debaucherous era of sex, drugs, and rock and roll is long behind them, but that angry young man mentality never goes away that easily, especially when dealing with rock star levels of ego.
For now, the two seem to be at peace with each other, at least publically in the press.