MÖTLEY CRÜE's TOMMY LEE Looks Back On Legal Battle With MICK MARS: 'That Whole Thing Was Awkward And Really Hurtful'

During an appearance on Billy Corgan's "The Magnificent Others" podcast, MÖTLEY CRÜE drummer Tommy Lee reflected on the "hurtful" legal battle between MÖTLEY CRÜE's founding guitarist Mick Mars and his longtime bandmates over Mick's exit from the CRÜE.

When Mars, who suffers from Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS),a chronic and inflammatory form of arthritis that mainly affects the spine and pelvis, announced his retirement from touring with MÖTLEY CRÜE in October 2022 as a result of worsening health issues, he maintained that he would remain a member of the band, with John 5 taking his place on the road. Only six months later, however, he filed a lawsuit against MÖTLEY CRÜE in Los Angeles County's Superior Court, claiming that, after his announcement, the rest of CRÜE tried to remove him as a significant stakeholder in the group's corporation and business holdings via a shareholders' meeting.

This past January, MÖTLEY CRÜE announced that it had won "a decisive victory" against Mars, resulting in "a final arbitration award that reject[ed] every claim Mars made against the band and order[ed] him to pay damages back to the group."

"For me, that whole thing was awkward and really hurtful, to the point where people were saying untrue things and kind of doing that, and I was, like, 'God, this sucks,'" Tommy told Corgan (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET). "I'm not into that kind of stuff. It's, like, why can't we just all... You go do your thing, we'll go do ours. It's all cool. That part of it sucked. I guess that's like a divorce or whatever. It sucks in any format. But there is only one Mick, and he's an insane player, and it saddens me just on a personal level for him that this insane bone disease or spine disease slowly started dementing his shape. He started to get locked into being hunched over. Good thing it was forward instead of backwards. At least you're looking at the guitar neck. [He went through] a lot of pain, and watching him struggle, and then all of a sudden, I think it takes a toll on... And maybe his age, too, you kind of mix all that in, he started to... He came to us saying, like, 'I don't wanna do this anymore. I can't.'"

Tommy continued: "I always try to put myself in Mick's shoes, and I got nothing but love for that guy — nothing but love. I just wish it didn't get so… and unfortunately, that's just the way things go. When people are threatened or hurt, they fight back. But it's all good."

On the topic of what John 5 has brought to MÖTLEY CRÜE, Tommy said: "I have to give props to John 5, because him coming in was the exact shot of adrenaline and life and energy and fire that we were missing, because it was really becoming a struggle. [On the 2022 'The Stadium Tour'] I'd be counting off 'Live Wire' and Mick would start 'Wild Side'. He started to not know where he was [in the song]. [It was a] trainwreck. And I've had to stop songs — just stop songs. I'm, like, 'Dude, we gotta restart this because he's playing the wrong song, and he doesn't know it.' It's, like, oh my God.

"John has been a [MÖTLEY CRÜE] fan for a long time," Lee explained. "He knows all the music inside and out, [and he] loves Mick… To me, dude, I don't give a shit how talented you are, if you're an [asshole], I don't have much respect for that. If you're talented and you're a sweetheart [like John 5 is], you're my favorite person."

Six months ago, Mick's attorney blasted the arbitrator's ruling that the group was within its rights to dismiss Mars as an officer in their business affairs as well as bandmember, for cause, once he dropped out of MÖTLEY CRÜE's touring due to health issues.

Mars's lawyer, Ed McPherson, told Rolling Stone: "The decision is awful. It's not fair. This band has never been fair to Mick. When Mick said 'I can't tour anymore because of a hideous disease, but I can still write, perform one-offs or residencies and record,' they said, 'Sorry, Mick. It's been 43 years, but you're out. Goodbye, and we don't want to pay you anymore.' This arbitrator said it's fine. We need to figure out if we're going to challenge [the decision]. It's ridiculous. It's just a question of whether he wants to keep pursuing this. Basically, he's over MÖTLEY CRÜE."

According to a January 2026 press release issued by MÖTLEY CRÜE's attorney, Sasha Frid of Miller Barondess, LLP, "the arbitrator's ruling not only vindicates the band contractually and financially but also dismantles the public narrative Mars promoted in interviews with major outlets." Frid went on to say that the arbitrator, the Honorable Patrick Walsh (Ret.),ruled entirely in favor of MÖTLEY CRÜE, confirming that Mars forfeited any right to touring revenue when he chose to stop touring — a rule Mars himself reportedly demanded and wrote into the band's governing agreement in 2008. That amendment explicitly provided that any member who stops touring does not share in touring income.

Despite that agreement, Mars later demanded to continue receiving 25% of touring revenue in perpetuity while no longer performing. The arbitrator flatly rejected that position. The final award also upheld the band's decision to terminate Mars as an officer and director for legal cause and ordered him to repay more than $750,000 in unrecouped tour advances. After accounting for the value of Mars's shares, the final award resulted in a net judgment in favor of MÖTLEY CRÜE.

While the arbitration was pending, Mars launched a public media campaign accusing the band of not playing live — claims he repeated under oath. Most notably, he asserted that Nikki Sixx's bass and Tommy Lee's drums were pre-recorded, striking at the core of the band's professional credibility.

Those accusations reportedly collapsed under scrutiny. Faced with extensive live performance recordings — and testimony from his own retained expert, a New York University professor specializing in music technology — Mars was forced to admit under oath that his statements were false. His expert confirmed that the band performed live, and Mars formally recanted his prior claims during sworn testimony.

Frid commented: "This dispute was about protecting the integrity and legacy of one of the most successful bands in rock history. With the arbitrator rejecting every claim and enforcing the parties' agreements as written, the band has been fully vindicated — legally, financially, and factually."

Last September, Sixx told the Los Angeles Times about Mars's exit from MÖTLEY CRÜE: "[Mick] came to us and said, health-wise, he couldn't fulfill his contract, and we let him out of the deal. Then he sued us because he just said that he can't tour. We were like, 'Well, if you can't tour, you can't tour.' I will probably come to that too someday."

Sixx also addressed Mars's allegation in his lawsuit that the guitarist was the only bandmember to play 100 percent live on MÖTLEY CRÜE's 2022 The Stadium Tour", claiming Nikki "did not play a single note on bass during the entire U.S. tour."

"Anything we enhance the shows with, we actually played," Sixx told the Los Angeles Times. "If there are background vocals with my background vocals, and we have background singers to make it sound more like the record. That does not mean we're not singing."

Frid wrote in a statement to the Los Angeles Times at the time: "The fact of the matter is that MÖTLEY always plays live. Even Mars's expert witness in the litigation, who Mars hired and who reviewed hours of footage, agreed and said that the band played live while performing. He disputed Mars's own claims."

Sixx went on to call Mars's accusations a "crazy betrayal", adding: "Saying he played in a band that didn't play, it's a betrayal to the band who saved his life. People say things like, 'Well, if you guys are really playing, then I need isolated tracks from band rehearsal.' … It's ludicrous."

In response to Mars's lawsuit, CRÜE's manager of more than three decades, Allen Kovac, told Variety in a 2023 interview that Mars was coming out with a list of allegations "to gain leverage in a smear campaign on MÖTLEY. He's attacked the band, and he's done it in a slanderous way, with false accusations and misrepresenting the facts to the fans. Mick is not the victim. The victims are MÖTLEY CRÜE and the brand, which Mick is so prideful of." But, he added, "What's upsetting to me is not Mick, but his representatives, who have guided Mick to say and do harmful things to the brand he cares about so much, MÖTLEY CRÜE. He has a degenerative disease and people are taking advantage of him. It's called elder abuse."

Kovac continued: "Mick's representatives have no idea what they've created, but I've stopped the band from speaking about this, so they're not gonna turn the fans against Mick. But I am going to make sure that people understand that Mick hasn't been treated badly. In fact, he was treated better than anyone else in the band, and they carried him and they saved his life."

Mars suffers from Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS),a chronic and inflammatory form of arthritis that mainly affects the spine and pelvis. After years of performing through the pain, he informed the other members of MÖTLEY CRÜE in the summer of 2022 that he could no longer tour with them but would still be open to recording new music or performing at residencies that did not require much travel.

Regarding Mick's claim that he was the only CRÜE member to play 100 percent live on the 2022 recent tour, Kovac told Variety at the time: "Everything is live with Nikki's bass playing and Tommy's [Lee] drum playing. When they've used loops, they're still playing. There are augmented vocals, which were (recorded) in the studio and are backgrounds behind the two ladies who are singing and (other background vocals by) John 5 and Nikki Sixx, and before that Mick and Nikki." He described the pre-recorded vocal layering as where "you multi-track and you do gang vocals with, like, 20 people, just like all the other bands do with background vocals. They've got background vocals in the mix. That's the truth.

"But Nikki played his bass and always has," Kovac continued. "Vince [Neil] was singing better than he was before (on the 2022 tour). That was in reviews. Now, John 5 is playing like who John 5 is. I've heard John 5 perform and I heard Mick perform. Both are great guitar players. Unfortunately, Mick is not the same. He hasn't been the same for a long time. Which was in reviews! You see that the professionals knew. DEF LEPPARD (which alternated headlining spots on the tour) knew. And (Mars) caused a train wreck up there, because he would play the wrong songs and the wrong parts, even with the guide tracks. When he played the wrong song, it wasn't Nikki Sixx that had a tape; it was the soundman bringing it into the mix so the audience could hear a song, even though the guitar player was playing a different song." He says audiences "would hear it at first, but (sound engineers) would fix it so that we could keep the song going. I heard it. I'd go to the soundboard."

Mars — whose real name is Robert Alan Deal — served as MÖTLEY CRÜE's lead guitarist since the band's inception in 1981.

Although Sixx is responsible for penning the lion's share of the band's material, Mars did have a hand in co-writing some of the group's most famous tracks, including "Same Ol' Situation (S.O.S.)", "Girls, Girls, Girls" and "Dr. Feelgood".

The only credit Mars has on the first two MÖTLEY CRÜE albums is the instrumental "God Bless The Children Of The Beast" on 1983's "Shout At The Devil".