“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.