Mötley Crüe have never exactly been known for restraint, but according to Tommy Lee, even they managed to push Sharon Osbourne’s patience to its limit during Ozzy Osbourne’s legendary Bark at the Moon tour.
Speaking during a recent appearance on The Zach Sang Show, the drummer looked back on the band’s infamous 1984 run alongside Ozzy, revealing how Sharon eventually stepped in to put a stop to the chaos unfolding backstage every night (per Loudwire).
Mötley Crüe were rapidly becoming one of the most notorious bands in rock, earning a reputation for excess that followed them from city to city, according to Lee, the backstage environment quickly became a problem.
“Put it this way, Sharon was not happy with us,” Lee recalled.
Backstage antics
As the stories go, dressing rooms and backstage corridors were overflowing with guests, parties and enough mayhem to make even seasoned rock veterans raise an eyebrow, Lee said Sharon would often arrive on tour and immediately confront what was happening behind the scenes:
“The Motley guys are bringing shitloads of girls backstage after the show and there’s all these girls running around back here and it’s a fucking party everywhere. And Sharon’s like ‘nope.’ She would fly out immediately.”
Eventually, Sharon decided enough was enough and introduced a rule that hit the band where it hurt:
“She took all of our after-show passes from us. We were no longer allowed to have any guests backstage. She cut us off,” Lee said.
‘No Fun Tour’
The decision didn’t exactly go down well with the Crüe camp, in response the band reportedly had custom shirts made featuring a smiley face with a bullet hole through it and the words “No Fun Tour” printed across the front, a tongue in cheek protest aimed squarely at Sharon’s crackdown.
Looking back more than four decades later, however, Lee admits Sharon may have had a point:
“It was bad for Ozzy to be around,” he acknowledged.
The Bark at the Moon tour has become one of the most infamous tours in heavy metal history, spawning countless stories of backstage debauchery, among the most notorious is the often retold tale involving Ozzy and Nikki Sixx that later appeared in Mötley Crüe’s memoir The Dirt.
While the legends surrounding that era continue to grow with every retelling, Lee’s latest recollection offers another reminder that even in the wild world of 1980s rock and metal, Sharon Osbourne was one of the few people capable of keeping things under control.
Follow me for more on Music:
MORE IN News
