JOHN CORABI Bears No Ill Will Toward MÖTLEY CRÜE

Ruben Mosqueda of Sleaze Roxx recently conducted an interview with John Corabi, former lead singer of MÖTLEY CRÜE, THE SCREAM and UNION. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Sleaze Roxx: Moving on to the "Mötley Crüe" album; Glenn Hughes (DEEP PURPLE, BLACK SABBATH) sang background vocals on "Misunderstood". How did he wind up on that and is he featured in other songs?

John Corabi: He basically just did "Misunderstood". That was such a fluke. I'm a huge DEEP PURPLE fan, so when I first met Glenn, I was probably in the band about three weeks. Glenn and his girlfriend came in and I didn't recognize him right away. It's common knowledge that in the past Glenn has had "substance" issues. He had gone into rehab, cleaned himself up, and had gained some weight and cut his hair. I said, "Who is that English guy over there?" Tommy Lee said, "Dude, that's Glenn Hughes!" I'm like, "What?!" I went over introduced myself. At one of the rehearsals Glenn and I started jamming to some blues and we became friends. When we did the record, we recorded it in Vancouver and we were doing overdubs and mixing it in L.A. Glenn found out that we were at A&M Studios and he decided to come by the studio. Bob Rock is also a huge DEEP PURPLE fan and we're all sitting around bullshitting when Bob said, "Would you guys be cool if we had Glenn do some vocals?" I said, "Yeah that would be awesome! I'd love that!" It just so happen that the reels were up and that was the song that was on at the time because Bob had been working on that particular song. Bob said, "Hey, Glenn, would you like to do some vocals?" Glenn said, "Yeah, man, sure." Bob said, "Well how about this one?" Glenn said, "Yeah great." I swear to God, dude, if you know anything about recording at all — we were standing in the control room. Glenn went into the next room, the engineer set up a pair of headphones for him and a microphone, and he begins to test his vocals. Glenn said, "Alright, run it down one time. Let me hear it." So they play the song for him one time top to bottom and he's sitting there with his eye closed listening to the song. Glenn said, "Okay, cool, man, that's great. I got it. Awesome. Roll tape." He went through the song ONE TIME! What you hear on the record is what he came up with off the top of his head!

Sleaze Roxx: Are you saying it was one take?

John Corabi: Dude, it was one... is this being taped?

Sleaze Roxx: Yeah.

John Corabi: Okay, cool. ONE FUCKING TAKE! I'm like, "Holy shit! How? Are you fucking kidding me?" I could not believe that he had done this off the cuff and laid down this amazing vocal. We were sitting there looking at each other. Bob Rock was sitting there pissing himself laughing, saying, "I can't believe what just came out of this guy's mouth!" I got a chance to record with one of my heroes as far as rock and roll goes but also one of my vocal heroes. I'm a huge Glenn Hughes fan. From a vocal standpoint, Glenn Hughes is just a God. Ten days later, we had Billy Preston come in a play a bunch of keyboards for us on a bunch of shit. I was in my glory hanging out doing this record. It was amazing.

Sleaze Roxx: You're friendly with the guys in MÖTLEY CRÜE, right? How do you maintain a relationship after suing them?

John Corabi: To be quite honest with you, a lot of people don't realize that Nikki Sixx and I did BRIDES OF DESTRUCTION after the lawsuit. Nikki and I would fuck with each other during the writing of the BRIDES OF DESTRUCTION record and we'd have a disagreement. Nikki would look at me and say, "What are you gonna do? Sue me?!" We'd do that back and forth jokingly. I would look at him and say, "Only if you give me reason to!" [laughs] I know why I did it. I think Nikki knows why I did it. So does Tommy Lee and Mick Mars. We don't talk a lot on the phone. If I saw any of those guys, including Vince Neil, right now... Vince would say, "Hey, buddy, how are you doing? Let's go have a beer." We'd be fine. Nikki and I still have our moments when we get pissy with each other, but we're like brothers. I don't agree with everything that he does and he doesn't agree with everything that I do. You gotta do what's right for you and they gotta do what's right for them. I don't have any ill will — nothing at all toward those guys. Mick and I, about three months ago, had a three hour conversation about life, ours kids, our girlfriends, our health and there was some stuff that I never had a chance to sit down with Mick and discuss at great length. I wanted to explain to him things related to my exit from the band so he knew. He totally understood what I said and why I did some of the things that I did. We're fine. It's funny, Mick just did an interview for a music magazine and he was asked what his favorite album that he's recorded he said, "The one we did with John." We're fine. It's not like we're hanging out having dinner together, but we're fine.

Read the entire interview from Sleaze Roxx.