One From The Grave: Too Fast for Love
May 20 2009 at 03:00:41 AM  Destin, Florida. 1984. Far too cool for sand and waves with the folks and sister. A stack of Circus mags, Walkman and countless cassettes: Metal Health, Number of the Beast, Blackout, Women & Children First, Blizzard of Oz. I hadn’t been able to shake the Crue’s first two. I’d listened to Too Fast for Love all the way down to the coast, watching the pines turn slowly to palms, smelling the salt in the air. Endlessly rewound “Live Wire” back to Mars’ opening riff, a lightning razor jab bisected by Lee’s snare/floor-tom combo. The video’s trappings hung in my head. Cobwebbed images of drifting mist, skulls, candelabras, a stone drum riser of pitch black: They may as well have been Mortuary Drape. The get-ups, part post-apocalyptic Fredrick’s of Hollywood transvestitism, part Mad Max. Codpieces, studs, spikes, tall black leather boots lifted from Vanity 6, Klute, Barbarella. Hair bleach burnt or inked blue black, teased, shocked, fried, ironed into lifeless flatlines. Dudes glomming this much glam best perform. So they did. No one could rock a kit like Lee. He bashed hard as Bonzo, but loaded each song’s trunk with so much funk it had to burn its tires to wire just to get started. Sixx palsied and pulsed and throbbed in time, a massive vinyl glans threatening climax. Vince worked either as a six-beer biker come-on or the screeching banshee he-she; sometimes both blurred beatifically together – see/hear the Crue’s 1983 US Festival performance for uproarious results. Mick “The Real Deal” Mars, though… Mars has always been my Keiji Haino. A Stone Giant. A Dragon Lord. Skin of leather, blood of poison. Marbled reptilian eyes sunken behind an Oakley’s welder mask. Black 501s 10 sizes too small, stitched to seat, groin, thigh and calf. A mink frightwig soldered upon his head. The self-proclaimed “loud, rude, aggressive” axe slayer transformed jejune reworkings of Sweet and Slade into technicolor pillow-talk for the teenage psyche. When unleashed in vivo, Mars conjured quick Castle Grayskull from fathoms-deep flange, a writhing mess of bent harmonics hammered into phrase repetition and then mangled into meaninglessness. Bic lighters held aloft woke the expired. The parents up at dawn; loaded the car with sunscreen, towels, cooler, umbrella. I opted out; headed to the pool made more enticing with an arcade enhanced by preternaturally loud juke. Ten dollars in quarters fed to Defender Stargate, Robotron, Joust. “Live Wire” played endlessly. Every girl barley covered in sparkly silver bikini and tattered concert tee: Priest, Crue, Dokken, Van Halen. Perms, frosted silver bangs, retainers clicking against their teeth, copper-toned skin fragrant with Hawaiian Tropic, Noxzema. Word was Eric Carr was lounging poolside, surrounded by adoring concubines, a side-table of depleted frozen drink trophies. It was true; he was even wearing his fingerless gloves in the midst of oven temps. I asked him to sign my Panama Jack painter’s cap. He pointed to my Walkman, asked me what I was listening to. Not Lick It Up, I said. Kiss dove willingly into the cartoonish, gender-bending soft-core. Attempts to further sexualize the band on a downslide proved laughable. The Crue was ably beating them at their own game – taking their trappings, reappropriating them within the boundless smut of endless Hollywood Blvd night. The LP’s title alone a standard only dared in manic whispers from lesser hair-farming, cock-rocking ensembles prior. Too Fast for Love your folks figured out long before you did. The Sticky Fingers cover art homage left little to the imagination: Vince’s leather covered crotch front and center. That’s a wrap. Maybe your mom stared far too long at it; I’m sure she wasn’t alone. Explain away… The White Knight notion was waste-basketed; Crue’s conquest was the attainment of “physical pureness:” Dispense with the emotive, heady side of sex; open yourself up to a world of interlocking cock ‘n’ cunt bookended with stretching swathes of self-degradation. Sounds almost like a typically selfless and wholly eastern take on S&M-less S&M. Don the ‘fits; let’s “interface.” See/hear “Ten Seconds to Love” for part two of Crue’s Fleischgeist. Meanwhile… “Fast and slick / Well, she’s cool and clean / In a Pepsi sheen / She’s a leather tease / She’s on top / Well, she can’t be stopped / Watch her scream / Watch her suck you clean,” Vince sneers in “Come On and Dance,” one of the more robustly carnal tunes in the program, augmented with what Tyler Davis rightly refers to as Lee’s “poetic” use of Latin Percussion cowbell. Infinitely out slow-riding “Slow Ride,” the song thrusts along with the sloppy precision of two teenage pelvises slapping together, Lee magnificently embellishing Caveman Rudd’s more linear eye-on-the-prize drum work. “Merry-Go-Round” pairs bedroom acoustic with sky-soaring electric. Lee’s cymbals crash waves. Vince “sings,” and we almost choke on the stench wafting from sticky floor and wall of embalmed LA nightclub’s past: Standing bathroom stall coitus. Anthills of coke. Hoop earrings large enough to run a tractor-trailer through. Despite “Piece of Your Action,” “Take Me to the Top,” and a host of other grinders, “Live Wire” is the undisputed King of Sleaze. Sixx does his best Dusty Hill while Lee and Mars catamite. The riff here is motherfucking museum piece archetype, shatteringly shined chrome, a pussy and leather reek worse than any dungeon hosted fetish fest this side of Interzone. Let’s heap some praise upon producer Michael Wagener, who helped fire the clay of a conspicuous array of anti-heroes: Accept, Dokken, Metallica. The displaced Kraut favored an oft-imitated rash-raw sound, each instrument given equal level, bass, guitar, and drums sequestered to the sort of serendipity found only by tinkerless tinkering. Wagener recognized Crue’s strengths; he enhanced them ten-fold and fitted Vince with a Siberian coat of reverb. “Live Wire” is his meisterwerk, sounding simultaneously as stadium anthem and wee-hours house party rawk. Lee’s choked cymbals, cowbell thumps, clicking hi-hats provide breathers for a riff as vicious as it is saturnalian. “Cause I’m hot, young, running free / A little bit better than I used to be.” The Elektra pressing omitted the killer “Stick to Your Guns,” which manages to sound like a mash up of every song that precedes it, all while featuring some of Sixx’s more dust-addled fingering. Appropriately, Lee’s cowbell claps continually over the track’s length, his ride bell decaying over the song’s end. For me, it never really ended. Inextricably bound to awkward adolescent yearning – and better for it – Too Fast for Love will never shake its locus-centric quality. Unavoidably Proustian and undeniably pathetic in its soul-crunching bathos, the LP maintains its vision through chlorine-irritated eyes. Every play an 80s abracadabra surrounding its listeners with winsome sweet sixteens odiferous as walking Piña Coladas. “So come now, children of the Beast / Be strong / And…” [Stewart Voegtlin] Motley Crue
Too Fast for Love 1981 Leathur / Elektra 
type: reviews
keywords:
heavy metal,
one from the grave,
leather,
lhp026,
rawk,
codpiece,
cowbell,
pussy,
snatch,
snapper,
hollywood,
live wire,
salad days,
Comments (6) |
RSS FEEDS
TWITTER
print
email
list
big
small
Tommy's drumming is perfect on Too Fast... but I like his sound more on Shout. "Red Hot;" "Shout...;" the opening Bonzo rip on "Too Young..." all just the shit.
True.
LHP rules! Where else can you read great reviews for Motley Crue and Teitanblood!?!
I didn't like "Shout..." either until recently. The opening kick and bass coupling is just nasty, and the dbl-time fade out is so fucking ROCK.
And to think Sixx' initial vision for the "Shout" stage setup/live show was to be a cross between a nazi rally and a black mass...