Consider Suite 619 at the Park Hyatt in Chicago. The floor plants in wicker baskets. The liquor cabinet. The glass coffee table, with fresh flowers and copies of the latest issues of Esquire, Fortune and the Neiman-Marcus catalogue. All the splendid touches to make the busy traveler feel at home. If you’d like a cold beer, why, just call room service—or enjoy your beverage in a plush chair in the lobby bar where you can purchase 12 ounces of Miller Lite for three dollars.

You can do many things in a room as fine as this and—if you’re paying for it— you should. It’s costing you $225 a night; check-out time is noon. One thing you can do (and you can do this even if someone else—let’s say a rock group with money to burn—is paying for Suite 619 for the sole purpose of you spending an hour with a musician) is spend an hour with a musician.

Which is what I did; the musician being Nikki Sixx, bass player, songwriter and spokesman for Motley Crue, the world’s most despised band and the band that’s worked hardest to convince the world they are despicable. To say that many see the Crue as sexist morons and musical imbeciles is actually going pretty easy on these guys. They’re a true anathema. Tipper Gore, the well-known musicologist, once recited some of their lyrics to me (“Livewire” and “Too Young To Fall In Love”) and I believe she did it off the top of her head. Singer Vince Neil has been quoted in newspapers as saying things like: “Oh, we’re so glad to be in Albuquerque—our only regret is we can’t eat all the pussy we see here tonight.” What’s more, he’s been reliably quoted. That the same man was behind the wheel in a car accident that killed Nicholas Dingley of Hanoi Rocks and seriously injured two others has been widely reported. Driving under the influence, Neil was—in addition to a few other punishments—ordered to pay $2.6 million to the injured parties.

But that was over a year ago. Now, Neil is back on the road, so to speak, and Motley Crue’s sort of back on track. Their Chicago concert was sold out...but, then, most of their concerts are. Their fans almost literally worship them, much as their detractors vociferously deride them.

So, are they worth all this hullabaloo?

Frankly, I doubt it. Their three albums—now there’s a voluminous body of work for you—are undistinguished. Let’s face it: when Mick Jagger was about their age he was singing songs of everlasting innuendo (“She said she liked the way I held the microphone”) that make the Crue’s stuff sound like it was written by a moderately-imaginative dishwasher, which Nikki Sixx used to be. (A dishwasher, I mean, not moderately imaginative.) Their shows are punctuated with great bursts of flame and continuous dynamite charges, but that only means they can afford such things. Besides, it diverts your attention from their songs, which are (as mentioned) undistinguished.

I imagine they’re worth looking at for sociological reasons, like Bob Greene did in Esquire—unfortunately, not the issue on the glass coffee table in Suite 619. Let’s do that, shall we?

• • •

Nikki Sixx is tall, slow and at ease. He talks in a teen-aged drawl that combines a certain ersatz ingenuity with a load of aggravating repetition. Even here, offstage in Suite 619, he wears cut-off leather gloves. He says his real name is Nikki Sixx and that he’s 26 years old.

Therefore, you can believe some of what he says, I guess.

“I remember, when I was a kid, listening to the radio and hearing ‘Big Bad John’ by Jimmy Dean—and it just blew me away,” the 26-year-old says. ‘‘I used to sit there and call the radio stations and request that song. And then—the Beatles were obviously out already, but I really didn’t know about the Beatles. I remember I ran across some Beatles’ tapes—fucking wimpy. Except I kept listening to ‘Helter Skelter,’ I remember that One, which we covered on our album (Shout At The Devil). Then I found the Rolling Stones, and I says, ‘This is getting better’—and it just kept getting better, y’know? Gettin’ heavier. And I always liked that more punchy stuff. But it all started with that one song that had that big, baritone voice. Y’know, it sounded big! It sounded rough. I always liked that. You can’t say why you like it, you just do.”

Wow...from Jimmy Dean to Motley Crue. Talk about entropy. How could the famous balladeer and future sausageer know what he was unleashing when he wrote ‘‘Big Bad John” on an airplane en route to a Nashville recording session? (Chronology fans, please don’t write to remind me that ‘‘Big Bad John” was released in 1961, when Nikki Sixx was two years old, because I know that. Write to Nikki Sixx instead.)

His favorite albums, at least, were released after the JFK assassination...Nikki cites AC/DC’s Highway To Hell, the Beatles’ White Album (strictly on the inclusion of ‘‘Helter Skelter,” one must suppose) and Motley Crue’s Shout At The Devil as three of music’s greatest, adding (in re Shout): ‘‘Ha ha ha ha; aw, piss someone off with that one.”

Yeah, it’s pretty much the height of outrage. I can practically see some of our elderly readers turning purple, clutching their chests and expiring right there in the recliner. Of course, the Motleys feel obliged to piss you off, whoever the hell “you” are, and I reckon they do more shouting at those who could care less about the existence of Motley Crue than they do at the devil. In fact, I proposed that I write the following: “These guys really suck; they’ve never done anything of substance.”

I love what

“That’s fine!” he enthused.

“They hate women—”

“That’s fine!”

“—and they’re the worst influence ever on anybody,” I concluded.

“Please print that,” Nikki Sixx requested.

Consider it printed, my man. You guys are some bad dudes. Scum, in fact. Your music is puerile. You violate every convention of civility ever invented. You’re sick. You’re rich.

“First of all, let me explain something: I’m not incredibly rich,” said Nikki Sixx. I stole the Neiman-Marcus catalogue from Suite 619 myself, just as a memento.

• • •

A cold, cold rain pelted the Chicago area as five of us got into a limousine. Two were Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee, the Crue’s drummer. Two were their managers, Doc McGhee and Doug Thaler. The last was me, the magazine thief.

A limousine, you understand, is large and comfortable and a fine way to travel if you’re incredibly rich, or even if you’re not. This particular limo had a phone in the back and a tape deck within reach of Tommy Lee, who was playing some hardcore tapes. At least three of us (Lee, Sixx and myself; dunno about the managers) were bored and antsy and cursing the northbound flow of traffic. Lee’s thrash tape—of exceptionally poor fidelitycontinued playing.

“Remember when you asked me what bothered me?” Sixx said. ‘‘That bothers me.” Me, too. I mentioned the idea of rating records, which we’d talked about some back in the hotel.

“Why don’t we just title the next album with all their ratings?” suggested the bass player. “We’ll just call it D/A/O/X or whatever they want—that should make ’em happy.” I thought it was a good idea and said so; nobody else seemed particularly thrilled.

The long ride continued, as did the boredom and claustrophobia. Many stories were spun and many comments were made. Tommy Lee referred to Yngwie Malmsteem as “Yngwie Bumsteen.” Humor flowed. The guys asked me who I’d last interviewed and I said Howard Jones. “It could’ve been worse,” said Nikki Sixx. “It could’ve been Tears For Fears.” The amiable Doc addressed the marketing of Dokken thusly: “If Elektra put a million bucks behind my album, it’d go gold, too.” Nikki said—in regard to Prince—“I hope that slimeball falls on his ass.” A fitting fate for slimeballs, I think we can agree. Some* one mentioned it was curious that W.A.S.P. sell records until they play a town. W.A.S.P. are friends of the Crue’s, according to both Nikki Sixx and Blackie Lawless. It was a pretty weird ride.

Back at the hotel, I’d given Nikki Sixx a ‘frinstance: ’‘You’re a bunch of dunderheads and your I.Q., put together, is 90, all four of you. So, do you give a shit?”

“Fuck no,” he quipped. Ml |ove what I’m doing and I wouldn’t change for anything. I’m having a blast and I think the people that give us the respect are the people that I really do care about. That’s the fans.”

When the long ride ended—finally— dozens of those fans were grouped at the back of the arena, the place where the limos slide in, carrying the stars. The fans, standing in a torrential, frigid downpour, recognized Tommy Lee, who was sitting at the left rear window. Lee rolled down the window and yelled, ‘‘Yeahhh—sex!,” thrusting his arm in the air. The fans went berserk. Lee rolled up the window and looked at Nikki Sixx.

"Cunts,” he said, in an unmistakably harsh tone.

A weird ride, like I said before.

• • •

Well, I’ve gotta admit the Crue show ed me a good time at the Rosemont Horizon. Nikki Sixx took me onstage during the soundcheck to show me their pyrotechnics and bizarre, angular stage.

I met Vince Neil there. He was drinking a glass of water.

I was drinking many beers, courtesy of Motley Crue. I met Mick Mars, who was slumped on a couch backstage. He ended up giving me a bunch of personalized Mick Mars guitar picks and some souvenir "Welcome To The Theatre Of Pain” tour programs for my kids. (The book’s really a high-quality item, but it’s got some strange information in its pages. For example, it says that Mick Mars’s “most terrifying experience” was “getting the shit kicked out of me by a couple of black guys.” Is it less terrifying to get the shit kicked out of you by a couple of white guys? Black girls? An octoroon and an Arab?)

I told them that I’d read somewhere that someone had counted the flash explosions in Dio’s latest show—there were more than a hundred.

“We have 116,” Nikki Sixx said. “Write that down.” Yes, sir\

Sixx bemoaned their fate when I mentioned that the Crue were possibly becoming less than the coolest, what with a ballad like “Home Sweet Home” on their latest LP. “First we were mass murderers for doing ‘Helter Skelter,’ then we were Satan worshippers and now we’ve wimped out.” You just can’t win,

I guess. Nikki was enthusiastic about their video(s) (there’s several versions) of “Home Sweet Home,” though. In fact, he was so enthusiastic that he took me out to their bus to show it to me. “Watch for the lesboes right at the very beginning,” he advised me with some fervor. Yep, there they were, all right.

(Another concept enjoying a critical vogue these days is that Motley Crue are homophobes. Part of this is because of a run-in they had with Deborah Frost, who was working on a story about them for People—a story that People never published. Nikki Sixx remembered her as a “lesbian body-builder,” at which point I asked him if they were, indeed, homophobes.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“That’s people who are afraid of homosexuals because they fear their own homosexual tendencies,” I explained.

“Hey, man, if that’s what people wanna do, that’s fine with me. I don’t really care what people do.”

“Well, what about your, uh, effeminate clothes?” I asked.

“Hey, man, I like to look good, I wear make-up,” said Nikki. “Shit, President George Washington used to wear a wig and make-up. I mean, c’mon. If he can do it, I can do it.”

It’s true. Shout at the Hessians.)

During their concert, Vince Neil haul ed out the usual lines (“How many perverts we got here tonight, huh?”; “As I remember it, there ain’t nothin’ like Chicago pussy, huh, boys?”; “You’re impressin’ the fuck out of me tonight, Chicago”) and the bombastic show—I really must thank the roadie who warned me to cover my ears before each explosion—culminated with their quirkily speeded-up (and, to be honest, kind of lousy) version of “Jailhouse Rock.”

Is that the most amazing song in the world to sing when the guy knows he’s got to spend 30 days in jail as part of his sentence for the drunk driving rap? I mean, Jesus.

“We’re doing it every night and we’re, like, recording it almost every night we can—and then we’re gonna put it on the next album,” said Nikki Sixx. I asked Mick Mars if Neil felt “uncomfortable” doing that particular song.