MÖTLEY CRÜE's MARS Talks About Songwriting Process For 'Saints Of Los Angeles'

Ultimate-Guitar.com recently conducted an interview with MÖTLEY CRÜE guitarist Mick Mars. An excerpt from the chat follows below.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: It's been a long time since the original MÖTLEY CRÜE were together in the studio writing and recording together since the "Generation Swine" album in 1997. What was the experience like this time with "Saints Of Los Angeles"? Was there a feeling-out period? Did you come in with guitar ideas?

Mick Mars: Mostly what we did was, I would come in with some riffs and things like that. We would record them, I would record them on ProTools because everybody was kind of doing their thing, you know? Like Tommy [Lee, drums] and Vince [Neil, vocals] already had their schedules already pre-planned so we had to kind of plan around that because they had already committed to doing that before. Doing what they needed to do, that is. And so what we did was, Nikki [Sixx, bass] and I would record some things, put them down on ProTools, cut 'em up, splice 'em together, put 'em together, however you want to call it. And had Tommy and Vince do their parts when they had time to do it. And it worked out pretty well.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: Didn't it feel a little disjointed?

Mick Mars: I like more like live off the floor kind of thing. But we didn't really have the choice but to do it this way this time and I think it turned out really, really well.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: You had been doing some writing on your own, Mick? Putting ideas down on ProTools and saving them for a rainy day kind of thing?

Mick Mars: Always, yeah. Because what's good for MÖTLEY is cool, but there's a lot of things that I write that's outside the realm of MÖTLEY, you know. Say, like I'll write some riffs and say, "Ah, you know what? This'll be a good thing for a band called EMERY." So, I wrote with them for a bit and I wrote with MACHINA and DMC, a lot of different people, because I like to do a lot of different styles of music. Not just one. That's the reason for MOTLEY but you know what I mean? But I like to express myself in different ways; not only as like a guitar player but as a songwriter as well.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: What is it that innately tells you, "This is a MÖTLEY CRÜE riff?" Of course it's going to be big and loud but some of these other bands you mentioned writing for are also big and loud.

Mick Mars: Umm, a MÖTLEY song is umm, I can feel them; I can pretty much tell right away. Umm, when I write a song for MÖTLEY CRÜE, about two-thirds of it is MÖTLEY and then I kind of put a part in that pieces it together, so you can hear the parts together. Usually that part gets re-written by Nikki and I and we'll put it together that way. Then I have another piece of song to take out and play around with, to do something else with it.

Read the entire interview from Ultimate-Guitar.com.