JOHN CORABI: 'I'm Grateful To MÖTLEY CRÜE For Making That Phone Call' And Asking Me To Join

Former MÖTLEY CRÜE frontman John Corabi, who joined the band in 1992 as the replacement for original singer Vince Neil, reflected on his time with the group in a new interview with Australia's "Scars And Guitars" podcast. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "The funny thing of it is I get these fans that… 'Cause I guarantee you part of this interview is gonna end up on a web site like Blabbermouth. It is what it is, and I'm fine with it; I don't give a shit. The funny thing of it is these fans will sit there and make these comments, like, 'Oh my God, dude. Fuck, it was 27 years ago. Leave it alone. Why don't you move on? Why don't you get your own life?' And the odd thing is… I don't really say to anybody, 'Hey, you can interview me, but don't ask me about this, this, this or…' My life is an open book. I don't care. I'm proud of everything that I've done. I respect everything that I've done. I have no regrets. And at the end of the day, though, I don't even think about that stuff."

"I try to liken my life to driving a car. I did the MÖTLEY thing. I did [my pre-MÖTLEY CRÜE band] THE SCREAM. Who knew I was gonna get into MÖTLEY? I did that. Who knew Vince was gonna come back? And I did UNION. And who knew that Bruce [Kulick, Corabi's UNION bandmate] was gonna join GRAND FUNK RAILROAD [and] I was gonna get an offer [to play with] RATT? Everything happened for whatever the universe's reasons were it happened. And at the end of the day, I feel like if you're in a car and you're moving the car forward, it's kind of important to look forward. If the car is moving forward and you're looking in the rearview mirror behind you, you're looking in the past and it's not gonna end well because you're not paying attention to what's going on in front of you."

With Corabi on vocals, MÖTLEY CRÜE released one critically acclaimed full-length CD, which ended up being a commercial failure in the wake of grunge despite a Top 10 placing on the album chart. When Neil returned to the fold in 1997, Corabi was left on his own and formed UNION with Kulick.

"I think the record that we did, it was a joint effort; it was four guys that got together in a room," John told "Scars And Guitars". "I don't know if my attitude, I don't know if it was my guitar playing, I don't know if it was my vocals, I don't know if it was my contributions to lyrics — I don't know what it is. All I know is we all together sat in a room for almost a year and we just jammed and we wrote and we re-wrote. And we did all this stuff. And then we sent the stuff to [producer] Bob Rock and he loved it. And he said, 'Let's do this.' And then, honestly, we got up with Bob Rock and we took everything that we sent him and we stripped it down to its barest form and we started building it again.

"Now, I'm proud of the record," Corabi clarified. "I'm grateful to MÖTLEY CRÜE for actually making that phone call. Contrary to popular belief, I have zero bones against anybody in the band. I've pretty much talked to just about everybody in the band but [bassist] Nikki [Sixx], and that's for whatever reasons; that's his choice, that's his choosing. And you know what? Great. Awesome. Sorry, dude. Whatever.

"I don't regret anything," John repeated. "I'm just trying to do my best. I'm writing new music. I'm coming to Australia. The fact that people still want me to come and play for them is a blessing. The fact that I'm still doing new music and people are downloading it and streaming it and excited about when the CD and the vinyl comes out is a blessing. [My upcoming autobiography] is a blessing. And I'm just moving forward, man. So I don't even think about any of that stuff, to be honest with you."

In a 2016 interview with Sweden Rock Magazine, Sixx said that writing the "Mötley Crüe" LP with Corabi was a prolonged and difficult experience. He went to call it "a very unfocused record" that was "painful for me, because John Corabi can't write lyrics, and I had to do all that work."

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.

Corabi recently completed work on his autobiography. Titled "Horseshoes And Hand Grenades", it was written with the help of MÖTLEY CRÜE historian/author Paul Miles, and is due this month via Rare Bird Books.