TOMMY LEE

What a ride it's been! Decadent, hell-raising, hard-driving debauchery: TOMMY LEE has established himself as the uber-showman of the hard rock & heavy metal circuit.  The Crue may be retiring, but Tommy continues to push the envelope of what live drumming entails.  While he hits the skins with reckless abandon, it's Tommy's knack for experimentation and innovation and early embrace of social & emerging media that more accurately define him.    

All these years later, Tommy Lee continues to exemplify Motley Crue with his death-defying, devil-be-damned mentality he's delivered since Day 1, when he formed Motley Crue with bassist, Nikki Sixx, in 1981.  Together, the Crue set off the next wave of California dreaming, as rock bands with stars in their eyes hightailed it to the Sunset Strip to benefit from the gold rush.  Suddenly every label was looking for the next Motley Crue: dangerous and destructive.  Glam metal! Only in a world where grit and fear are beautiful. Crue shows operated on a level of (barely) controlled chaos, as they mixed powerful, ear-splitting performances with elevated theatrics.  

Being from Detroit, when we think of The Bad Boys, the Pistons of the early 80's come to mind.  Outside of professional sports, however, around the same time, another Crue was staking their claim, selling out arenas and earning championships of a different sort.  Tommy's memoir, Tommyland (published in 2004), provides an intimate, brutally candid glimpse into the inner workings of one of modern rock's most notorious bands.        

Cutting edge, cultivation of expressive personality, and genre-bending interpration of percussion performance: that's Tommy Lee--carver and currator  of his own influencial nitche.  Tommy has all the talent in the world, but it's his incorporation of technology and thirst to create spectacle that puts him on a platform with no peers.  While we're looking forward to his future EDM/DJ projects, collaborations with peers (like Billy Corgan), and session work coming out of his base of operations, Atrium Studio, but there's no down-playing his last-ever show in the D with The Crue.  Take my word, we can throw one helluva funeral service.  Bring on the Cruecifly!