Location: London
The Hempel Nov 2005
Occasion: “Tommyland: The Ride” & “Tommy Lee Goes To College”

First of all: Congratulations on “TL Goes To College”. That show is brilliant.

Thank you, my cheeks still hurt from laughing so much, it’s really a fun show and very different than anything else that’s on TV, you know. So you liked it? It’s cool. I know it’s coming out in Britain, but I don’t know, is it not coming to Germany? I don’t know.

But you´re already planning a 2nd season, aren´t you?

We talked about like either joining the navy or going to police academy or some crazy stuff, but I don’t know yet. We’re trying to figure that out.

However, “TL Goes To College” leaves a few questions unanswered. Like: Natalie or Bridget?

Natalie. She’s hot, ha? I love the scene when she comes walking in, you know, like when her hair is blowing. Great moments… I stay in touch with Natalie, Matt, my room mate, Ben, one of the drummers, yeah, those three guys, I stay in touch with them all the time.

What about the fraternity, do you keep that going on the side?

No, “The House Of Lee” is no longer. Yeah, we should have done that, we should have kept the place and have people stay there like in a hotel for a couple of days.

How did it feel joining the marching band for rehearsals at 7 o’clock in the morning?

6 o’clock in the morning - it’s still dark out, freezing cold, and I’m like: “God, what am I doing here?” But it’s fun, I haven’t done that since I was in high school, I used to play in a drum line, and it’s been a while since I read drum music on sheet music, so I’m thinking: “This is gonna be a piece of cake, no problem”, and it was difficult, it’s not easy, you know, reading the sheet music, and you’ve got four different drums that are all tuned to different notes, so you can’t just start playing, they’re all precise, every note, and so it took me a couple of days to refresh my memory of the time signatures, the note values and just to learn how to read sheet music again, because I haven’t done it, and when I play now, when I play drums in the studio I don’t play off sheet music, I play by heart, you know.

You also tried the sports department...

…and the women’s swim team. I had ‘em beat on the way there, you know, and then you flip and turn under water and you push off and you go back, I did it too soon, I went to push, and I wasn’t at the end of the pool yet, so I pushed off to nothing, and I lost.

And why on earth did you choose chemistry for class?

I don’t know. I should have had my friggin head examined for doing that, what a nightmare. Frigging nightmare. When I thought about chemistry, I pictured I’d be in a lab, I’d switched on Bunsen Burners and test tubes and doing experiments, and I was in the lab once in three months of the semester, and the rest was just a frigging terrible math problem with a calculator, and I’m like: “This is not chemistry to me.” Well.

Have you heard Fred Durst’s version of “Bittersweet Symphony” merged with “Home Sweet Home”?

No, somebody told me about it. I need to hear it. Is it cool? I need to get that.

What does “Tommyland” mean to you? Is it an escape? Does the place exist?

Yes, it’s my dark little street that I live on. It’s like Disneyland that’s gone terribly wrong. It’s a fun place, like I started Tommyland when I named my house Tommyland, because to me it was the ultimate adult playground, and there’s swings over the piano and sex swings in the bedroom, and a Starbucks coffee thing in the bar, and a bar in a recording studio, and a dirt bike track in the back to ride Dirt Bikes and swimming pools and Koi ponds, Japanese gardens, and it’s like the ultimate adult playground, and that’s where Tommyland came from, and so I just kinda put that into my music or book or whatever.

You should open a theme park.

I thought about this. How fun would that be, like a really crazy rock‘n’roll madhouse. Yeah, we’ll ride on rollercoasters with naked girls and their titties are flapping around all over the place, it’d be genius, fucking genius. That’s a great idea, I’m gonna work on that. I’ll have it ready in probably less than a year.

Putting out a biography, starring in a TV-series, finishing a solo-record, touring with Mötley – you are all over the place right now. How comes?

Yeah, I think, you know, when MCA dropped the ball, it really inspired me. I was like: “You know what? I gotta do this shit on my own and make it happen, because I can’t rely on other people”, you know, because when you do that you’re sorta leaving your destiny and your hope and your faith in somebody else’s hands. You work your ass off to make a great record, and then you hand it off to somebody else, and you’re like: “Fuck, I hope they don’t drop the ball”, and it’s terrible and, I don’t know if you know: It’s not like you make a record on a weekend, I mean, it’s about a year of your life by the time you’ve written, demoed, recorded, mixed and released the songs, it’s about a year’s worth of your work, that’s a long time and then they have somebody just go, you know, MCA just fold it right after the first single. And I was like: “Wait, there is a song called “Blue” that’s gorgeous”, on that “Never A Dull Moment”-record, and it just never saw the light of day, and I’m like: “That’s it. I’m gonna go directly to the biggest distributor in the world, well, in America called Handyman, and I’m gonna make a deal directly with him and cut out all the middle men”, so basically I started my own virtual record company. I got my radio team, publicity team and marketing team and just said: “You know what? I’m just gonna do this on my own”, and by doing that I don’t have, I’m not a humungous record company that has 400 employees, I can get my music to people for 7 dollars back in America, I don’t know how much it’s here, because it’s being distributed by different companies over here, but I think you know what I’m talking about, it was really something that I needed to do. These last two years for me have been, I’ve just been really motivated to write a book, to make another record, do a TV show, and I’m a little tired, but it’s been fun.

Plus you’ve been touring constantly, haven’t you?

And with Mötley we’ve been touring for 10 and a half months. We’ve been going since February. That’s ten months and we leave for Japan in two weeks. Japan, Australia, Hawaii and then we go home for the holidays. A busy boy.

Which means you won´t return to Europe any time soon?

In January we have time off. Mötley’s taking time off, so I’m gonna go and do some of my own shows. I’m gonna do some in America, and I hope to come over here at maybe the end of January, it’d be really cool to come over here and do a few selected shows.

Is it true you are planning a special event with all the people involved?

I would like to do that, that’s my dream to have all the people that collaborate on the record, you know, if I can get everybody to commit to like two or three weeks and just bust out a bunch of shows really quick. That would be cool. With everybody’s schedules, I don’t know if that’s possible, it’s my little fantasy, but I’m gonna try to make that happen.

Why didn’t you just sing on your own, instead off bringing in so many guests, which is pretty popular these days?

I think it’s my favourite thing to do. When you’re in a band, you’re in Mötley Crüe it’s the same four guys, and I’ve been doing that for years, so for me to go do something completely different and work with other musicians is really a nice profession change, and I like collaborating with other artists, because what I bring to the process and what somebody else brings to the process ends up being this really cool thing that happens, you know, and I just really like collaborating with people. I do.

What´s your comment on the metal press calling it too soft and too poppy?

Yeah, I know, who cares? Is the song cool? Yeah, it’s fucking killer, so who cares? That’s a fucking super heavy metal magazine, and I don’t play crazy heavy metal. It’s frigging noise to me, I like good songs.

But you could have picked the usual suspects, couldn’t you?

Of course, but I like to keep people guessing. I actually enjoy that, like I like people not knowing what’s next, like: “What is he gonna do next?” And you know what I’m gonna next? I’m gonna make a fucking crazy club record. All breakbeat, progressive house, and in my spare time I like to DJ and I love electronic music, I’ve loved it for years, and if anybody knows me well enough or has been to Mötley Crüe shows, during the drum solo I’m always playing to a lot of crazy electronic stuff, so I think I might do that next just to throw everybody another huge curveball and get guys like Chrystal Method, Prodigy, Adam Freeland, DJ Eric Morrillo, just a bunch of electronic guys, and I think I wanna do that for fun.

Plus there´s a big passion for hiphop. Is it true you’d love to work with Missy Elliot?

Yes, and we’ve talked about it, and we’re gonna do something together. It’ll be fucking amazing, can you imagine her production team and mine and getting in the studio with some drums and banging out some crazy beats? It’ll be unbelievable. I can hear it already.

But what got you working with Nick Carter? Because he´s more of a rocker than people think?

You´ve met him? He blew my mind, because at first, and I get asked this question all time, like: “Nick Carter?” And they look at me with big question marks, and I’m like: “Wait a minute, you guys don’t understand.” I met this guy, he asked me to write some songs for his solo-record and I had the same reaction that everybody does: “Really? OK.” So I meet with him, and I bring a couple of things that I think will be great for him, so we have dinner, a couple of drinks, we go out to his car and I pull out the CD changer, and there’s AC/DC, Zeppelin, Black Sabbath-records, I mean, it was like: “What?” And he’s like: “Dude, I love rock‘n’roll music. I love it.” And that blew my mind. Anyway, we went to my house, we recorded a couple of songs for his solo record. Then I think a month or two went by and he got together with the Backstreet Boys, so he aborted the solo record for now, and I’ve got these two great songs that we worked on at my house, and so I put one of them on the record. And that guy partied harder than anybody that was in the studio, and I had everybody, I had Slash, Navarro and all these crazy cats in there, and he’s a frigging maniac. He’s nothing like you would imagine and you know this because you met him.

What about yourself? Is there a difference between the mythological and the real Tommy? Do you feel misunderstood?

Yeah, sometimes. I think that’s the reason I did the TV show and wrote the book, because what people know about me up until before the book and the TV show is they only get tiny little blibs of information, you know, they see you on a tabloid TV show or read a little article in a rock magazine or hear something on the radio. They’re all small little things, and I really wanted to write a book and just let everyone really get to know who Tommy is, Tommy not Tommy Lee, and the TV show I wanted people to see the real me, see me struggle and try to do well and sometimes fail. I’m normal, you know, I think sometimes people think you’re some superhero, and you’re not. We’re just people.

Is this the time to cut all the crap out of your life?

Yeah, this would be the part of the rollercoaster ride where it’s the good part. But that’s cool, you know, I mean you can’t really appreciate the good times unless you’ve had some speed bumps and some shitty times. I like that it’s always changing, and this is one of those upswings and we’re getting ready to do the big giant loop.

Reading “Tommyland”, I really enjoyed the conversations between you and your penis. Do you really talk to him like that? Is he like your Über-Ego?

Yeah, Über-Ego? That’s a good name. It’s funny, and I think for most men their dick runs the show sometimes, at least it does with mine. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, and sometimes, you know, when you wanna play and he doesn’t wanna play, you’re like: “No, bullshit, come on, we’re rocking.”

How do you get along with Vince Neil these days? According to your book you were about to kill the guy – more than once.

Well, when I wrote the book I wrote it two summers ago, and I think myself and the rest of the guys, it’s like being in a marriage, we got divorced for six years and then we got back together, and I’ve learned one thing that is very true: Any time there is a problem you take the problem and you take the solution and you insert time in the middle of it, and taking a break from everybody I’m sure did everybody a world of good, and so when we got back together I think everybody put a lot of their bullshit aside, and we realised what the four of us do together is very special, and we make a lot of people happy, and I think once we realised that we all just looked at each other and thought: “This is good, this is good.” If we treat each other with respect and love, we can do this for fucking ever, like the Rolling Stones, you know, every few years, make a record, go on tour and have a great time and have fun, and it’s cool. Like we just played a couple of shows with the Rolling Stones in Seattle and Portland, and it was so cool to meet those guys, and what an honour to be on the same stage and just seeing those guys still doing it, yeah, they’re older but, fuck, they’re still fucking killing it. I watched the show and was like: “Yeah”, (riffing) Fucking amazing! That’s cool. I’d like to have a career in music as long as those guys. I think it’s cool. Cool as hell. Still rocking shit. Still. And I think now that we’ve had a break from each other for a long time and we’re back and we got touring and it’s been sold out everywhere, I think everybody gets it. We realise: All we gotta do is be cool to each other, that’s it, and everything else is lovely. But then again brothers do fight once in a while. When we’re together for a year on tour you’re gonna have a disagreement, you just are, there’s no way to avoid that, so now we just deal with it in different ways.

Is it true you hit the hurricane season while touring Texas?

Yes, we were in Corpus Christi going to Houston, it was about to get fucking nailed, and so we cancelled the show and we’re gonna go back in February/March to go make it up.

You´ve recorded a benefit for the victims of hurricane Katrina – with Chester from Linkin Park. Where can I get it?

The song? I think online. I think AOL has it. It might be at i-tunes. I’m not sure. It came out great, Chester’s great, and it’s a really nice version.

Will he join you on one of your next records?

Yeah, I have some new stuff that I’ve been working on, and I might like to work on something with Chester, I think he is great, too, and so he is on my list of people. Speaking of collaborations, I mean, I called Lenny Kravitz, Steven Tyler and the schedules didn’t pen out, but there’s still a lot of people I wanna work with. I have a nice list.

Honestly: Are you working on another Mötley record as well?

Yeah, we’re working on that. Yeah. I think we’ve got a few things we wrote. Nikki has a recording studio on his bus, and I have one on my bus. We worked on a song while we were on tour, which is really cool, and I think it’s called “Tomorrow”, and we did it with the guys from The Axis (?) and it’s a great song. So I think we’re gonna start writing on our time off. I don’t know, we still got February and March and after that to work on stuff.

How far has “The Dirt”-movie evolved?

It is gonna happen. We had David Fincher on line for a minute there, and then he ended up taking some crazy movie that’s gonna take him two years to shoot, so he’s no longer available, so we’re now looking at different directors, but it will happen some time, probably late next year.

If you keep close to the book, it should be rated XXX, shouldn´t it?

I don’t know. We gotta make sure we keep it real like that and not some watered down, PG-13 shit. It’s gonna have to be R or X, I don’t know, we’re gonna have to figure that out.

Are you gonna be in it as well?

I don’t know what we’re gonna do about that. Me personally I would love Johnny Depp, he is my favourite, I love everything that guy does. I would love him to play me. I think he is the best ever, and I like everything that that guy’s ever done and him being a musician as well and being a fan of music and his acting is incredible, I don’t know, I just think it’d be fun, really cool.

What made you go through the x-ray-machine at Cologne airport?

I hate going to the fucking airport. I absolutely hate it. I’ve got two things that make me crazy: Traffic and the airport, like I’ll do anything in my power. I’ll pay whatever money it takes to fly private, or I’ll drive five hours just to avoid going to the airport. And a guy like me, when you get to the airport my nipples are pierced, you got necklaces on, wallet chains, cigarettes, and it takes forever to take all the shit off, and some guy is busting your balls: “Take your shoes off!” And I was like: “You know what? Fuck it.” I jumped on the conveyor belt and ran right through the x-ray machine and went: “Fuck it!” I didn’t feel so good though after it. I think those x-ray machines are two or four times more powerful than a regular x-ray, and I didn’t feel so good. Something probably happened, I’m probably sterile now or something. I don’t know. It was really cool though, because I got it all on film, and I don’t know, I thought: “OK, two things are gonna happen here, either I’m gonna go to jail for doing this or they’re gonna be cool”, and they were laughing their asses off at the airport. They were like: “That dude is fucking crazy”.

Last question: Who is your hot babe 2005?

My current dream girl? I spent a night with Eva Langoria, she is fucking amazing. She is so hot, and she’s got cute feet, her toes are great. But the Victoria’s Secret model, Adriana Lima, Brazilian. I want that! I want that!!!

www.tommylee.tv

Courtesy of Infected PR