Mötley Crüe

Let's get one thing straight about Mötley Crüe: the Sunset Strip survivors didn't sell more than 80 million albums worldwide simply by being a hedonistic hair-metal band. They did it by delivering massive singles, like “Dr. Feelgood,” “Shout At the Devil,” and “Girls, Girls, Girls" — the sort of spandex-optional songs that sound like absolute anthems from the very second you press play. And like all great rock 'n' rollers before them, the Crüe have always been the real deal, from their leather-and-lipstick look to their Keith Richards-like ability to survive decades of partying like it's in their job description. No wonder why the spot-on power balladry of “Home Sweet Home” sounds so natural. Mötley Crüe's career didn’t begin and end in the ’80s, either. As our Next Steps reveals, L.A.’s spike-studded pop stars were still around to toast the town in 2008.

Born to rock? How about storming the scene like a wild-eyed love child of Alice Cooper and the New York Dolls? That’s what Mötley Crüe did on their 1981 debut, Too Fast for Love — deliver a slab of glam-metal goodness, guided by seared guitar solos, crowd-riling choruses, and, quite literally, an “On With the Show” attitude. (Let’s put it this way: when they were still playing clubs, bassist Nikki Sixx thought it was a good idea to set his pants on fire.) Eight albums and 17 years later, the Crüe showed no signs of slowing down, either, as they channeled a best-selling autobiography into total throwback tracks like “Face Down In the Dirt” and “M**********r of the Year.” And the frantic fan favorites continue in our Deep Cuts, from the Crüe’s early days right on through their golden years.

If you’ve ever wondered what Mötley Crüe would be like without their spotlight-stealing drummer Tommy Lee, New Tattoo’s got your answer. Backed by the frenzied fills of Ozzy Osbourne’s former hired gun Randy Castillo, the band tears through the Tubes’ “White Punks On Dope,” the high-octane hooks of “Hell On High Heels,” and a lighter-lifting title-track that takes a long, hard look at the everyday dudes behind all those liquor bottles and leather. And if that’s not enough to show you every side of L.A.’s fearsome foursome, Supersonic and Demonic Relics reveals such party-starting rarities as “Primal Scream” and “Planet Boom” — a beat-heavy song that wrecks subwoofers like Tommy Lee’s ongoing rap-rock project, Methods of Mayhem.

Nothing’s been able to derail Mötley Crüe’s rock ’n’ roll dreams for the past three decades. Not even the near-death experience that Nikki Sixx details in “Kickstart My Heart,” a rail-jumping reminder of the adrenaline shots that rebooted his heart after a heroin overdose. And while most hair-metal heroes fell victim to the flannel-clad wrath of grunge, the Crüe kept raising hell with a pair of gold albums — Generation Swine and a self-titled brush with the cleanup chords and something-to-prove singing of the Scream’s John Corabi. But the Scream singer didn't last long in their lineup, proving there’s nothing quite like the pryo-trailed peaks of Tommy, Mick, Nikki, and Vince, from their first MTV hit (the fist-pumping gang choruses and anvil-like licks of “Looks That Kill”) to the barrage of arena-filling battering rams (“Dr. Feelgood,” “Shout At the Devil”) that earned the band five straight platinum albums.