Motley Crue – “Wild Side” – 7″ Single

Published on by 2loud2oldmusic

“The Wild Side” by Motley Crue is off the band’s 1987 album ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’ which went to #2 on the Billboard charts and saw three singles including this one. It sold well over 4 million albums in the U.S. alone and saw the band reach another level of success.

The song “Wild Side” was written by Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee. It was inspired by a school girl who Nikki had asked to recite the Lord’s Prayer and why he asked her to do it, we have no idea. He thought about what she said and thought, damn that’s cool so he incorporated some of the prayer in to the lyrics like below…

“Our father
Who ain’t in heaven
Be thy name on the wild side”

The song is about the dirty side of the Strip with all the drugs, pimping, and many other abuses going on at that time in their lives.  Heck, even Nikki wrote when he was severely hooked on Heroin so it was a time of debauchery. It is a reflection of the band’s sin on the seedy side of rock & roll and about their life in L.A. These were the bad boys of rock & roll for sure.

The version of the single I have is the standard U.S. Version with the B-Side being “Five Years Dead” also from ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’. Nothing special about it and it is even a promo, just the basic single. I love collecting the picture sleeve singles from the 80’s so that is why I have it as I already have these songs elsewhere.

A-SIDE:

Musically, it belts at as a rocker with a mean guitar riff by Mick Mars. The pace goes from fast to slow with tempos reaching 118 beats per minute at one time.  There is actually no guitar solo in the song only many instances of Mick belting out some cool riffs and guitar parts.  Tommy pounds away and you can tell it is him on those drums. Vince sounds great and still so young.  And Nikki is always doing his thing.  There is a blues sound to the song as well and ends with sirens, breaking glass, gunfire and lots of mayhem.

B-SIDE:

The B-Side is “Five Years Dead” which kicks off the second half of the ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’ album. It is a rocker and has that sleazy Mick Mars guitar sound which we love, but the song itself is a mix of the song “Bad Boy Boogie” and even “Sumthin’ for Nuthin'” which makes it a combination of cheesy and bad ass…I’m leaning more to the cheesy side. The lyrics aren’t anything to write home about as they are a little repetitive and more of the same sleaziness the band was in to during this time. The band’s image of being bad boys was not hurt with this song, but the song doesn’t hold up very well over 35+ years later.

And there you have it, another single from the collection. I haven’t done one in a while and thought it was time and why not talk about Motley Crue. Thanks for hanging around and we will see you all again real soon.

26 thoughts on “Motley Crue – “Wild Side” – 7″ Single”

  1. By this time, the Crüe has gotten so lazy, they were using the same chorus twice on the same album (‘Girls, Girls, Girls’ / ‘Five Years Dead’), and got away with it. At least Bon Jovi had the decency to hide ‘Love is War’ as a B-side.

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      1. That’s a given, as there are all of two good songs on that album, even by their own admission. It’s my least favorite from the 1st Vince era by far.

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