MÖTLEY CRÜE Guitarist: 'I've Got Probably A Thousand' Song Ideas That We Could Work From

ARTISTdirect.com editor Rick Florino recently conducted an interview with MÖTLEY CRÜE guitarist Mick Mars. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

ARTISTdirect.com: So how do you up the ante every night with the Las Vegas residency?

Mars: The more we do the show, the tighter and better it gets. You find little things and say, "Oh, this doesn't work. Let's tighten that up and do it this way instead of that way." We fix the little odd events that go wrong. Something might get stuck in the ceiling, and we watch out for that next time [Laughs]. It's real!

ARTISTdirect.com: Has MÖTLEY CRÜE always had a connection to Las Vegas?

Mars: Vince Neil lives here. We play here quite a bit. As far as gambling and all of that, I'm pretty much done. I stopped a long time ago when I lost a few thousand bucks or a little more [Laughs]. It's a cool city. There's so much amazing stuff going on. I remember this place way back in the late '50s and early '60s. I'd come here when I was a kid. I think the brightest lights I saw on the Strip came from the Flamingo Hotel. When I lived in Indiana, we drove out here and went through Las Vegas. We'd ride over the Hoover Dam. It was such a naïve kid, I wished there was snow on it so I could sled down it [Laughs].

ARTISTdirect.com: Does the setlist change nightly?

Mars: It stays steady. There may be some weird things that happen nightly. As far as the music goes, we play it in order. We play the hits and the "near misses" as Joe Walsh would say [Laughs]. Off the new album, there's a song or two. From the first album, we play "Too Fast For Love" and "Piece Of Your Action". We play "Afraid" from "Generation Swine" and things like that. We try to change it up some. However, if you've been to enough concerts, you'd get disappointed if AEROSMITH didn't play "Walk This Way". We've got the songs in there you want to hear.

ARTISTdirect.com: Have you started working on the next record?

Mars: Not yet, but we do have quite a few ideas. I work on my own at home. Nikki [Sixx, bass] does. Tommy [Lee, drums] does. Nikki will call me up and say, "Hey, I've got a great riff". I'll go, "Okay, send it over!" Tommy's the same way. Sometimes, we'll do some goofing around during soundcheck. Mostly, we put a lot into pre-production, adding different elements to the show. I have my riffs. I've got them all recorded. I have stacks of them on my Pro Tools. When tape was happening, I had stacks of tapes. I've got probably a thousand songs that we could work from. I'm sure Nikki does as well. Nowadays, it's easy because we can send a hard drive back and forth.

Read the entire interview from ARTISTdirect.com.