Drugs in autobiographical project of Mötley Crüe
The presence of drugs in popular music – in rock, particularly – has been understudied through the years. We know that, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, musicians took part in travelling medicine shows that touted the benefits of various remedies, many of which contained opiates, cocaine and alcohol. In turn, musicians became increasingly defined as itinerant, free characters untrammeled by social conventions. Then, by 1915, different laws controlling drugs contributed to musicians’ «addictization,» which gave rise to the musician-as-outlaw or rebel figure. In this article, I analyze how the musicians themselves make sense of their drug habits, via the Mötley Crüe’s autobiographical discourses. At the height of their popularity in the 1980s, glam metal band Mötley Crüe chased a lifestyle of decadence and rebellion. In their six-part written autobiographical project, band members document their rampant drug use as key to their pursuit of «the party.» Not surprisingly, this profuse drug consumption compromised the band mates’ (and others) well-being, through the neglect of personal hygiene rules, a lack of civic sense as well as the threat of symbolic (and real) violence. While Mötley Crüe’s abundant drug consumption supports their identity as decadent rebels, I conclude that the band’s true rebellion lies its celebration of extreme individualism or, what I term, «radical bourgeoisie» – a lifestyle that changes little of what the band claims to want to change and, in the process, contributes to rock’s depoliticization.