Former MÖTLEY CRÜE frontman John Corabi has reflected on the making of the band’s 1997 album “Generation Swine”. CRÜE began recording the album with Corabi as lead singer, but ended up bringing original vocalist Vince Neil back into the fold and releasing the record with Neil‘s vocals.
Speaking to Rob’s School Of Music, Corabi said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “We worked on that record for, God, almost two years. Now, the difference is I’m not a fan of the record that came out. ‘Cause you’ve gotta understand we had recorded a bunch of those songs, and they brought Vince back. Then they went back into the studio with him for, like, another year. And they switched things around, then they started playing with sound effects.
“I don’t mean this in any disrespect to MÖTLEY at all, but the bottom line of it is we did a record and it didn’t sell well — per their standards,” he continued, referencing 1994’s “Mötley Crüe” LP. “I mean, it went gold, but it didn’t sell well. The tour was a disaster. And I think, to be honest with you, Tommy [Lee, drums] and Nikki [Sixx, bass] and Scott [Humphrey, co-producer] were trying to reinvent themselves to be current. And at the time, bands like MARILYN MANSON, NINE INCH NAILS, ROB ZOMBIE, MINISTRY, PANTERA — all these bands were heavy, a lot of ’em were industrial, and they were just trying to figure out how to be relevant again. Which kind of led to a little bit of my demise, because I was just, like, ‘This is fucking bullshit. Just do what you do. You’re MÖTLEY.’ And I’ve done the same thing. Even after I got out of MÖTLEY and I was in RATT, then I decided I was gonna do a solo record, I would record a few songs and I would do ’em and I’d go, ‘Man, I’ve gotta be relevant. I’ve gotta be relevant.’ So everybody gets caught up in it. But the bottom line of it is it took a manager, or a friend mine, to just sit there and go, ‘You know, Crab, listen, man. Fuck that. You are what you are. You’re a bluesy kind of BEATLES, [LED] ZEPPELIN, AEROSMITH… That’s who you are. Don’t try to be something that you’re not. Stop looking at trends and just do what you do. There are people out there that like what you do.’ And at that point, once I just said, ‘You know what? Fuck it. I’m just gonna do my own thing,’ then I was a lot better off.”
Circling back to the musical direction of “Generation Swine”, Corabi said: “I’m not real happy with the record the way it came out, because I think they went so far left… We wrote a song, and then they turned it into a song called ‘Glitter’. And if you listen to some of the guitar parts that Mick‘s [Mars] doing, it’s like this weird random noise. One song, I don’t remember which one it is, but there was a guitar solo on it; it sounded like a chainsaw. And I’m, like, ‘Why the fuck…?’ Mick Mars has got the most awesome guitar tone; he’s a very underrated guitar player. Why would you do that to his tone? So, it is what it is.
“A lot of that record was written while I was in the band,” he confirmed. “And there was a bunch of other songs that are probably in a vault somewhere that we wrote.”
When interviewer Rob Spampinato suggested that it would be cool for MÖTLEY CRÜE to one day release the demos for “Generation Swine” with John‘s vocals, Corabi said: “To be perfectly honest with you, I think they were panicked. It was the first time for Tommy and Nikki to actually really produce a record. And to be perfectly honest with you, my vocals, if they were ever to release any of that shit, I would wanna go back in and re-sing. Because I was so mentally… I couldn’t figure out what they wanted. Normally, when you go in with a producer, if you sing something, and they go, ‘Well…’ Like Marti Frederiksen, for example — I’ve done three records with Marti with THE DEAD DAISIES, and we’re working together on my solo album. And I’ll sing something for Marti, and he’ll go, ‘Eh. That’s really good, dude. But what about…’ And he’ll maybe sing 70 percent of what I was singing, and then he’ll just twist a note or two, and now I go, ‘Oh, shit. I would have never thought of that.’
“The thing that I was struggling with Tommy and Nikki and Scott, as far as producing was, they would say, ‘Nah. That’s not it,'” he recalled. “Then I’d go, ‘What are you hearing?’ And they wouldn’t sing me anything back. They really didn’t know what they wanted. They would give me these random bands… Like, Nikki would say, ‘Something on the lines of MANIC STREET PREACHERS and old David Bowie.’ And then Scott would go, ‘CHEAP TRICK.’ And then Tommy would go, ‘No, dude. Like, heavy. Like PANTERA. But lush, like OASIS.’ And I’m sitting there going, ‘Half of these bands I’ve never even fucking heard of before. Who are the MANIC STREET PREACHERS? Never heard of ’em.’ And I’m trying to process, how do you blend PANTERA with OASIS or CHEAP TRICK or Bowie? I was trying to process it, so my singing was not peak, let’s put it that way. So I would definitely wanna re-sing a lot of that shit.”
In February 2018, Corabi released a live album of his performance of MÖTLEY CRÜE‘s entire 1994 self-titled album, recorded on October 27, 2015 in Nashville, Tennessee. “Live ’94: One Night In Nashville” documents the album in its entirety along with the bonus track “10,000 Miles”, which was originally released as a bonus track on the Japanese version of the “Quaternary” EP.
