JOHN CORABI Says MÖTLEY CRÜE Won't Return His Phone Calls

Former MÖTLEY CRÜE singer John Corabi recently spoke to Metal-Rules.com about his work with UNION, ERIC SINGER PROJECT and RATT, as well as his thoughts about the current CRÜE reunion tour. Several excerpts from the interview follow:

Metal-Rules: Let's talk a little about MÖTLEY CRÜE, have you seen any of the reunion show so far?

John Corabi: "No."

Metal-Rules: Are you planning to see any?

John Corabi: "No. You see, I don't have an issue with Nikki [Sixx], I don't have an issue with Tommy [Lee], I tried calling them a few times before the tour started. You know they did 'The Dirt' [book] and I did some interviews for 'The Dirt' and Tommy did a book and I did some interviews for his book. And you know I called them and just wanted to congratulate them and say, 'Good luck on the tour. I hope there's no fighting and you can get throught it.' just small talk you know. Those guys, it's funny man, they have a tendency, if you're in the circle, everything is great, if you're outside of the circle, there no thought there. So I called once, I called twice, I called three times, and no return call. I won't go to the tour, my girlfriend wanted to go so I made arrangements and I got her a ticket but said I'm not going. She wanted me to go, it's probably pride on my part, but I just felt like if I would have showed up or went backstage or something like that, it would have been like a dog hanging around a table for scraps, it would have appeared that way. Now Nikki's started emailing Bruce [Kulick] saying, 'Tell Corabi I'm sorry about the BRIDES and he was right about everything.' So there's communication there, but not directly, I've left my number with them a few times, so if they want to call me they'll call, no big deal."

Metal-Rules: Do you still get royalties from MÖTLEY CRÜE, like from the new best of album "Red White and Crue" which just came out and has already gone platinum?

John Corabi: "I'm actually checking into that right now. You see, I actually signed a publishing deal when I joined the band, so this record company gave me an advance years ago and since I've left the band I haven't received anything from the record company, so I don't know if MÖTLEY send them the money and they've just kept it or if MÖTLEY is not sending the money, I don't know, I haven't received anything from anybody, so my manager is actually checking into it, because I just realized that there was the record that I did, well there was three records that I was involved with: 'Mötley Crüe', 'Quarternary' and 'Generation Swine', and those three records have been re-realesed a couple of different times on different labels, and then there's all these little compilation records like 'Supersonic and Demonic Relics', there's a video thing called 'Mötley Crüe Greatest Video Hits' that I have three songs on, there's the new one 'Red,White and Crüe', then there's another one that was released only in Europe called 'Loud as Fuck'. I'm on that and the DVD, I didn't even knew about these. So my manager contacted the record company that gave me the advance and said, 'What's the deal? Why isn't John getting any statements?' So there is maybe some money, somewhere in the pipeline for me, but I don't worry about it."

Metal-Rules: Whatever happened to you with the BRIDES OF DESTRUCTION?

John Corabi: "To be perfectly honest with you, I get along with Nikki [Sixx] splendidly, but when I left the band I told Nikki that there was gonna be some egos involved, I don't wanna say who, but I just said there's a member in this band that I just do not get along with, that I do not write well with. First of all they basically told me that they don't need me to write at all, so I was like I'm not into that situation, and I told Nikki, 'Dude, I love you to death. I known that you and I can write a great record and so I'm out.' And as it turned out he just sent Bruce [Kulick] an email like a week ago and said, 'Tell Corabi I'm really sorry about the BRIDES OF DESTRUCTION thing and he was right.' Because Nikki is having an issue now with the person that I was having an issue with… So we'll just leave it at that."

Metal-Rules: What's your opinion of the finished record?

John Corabi: "To be honest with you, I've written with Nikki Sixx and my whole beef with that record was... and I like London [LeGrand], I don't dislike London at all, everybody thought I left, even London thought I left the band because I didn't like him, that's not an issue, but I felt like there were certain members in that band that were trying too hard to be cool and there's an American saying you can't fit a square peg into a round hole, you know, it's just not gonna go."

Metal-Rules: I'm starting to get the picture…

John Corabi: "So we know who we're talking about then. But you know it's like when I came in, I spoke with Nikki at length and he told me, 'Yeah, you can write, you can do this, you can do that, I really want you to contribute.' So I started to contribute and started to get pushed aside. After listening to the record I was just scratching my head, like I don't know what we're trying to do here, are we trying to be punk, are we trying to be AFI, what the fuck are we doing here? An honestly I told Nikki, when I left I said the best song on the record is a song that Nikki wrote with an outside writer for somebody else, a song called 'Life'."

Read the entire interview at Metal-Rules.com.