JOHN CORABI Says His Phone 'Stopped Ringing' After He Was Fired From MÖTLEY CRÜE

Holland's FaceCulture recently conducted an interview with former MÖTLEY CRÜE and current THE DEAD DAISIES singer John Corabi. You can watch the chat in three parts below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On his decision to perform MÖTLEY CRÜE's self-titled 1994 album in its entirety to celebrate the LP's twentieth anniversary:

Corabi: "I didn't even realize it. I was doing a show somewhere — it was with my solo band; it was in 2014 — and somebody in the audience yelled, 'Happy anniversary.' And I was looking around, going, 'What are you talking about?' So I'm on stage and I'm talking to this person. I go, 'What are you talking about?' And the person in the audience said, 'Your MÖTLEY record came out today in 1994.' And I was, like, 'Oh, that's cool,' you know, whatever, and I played a couple of songs from the record. My manager was there and his wheels started turning. And he said, 'You know, you guys never really toured on that record.' It was a very short period of time — maybe three months. And I said, 'Yeah.' And he goes, 'How do you feel about — this year — getting the guys in your band to learn that whole record and go out and do a little anniversary run?' And I wasn't sure at first, you know what I mean? I'm, like, 'Ugh, okay.' So I just threw it out there on Facebook. I'm like, 'Would you guys…?' and the fans overwhelmingly were, like, 'Yes! I never saw that tour.' We never came to Europe at all. We never played South America. We never played Canada. And there was a ton of places in America that we never played. We never played the West Coast. We never played the East Coast north of, like, Georgia. There was a bunch of places even in America we didn't play. So, overwhelmingly, everybody was, like, 'Yes! Please do it.' So I did for a while. And then the problem of bringing it here to Europe, I thought that maybe it would just take a few phone calls and I could get my band and bring them over to Europe and just do a whole bunch of shows and just knock it out. And, unfortunately, with things like visas for a lot of different countries, there's five guys. It's five hotel rooms, five meals every day, five airline tickets over and, every day, drink tickets or whatever. So it wound up, looking at the budget, and I'm, like, 'Wow! I don't know if I'm gonna be able to do this for the amount of money that the promoters are offering me.' So I just went, 'You know what? Let's put a cap on this. Let's just record it. I'll do a DVD, so it's a package thing — a DVD and the album together — and throw it out there and then I can just move on and just whatever. And if I can't personally bring the band to Europe, then people can see what it looked like and hear it as…' You know what I mean? So that's why we did it."

On whether revisiting the songs from MÖTLEY CRÜE's self-titled album brought back any memories:

Corabi: "Yeah, I was sitting there going… I was telling myself, 'What the fuck was I thinking, screaming all these [lyrics like], 'Smoke The Sky'?' I'm, like, 'I'm twenty years older now. I can't do this shit every day.' But, honestly, that whole record experience, being with MÖTLEY, it was fun, it was a great time. I had fun, and I'm very proud of the record, so why not?"

On whether it gets tiring being asked about MÖTLEY CRÜE in every interview:

Corabi: "No. It's just… When I say [I would like to] move on, I just meant… I guess the [upcoming live] record is just kind of, like, here it is. This is, hopefully, a great representation of what it would have sounded like had MÖTLEY toured all over the world. I think the guys in my band did a great job. My son is my drummer, so that's a lot of fun. And he literally studied the drums on that record, and he's pretty flawless with it, and the same with the two guitar players I have; they really studied every little thing. We didn't use any backing tapes. We didn't use any backing tapes or any backing vocals. I wanted it to sound like a band… like what MÖTLEY would have sounded like without any additional help. It's just stripped down, it is what it is, and here you go. And it's not that I wanna… I shouldn't say 'move on,' but I just [meant that I wanted to] move on from the idea of taking it all over the world. Because I'm realizing that, financially, it's a little easier said than done. So I can move on from that idea, and then… Now I'm doing THE DAISIES, I can do whatever."

On what he learned during his time with MÖTLEY CRÜE:

Corabi: "I think, at the end of the day, the one thing I did learn in MÖTLEY was… And Tommy [Lee, MÖTLEY CRÜE drummer] and Nikki [Sixx, MÖTLEY CRÜE bassist] told me this was gonna happen. They told me, 'As soon as everybody finds out you're in this band, your phone's gonna ring off the hook. It's gonna be crazy.' And it was. The thing I wasn't prepared for was when I wasn't in MÖTLEY CRÜE anymore. 'Cause as much as my phone was ringing, it stopped ringing. And then it was… I had a few friends that were with me before I was in MÖTLEY that were there after I was in MÖTLEY, and it wasn't that many. And I kind of sat down and I thought about it, and I go, 'You know what? At the end of the day, as long as I can take care of myself and my family, and play music, and go to places like here and the U.K. and Japan… I get to travel all over the world, play guitar and be a dumbass on stage for an hour and a half. And I sit and I watch people singing back to me my lyrics that I wrote. So I go, 'If I could do this and be able to take care of my family and have a couple of little toys, I'm good. Success. That's how it should be. If you don't like what you're doing, get out. I think if you expect too much, you're never gonna… So I just do the best I can and wish for the best. It's all good."

THE DEAD DAISIES' third album, "Make Some Noise", was released in August via SPV, preceded by first single "Long Way To Go", which came out in June. Recorded and produced by Marti Frederiksen (AEROSMITH, DEF LEPPARD, MÖTLEY CRÜE) in Nashville in February/March this year, the disc includes two inspired classics revisited — THE WHO's "Join Together" and CREDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVAL's "Fortunate Son" — alongside ten originals.