“Our job here is done”: It’s ten years since Motley Crue signed their “Cessation Of Touring” agreement and vowed to retire... so what happened?

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Although it's probably obvious for a band who have never been the retiring type, Motley Crue really did absolutely suck at giving up the day job. It is ten years ago this week since Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx, Tommy Lee and Mick Mars vowed to bring the band to an explosive end and embark on a show-stopping final tour. Drummer Lee said at the time, “Everything must come to an end. We always had a vision of going out with a big fucking bang, and not playing county fairs, or clubs with one or two original band members. Our job here is done.”

In typical Motley OTT style, in 2014 the band signed a Cessation Of Touring Agreement in front of the press, a binding contract that meant they could be sued if they toured again after their final tour, a tour meant to be so final they called it The FInal, which sounds pretty final. Or it would be if not for the fact that you can go and see Motley Crue play live this year, so what happened?

Well, they obviously hadn’t read the retirement manual for a start. In 2018, the band went into the studio to record some new music for their biopic The Dirt, which doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that a band who no longer exist would do. Buoyed by the reaction to the film and what they humbly described as “an entirely new legion of fans, who, along with diehard Crueheads, demanded the band tear up that stupid contract and come out of retirement”, they complied. Instead of getting into legal jargon and having to explain their way out of the Cessation Of Touring Agreement, they simply blew it up, filmed the results and put it on the internet. How’s that for a loophole?

There has been no more retirement talk since they reformed, although founding member Mick Mars has since departed and/or been fired depending on who you speak to. Maybe he actually wanted to stay retired in the first place?

Niall Doherty is a writer and editor whose work can be found in Classic Rock, The Guardian, Music Week, FourFourTwo, Champions Journal, on Apple Music and more. Formerly the Deputy Editor of Q magazine, he co-runs the music Substack letter The New Cue with fellow former Q colleague Ted Kessler. He is also Reviews Editor at Record Collector. Over the years, he's interviewed some of the world's biggest stars, including Elton John, Coldplay, Radiohead, Liam and Noel Gallagher, Florence + The Machine, Arctic Monkeys, Muse, Pearl Jam, Depeche Mode, Robert Plant and more.