Tommy Quits Crue!!

I got this 4/29/99 4:30pm E.S.T. from Motley.com

MOTLEY CRUE DRUMMER TOMMY LEE DEPARTS BAND

Motley Crue has asked Guns N Roses drummer Matt Sorum to fill-in for the summer tour.

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CRUE CHOOSES RANDY CASTILLO AS DRUMMER FOR SUMMER TOUR

LOS ANGELES, CA May 7, 1999 – Motley Crue has chosen Randy Castillo as their drummer for the 40-city summer amphitheatre tour set to kick-off on June 29. According to Nikki Sixx, bassist of Motley Crue, "Randy is the best drummer we know—he’s known for being a hard-hitting rock drummer and we’re thrilled for him to out with us." Castillo has most recently played with Ozzy Osbourne and is looking forward to the "Maximum Rock" summer tour, "I got a call from Nikki and couldn’t think of a better way to spend my summer than playing with Motley Crue. I’ve been a fan for years and look forward to being a part of the madness."

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Subject: A POST FROM TOMMY.......
Date: 5/15/99 4:15 AM Eastern Daylight Time
From: LPP 11
Message-id: <19990515041554.04490.00000857@ng-fa1.aol.com>

Hi. This is Tommy Lee.

First, thanks for all your personal notes, business advise, and predictions. Some of your notes were very positive and supportive. Some of them were very critical. All of them got me thinking.

Some of you think I'm going to do great. Some of you think I'm going to crash and burn. I learned a lot of things in the last year. One of them is that predictions generally say more about the one who's talking then they say about the one who's being talked about. I'll try to stay positive.

There were some good notes and some that were painful and hard to read. For example, one note said, "You're only a drummer. You're not a family man."

That really got me thinking. Yeah, I'm a drummer. And I've worked hard (and played hard) and I've been lucky enough to enjoy a lot of success at that. But I'm not "only a drummer." I'm lots of other things.

I'm more than what gets seen through the mean, green, one-eyed monster publicity machine.

The simple truth is I am a family man. Sitting in jail last year for those many months, I realized just how much of a family man I really am. I missed my wife and I missed my sons. I'm a husband to an exciting and beautiful woman. I'm a father to two incredibly beautiful boys. I'm also a son to my own Mom and Dad. I write about being a father and also being a son at the same time, in one of the songs on my new CD. I'm also a brother to my sister, who's also a drummer and a wife and a mother. So I'm also an Uncle to her kids. I'm a friend to a few people. Sometimes we get along, sometimes we don't. There are times when friendships can be hard. I'm sure as I work at it I'll get

More than "only a drummer" I'm a musician. I also play keyboard and guitar and I write songs. Nikki and I wrote almost all the songs on the Motley Crue CD's. Sometimes, even though I try not to, I have to be a businessman. Music is a pretty crazy business. It can keep you guessing and wishing and regretting a lot, if you don't make good decisions.

Like you, I'm a consumer and a fan. I buy lots of CD's by other musicians. I listen to just about everything from Rock to Rap; from Opera to Enigma.
I enjoy it all and learn from it all. I'm still a student. My personal coach reminds me that I still have a lot to learn about a lot of things.

My decision to leave the band was not a rash, spur of the moment shot in the dark. That decision has been building inside me for the last three years. For the last couple of years I've felt a musical growth, a strong spiritual force pushing me in new musical directions that were not possible to explore with the band, as we were. I felt exciting new musical sounds in my heart. It can be hard to get three other guys in a band to share the new vision of one of them.

Something else happened in the last three years. I became a husband again and I fulfilled a life-long dream by becoming a dad.

One fan wrote that "old rockers shouldn't try to act too young — it's tacky." I agree. Nikki is also a dedicated husband and a father and we used to have long talks about what that meant to our lives and our futures. We knew we had to start thinking and doing things a little differently. We knew we had other people depending on us and we had to think differently about the future.

I was lucky in a strange way. A chain of bad events pulled me away from my new family of Pamela and my sons and from my old family of 18 years —
the other band members of Motley Crue. I was forced off the hard charging life style.

Suddenly all the fast motion and all the loud noise came to a dead stop. I had only the screaming silence of four cold stone walls, broken only by the metallic clang of heavy doors opened by guards who told me where to go and who I could talk to.

Sitting in jail gave me the rare and frightening opportunity to be alone with my thoughts and fears and regrets and my hopes for the future. It gave me a chance to take a careful look at the many business and financial webs that had been woven around Motley Crue. Were all those business deals really the best possible deals for me and the other guys in the band? Did those deals allow for us to change and grow as musicians? Did they help us to create a better future? Could I continue to be "only a rock drummer" and still create a new life with Pamela and my sons?

I didn't make any rash decisions about the band. I got out of jail and got right back on tour and back into the music. You fans were fantastic, with all your support.

Still, certain wheels were put in motion. My life had changed. I came closer than anyone should to losing it all — my family, my music, everything. Believe me when I say that last year absolutely change my life.

Motley Crue was a great band. We did some really good music. Fans will enjoy our music for a long time to come. And there's something about the Crue's music that probably should not change.

If everything with the Motley Crue and all the business deals were all good and could be made to work for a new future, I would have stayed with the band.

The harsh truth is that sometimes you just can't force old patterns into new directions. Sometimes you have to stop what you're doing in order to change directions. And that's what I felt I needed to do with my life. I needed to change directions because I didn't want to end up where I was headed with the old directions.

We all change. Life is all about change. Just about the only things on the planet that don't change are yesterday's newspapers and rocks. If you're alive, if you're above ground, you're lucky and you're changing. We all like to think we're changing for the better.

It's time for me to put some serious energy into being a good family man, a good husband, and a good dad to my boys. It's also time to expand myself as a musician. I always was a little more than "just a drummer" and now I want to work at being even more than I was. I'm working on my own CD. It'll be out in September. I'm exploring some new musical directions on the CD. I'm exploring new voices for rhythm and lyrics and sounds. The CD holds a lot of what I've learned in the last year. I think it also carries the hope for a better future for me and my family.

I hope you, the audience, likes what you hear.
Thanks again for all your support.

Tommy Lee
"Methods of Mayhem"

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