JOHN CORABI Doesn't Measure Success By The Size Of His Bank Account: 'If That's How I'm Judging It, Then I've Failed Miserably'

During a recent appearance on the Bumping Into That Sound podcast, ex-MÖTLEY CRÜE frontman John Corabi, who joined the band in 1992 as the replacement for original singer Vince Neil, was asked if there has ever been a time when he thought to himself, 'That's it. I've made it. I can take the foot off the accelerator." He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "No. Well, let me say this. It depends on how you look at life. Now, I could sit here and pull my fucking hair out because my bank account doesn't look the same as [MÖTLEY CRÜE bassist] Nikki Sixx's or [AEROSMITH singer] Steven Tyler's. If that's how I'm judging it, then I've failed miserably. But the one thing that I will say, and it doesn't make me any less hungry, but I'm hungry for different things.

"I remember having a conversation with Nikki when we were sitting back and we were listening to the MÖTLEY record that I did — the main one — and we were just all sitting there, like, 'Fuck.' All of us felt like that record, it was just strong. And I made a comment, like, 'Well, fellas, whether this thing sells five copies or five million, we did a fucking great job.' And Nikki got pissed about that comment.

"I wasn't measuring [success] by album sales; I was measuring it by the quality of what I felt we achieved musically," he continued. "And Nikki took offense to it. 'That's a lame attitude to have.' And I go, 'No, it's not. I'm just saying from a musical point of view, I think we can did a pretty good job here.' Now, again, if I sat and I looked at it from a monetary thing, do I have the success that Nikki has? No. I don't live in a 10,000-square-foot mansion. I live in a 1,500-square-foot home that I feel is very comfortable. It's me and my wife. I've been married three times, so my kids are all grown up. They don't live here. It's me and my wife and three dogs. I have a cool caravan. I have a couple of cool Harley-Davidsons. We have Jeeps, a truck, and I have a huge backyard for the three dogs that I have to just go out and play and run and throw a ball to them and do my thing.

"Hey, look, would I love to be able to walk up to a fucking Maserati dealership and buy one? Yeah, sure. I mean, who wouldn't? But I'm not gonna let the money thing get me crazy.

"We own everything that I just said," Corabi added. "So I have a very comfortable life. I have a beautiful wife. Everybody's healthy. My kids are healthy. My grandkids are healthy. Everybody's good. So it all depends on how you measure success. Now, do I feel like…? I sit down and I listen to songs like [QUEEN's] 'Bohemian Rhapsody' or I listen to [LED ZEPPELIN's] 'Stairway To Heaven' or I listen to 'Still The Same' by Bob Seger, and I just listen to these brilliant songs and I go, 'Fuck. I still haven't written that song.' So I'm my own worst enemy. I listen to guys like Bob Seger and I go, 'Fuck, that guy's a genius lyrically. He's a genius as a songwriter.' I listen to, like I said, 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. I wanna dig [late QUEEN singer] Freddie Mercury up and punch him in the face and then put him back in the ground again. So there's that part of it that I'm driven by. I need to write what I consider that song, whatever it is. And it's always gonna be there. You're always moving hopefully up and forward, instead of backwards and down. So that part of it is how I measure success.

"I feel like this last DEAD DAISIES record we did [2024's 'Light 'Em Up'] is — there's a growth there. I feel like we're growing. We keep getting better. We keep getting better and faster in the studio. We know what we want. But I'm already looking forward to the next record, like, 'Okay, how can we top what we just did?', from a statement point of view. Financially, and especially now in this day and age with streaming and people not really buying records anymore, it's, like, fuck, who knows what's gonna happen? My chances of earning that MÖTLEY money or AEROSMITH money or ROLLING STONES money is slim to none. But who knows?"

With Corabi on vocals, MÖTLEY CRÜE released one critically acclaimed full-length CD, which ended up being a commercial failure in the wake of grunge despite a Top 10 placing on the album chart. When Neil returned to the fold in 1997, Corabi was left on his own and formed the band UNION with ex-KISS guitarist Bruce Kulick.

In February 2018, Corabi released a live album of his performance of MÖTLEY CRÜE's entire 1994 self-titled album, recorded on October 27, 2015 in Nashville, Tennessee. "Live '94: One Night In Nashville" documents the album in its entirety along with the bonus track "10,000 Miles", which was originally released as a bonus track on the Japanese version of the "Quaternary" EP.

Corabi's autobiography, "Horseshoes And Hand Grenades", was written with the help of MÖTLEY CRÜE historian/author Paul Miles, and was made available in June 2022 via Rare Bird Books.

Corabi was previously asked how he measures success in a January 2022 interview with The Rock Experience With Mike Brunn. He said at the time: "I learned a very hard, valuable lesson when I was in MÖTLEY. Obviously, everybody knows what the [1994 self-titled] record did or didn't do. The tour was a nightmare. I was the new ingredient, and then I left. And the one thing that I learned was when I left the band, my phone stopped ringing. And it was kind of a harsh reality. I was the guy that was invited to all the parties, the backstage things, 'Let's go in a limo,' 'Let's do this,' 'Let's go to the Playboy mansion,' 'Let's do that,' and then the minute they made the announcement that Vince [Neil, original MÖTLEY singer] was back, if I wanted to have a message on my answering machine, I had to call myself. And it's weird. I just sat there and I went, you know what? It's really just about waking up in the morning, the fact that you wake up and you open your eyes, it's a good day; it's a healthy day.

"I have a small group — not a large group — but I have a small group of friends and family around me that are incredibly supportive of me, but they're also honest enough with me and just straightforward and we have a great relationship to the point where they can say to me, 'You know what, Crab? You're being a fucking idiot. Back the fuck up.' And I go, 'Okay. Mental check. Head check. Boom.' So I have a beautiful family around me."

He continued: "It's funny because sometimes I do look at things and I go, 'Okay, what am I doing wrong? Why can't I sell records? Why can't I be like Nikki Sixx? Or Steven Tyler? All these guys. Why am I not driving around in a Lamborghini?'

"I always tell everybody, if you can draw an imaginary straight, horizontal line and say everything above it is fame and everything below it is obscurity, I've literally been scraping my back on that line my whole career.

"But the MÖTLEY thing really made me look at the importance of, you know what? You do the best you can, fight for the things that you can change, fight for the things that you can make better, and then there's just some things, man, that are out of your control. You can't change it. I can't change the fact that when I was in [the pre-MÖTLEY band] THE SCREAM, I had no idea I was gonna get a call to join MÖTLEY. I had no idea that MÖTLEY was gonna bring Vince back. And I had no idea that my first record deal — and the MÖTLEY record — would come at the height of the music industry completely changing again."

Corabi added: "Honestly, it's the hand that I was dealt. I played it. I didn't win that hand. On to the next hand. And that's what I'm doing now, man. I just tell myself every day, I sit there and I go, 'You know what? Fuck, man. I've been doing this for 30-plus years.' There's guys that go through their whole life that don't get one record deal. I had one with THE SCREAM, one with MÖTLEY, one with UNION, THE DEAD DAISIES, even the solo [stuff]. So I'm, like, fuck, I've had five record deals and I'm still going, still releasing music, and people like you still wanna talk to me. So I went, 'You know what? Life's not that bad.'"