for the recording of the album, mötley crüe reunited with bob rock, who had produced "dr. feelgood", their most commercially successful album. with corabi now fronting the band, the members took advantage of the fact that he brought more to the table than neil did: sixx had never worked with another lyricist before, and mars had never played with another guitarist. mars noted that working with a second guitarist gave him "a chance to experiment and have some fun instead of having to focus on just keeping the rhythm." also, the band had never previously written songs through jamming. one of the first songs corabi worked with the band on was "hammered", as well as the acoustic portion of the song that would become "misunderstood."