MTLEY CRE Guitarist On New Album: 'It's Modern, But It's MTLEY Too'

Jim Otey of Pollstar.com recently conducted an interview with MTLEY CRE guitarist Mick Mars. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow.

Pollstar.com: You guys are stars in your own right. You could go out on tour and headline, playing whatever size venues you wanted. Why do a touring festival?

Mars: I think it was the next real step, the next step up the ladder I guess you'd say. We're still doing arenas, but we wanted to step it up a notch. Not to compete, but to establish that we can also do our own festival, like Ozzfest or Lollapalooza, but we're doing it. It's just stepping up to the plate and taking it on.

Pollstar.com: Who picked the bands on the tour?

Mars: We selected them. We had a whole list, everyone from MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE on down. We had a bunch of bands like that on the list and we picked the ones we thought would be best for the bill. We looked at what was going on with them chart-wise. You know how that works. Music is a business and you need to look at who's going to fit with your band the best.

Pollstar.com: The Internet has changed things a lot. Do you think it's helped metal and hardcore bands as much as it has indie bands?

Mars: I think it's helped tremendously. But there's still TV stuff that I feel is necessary, like some of the late night shows "Leno", "Letterman" and "Kimmel". Those things are still important. And radio interviews are still an important thing too, even though there isn't much left in the way of radio other than satellite. But you can get away with a lot more on that than you could on regular radio.

Pollstar.com: Is the new album, "Saints of Los Angeles", vintage CRE or is it a more mature CRE?

Mars: It sounds to me like vintage CRE meaning "Feel Good", "Girls, Girls, Girls" and that kind of stuff but at the same time, it's more modern sounding. The rawness from back then is on the album, but the songs are more modern. They fit into the genre today, instead of sounding like it's 1980. It's modern, but it's MTLEY too.

Pollstar.com: Have you been involved in the preparations for the movie based on the book "Dirt", which is about the band?

Mars: The movie is still in the works. I've gotten a few scripts, but they weren't true to the story, so I didn't care much for them personally. It was like they wanted to do a MONKEES kind of thing. And that ain't MTLEY CRE. They keep trying to polish it up, but we're a lot different than most of the scripts we've gotten. So the movie is still in the works, but we've still got to find the right director and find the right script and everything else. It will come out, but I don't know when.

Pollstar.com: Is there a headlining run in the works for after the festival tour to support the new album?

Mars: We're working on a world tour, not a world festival tour, but we're doing 40 or more dates on Cre Fest and then after that we'll do Europe and Japan. There are tons of festivals to do in Europe. And in Japan we'll go over and play eight or 10 gigs, because it's not a very big place. Then we'll hit Australia and hopefully new places like Argentina. And of course, we'll play Mexico City.

Read the entire interview at Pollstar.com.