Having debuted in 1981, Motley Crue have been eligible for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame since 2006. But, as Nikki Sixx reveals in a new interview, he's been told that their past behavior has led to them being blackballed by the Cleveland institution.

The bassist was speaking with Kerrang! when the subject of Motley Crue playing live again came up. Sixx said, “I was actually doing an interview with Tommy [Lee] a couple of weeks ago, and we were asked if we would ever play together again. And Tommy said, ‘I don’t know. Maybe if we got into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame or something, we could dust off a couple of our old classics.’ I was, like, ‘Really?’ And he said, ‘Why not?’ But we don’t have any plans because we were told by the Hall of Fame that we would never get in, because of how we’ve acted, so that’s kind of it.”

In early 2015, Sixx blasted the idea of getting into the Hall, writing, "The only award I look forward to getting the the one I will probably decline and that's the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. ... It's a fixed old-boy network that has lost touch with art, songwriting craft, lyrics and influential music and usually has other agendas at hand. Young bands tell me it's a joke and these bands are the future."

A few months later, he had softened his stance when the whole band were asked about it in . “I’m not one of these cranky guys about it,” he said. “But I think if they got it a little bit righter, people would respect it a little bit more. Honestly, there are a lot of bands previous to Motley Crue that deserve to be in, if it’s actually about influencing other musicians and making an impact on the planet. You know, the bands that have gotten in the last few years, it’s cool; but let’s go back and look at the people who curated this great music a little bit more."

“Honestly, I don’t think it’ll happen,” Mick Mars added. “We were there when the thing was being built; we had to wear hard hats while we were walking around the building site. They were like, ‘One of these days, you guys will be in here!’ Right. [Laughs] I’d have to say, 80 percent no, 20 percent yeah. But it’s like when you’re a kid in kindergarten, and you take a nap and get a gold star as a reward. I don’t need a few handful of people to say that I got a gold star, because I already got it from my fans. I see the crowds, I see the enthusiasm, I see all that stuff, and that’s already satisfying enough for me.”

Lee, however, was slightly more enthusiastic about it. “I do give a shit about it," he said in the same interview, "because it’s a time-stamp, it’s the acknowledgement of your peers and fans and the music industry, But then again, there’s a part of me that goes, ‘If we don’t, that’s fucking cool, too!’ In my heart, I know that we came, we saw, we kicked its fucking ass."

"We’ll probably go in at some point," added Vince Neil, "but we might not all be alive when it happens. Our grandkids will probably have to pick up the awards!”

 

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