Review: Mötley Crüe brought 1989 back to Charlotte. Not everything has aged well
Two rows in front of me Monday night at Truliant Amphitheater sat three men wearing wigs.
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Not subtle wigs. Mötley Crüe wigs.
One black. One brown. One blond. Two had headbands. On the kind of August night that makes Charlotte feel like the inside of a convection oven.
And when I say hot: 8 p.m., 89 degrees, RealFeel 101. By the time the Crüe stepped on stage just after 9, the RealFeel was still triple-digits.
There were, remarkably, plenty of men in jeans Monday night — apparently the sort who would rather risk heatstroke than wear shorts to Mötley Crüe. The devil himself might have reconsidered the denim. It was so hot that Nikki Sixx eventually surrendered his sequined ruby-red jacket to the heat. So hot that the guy in the brown wig was visibly sweating through his sleeveless jean jacket.
Then Mötley Crüe played “Too Fast for Love,” a prime deep cut off their 1981 debut album, and he and his two buddies lost their minds.
The whole thing was ridiculous. And the show should feel completely ridiculous in 2026. There should be a sinister carnival barker barking things like, “No one has ever left the Carnival of Sins unhappy, mostly because they’ve never left at all.” There should be carnival-inspired stagehands — one dressed as a scary clown, another as a strongman.
There should be the leather, and the hair, and Nikki Sixx amusing himself by pulling gum six inches out of his mouth, and John 5 playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” with his teeth.
Except there’s a difference between being knowingly ridiculous and being no longer capable of delivering the goods.
That’s the rub here: Forty-five years into Mötley Crüe’s career, almost everything about the band still works — the songs, the musicians, the spectacle, the fan devotion, even the ridiculousness — except, increasingly, Vince Neil.
When the enormous circus curtain lifted to start the show, I almost didn’t notice Neil. I was drawn to Sixx, who arrived looking like the demonic ringmaster of the whole operation; to John 5, just because he wasn’t with the band the last time I saw it here in Charlotte, at Bank of America Stadium in 2022; and to Tommy Lee, if for no other reason than I could feel his kick drum in my chest as he hammered away at his kit, his hair seemingly propelled either by a wind machine or his own arms.
This, by the way, is not Mötley Crüe accidentally looking like 1985. They’ve spent a tremendous amount of money making themselves intentionally look like 1985.
Giant meat hooks dangled from above. There were inverted pentagrams, a massive video wall, substantial fog effects, and, later, a metal cage that descended from the rafters. It looked like a heavy-metal haunted circus. The show was so theatrical that even the photographer got incorporated, hoisted above the stage inside the cage, the same contraption used by the four women who served as backup singers and dancers, transported from Mötley Crüe’s raciest old music videos untouched into 2026.
So the question isn’t whether this “reimagined” version of the band’s 2005-06 “Carnival of Sins” is ridiculous. It’s whether the people at the center of the spectacle can still live up to the spectacle surrounding them.
Let’s start with those women.
Although they did occasionally contribute vocals, mostly they were bodies — corsets and fishnets, or matching black bras, tiny shorts, stockings and boots. They writhed, gyrated, whipped their hair, simulated sex and provided scenery for men.
They also provided a stark juxtaposition to the moment 10 songs in when Sixx spotted a little girl in the pit with her mom, brought her onstage, and proceeded to tell the crowd, “This is the future right here.” He dropped to one knee beside her, grinning broadly; the girl stood stiffly beside him and looked uncertain.
With an arm around her, Sixx launched into an earnest speech about … a variety of things.
“It doesn’t really matter if you’re a Republican or a Democrat,” Sixx said, “or if you’re gay or if you’re straight. It really doesn’t matter to us. All that really matters to us is that we’re all here together. Can we just start unifying the f—— world together? Can we do that?”
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It was such an oddly earnest sentiment coming from Mötley Effing Crüe: Sixx, at 67, turning the “Carnival of Sins” into a plea for everybody to get along, delivering a message of encouragement to a little girl while the young women employed by the Crüe changed from one skimpy outfit to another offstage.
After returning the girl to her mother, the bass player kept going — reminiscing about leaving Idaho for Hollywood in 1977, talking about his dreams of writing songs and books, and urging the crowd never to give up on its own aspirations.
It was … ridiculous. Proof that Mötley Crüe has evolved and Mötley Crüe has not evolved at all.
And several songs later, the four women young enough to be the band members’ daughters returned, introduced by the animated carnival barker as Lust, Envy, Gluttony and Pride.
Meanwhile, as for the actual music, the men performing it, and that question of whether they can still live up to the spectacle surrounding them …
The music, at least, is still good.
Tommy Lee plays ferociously and remains technically astonishing. John 5, in Mick Mars’s old spot, can play the hell out of these songs. Sixx still has presence and plenty of verve on the bass. And the songs remain remarkably durable.
But Neil’s vocals have lost their shine. In Charlotte, they managed to sound somehow both muddy and washed out, a problem compounded by a mix that frequently buried him beneath the band. At times, Sixx’s backing vocals were easier to make out than Neil’s lead.
During “Dr. Feelgood,” Neil’s verses were virtually indecipherable; even the chorus seemed intelligible largely because anyone who had bought a ticket already knew what he was supposed to be singing. (Mötley Crüe’s opening acts, meanwhile, proved that guys in their mid-60s can sing. Extreme’s Gary Cherone is Neil’s age; Tesla’s Jeff Keith is two years older. Both could still deliver the vocal character their bands’ biggest songs require.)
Perhaps the fairest test was “Home Sweet Home,” a ballad that requires more singing and less shouting — and featured a tattooed Lee playing a white upright piano splattered and streaked with fake blood.
My review of his rendition, in a nutshell: Neil tried. It wasn’t great. But it was OK.
I will say, though, that toward the end of the night, I started feeling more sympathetic to Neil. He has grown old inside a fantasy that requires guys like him to remain permanently young.
And then, for a few minutes anyway, the band managed to make me forget about their lead singer’s shortcomings almost entirely, as “Kickstart My Heart” sent the whole ridiculous machine into overdrive one last time.
Tommy pounded away behind the kit, which rose roughly 12 feet into the air. John 5 tore into the guitar solo. Sixx stalked beneath the lights. Neil put his all into it. At the song’s climax came an explosion, multiple showers of sparks and a quick series of fireworks that torpedoed down from the rafters.
It was loud and stupid and excessive and exhilarating and ridiculous, and thousands of people shouted a chorus they’d been shouting for decades.
For those few glorious minutes, Mötley Crüe seemed perfectly capable of outrunning time.
1. “Red Hot”
2. “Louder Than Hell”
3. “Wild Side”
4. “Shout at the Devil”
5. “Too Fast for Love”
6. “Looks That Kill”
7. “Too Young to Fall in Love”
8. “Take Me to the Top”
9. “Primal Scream”
10. “Afraid”
11. “Home Sweet Home”
12. “Guitar Solo” (With elements of Eruption, the Star Spangled banner, Iron Man, & Whole Lotta Love)
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13. “Smokin’ in the Boys Room”
14. “Live Wire”
15. “Girls, Girls, Girls”
16. “Dr. Feelgood”
17. “Kickstart My Heart”
