Motley Crue Photographer
Don Adkins - Part II
Too Fast for Love
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FIB MUSIC: Didn't you also photograph the Runaways?
Don: Oh yeah. I was one of those people waiting in line for
hours to see them. We used to wait in line at the Whiskey, or down at Hunnington Beach at the Golden Bear. We
would wait in line for three hours to get the front seats, or next to the stage. Then later, Motley Crue started getting
a local buzz.....I was blown away, because I was doing all the original Motley Crue photo shoots at my parents house, in their
living room, in Cerritos. Pretty soon, I would have Nikki Sixx bringing over his new girlfriend, Lita Ford.....and I also
have shots of that, by the way. So he would bring over Lita Ford and they would just come over and hang out and talk. Eventually,
I said, "Lita, you wouldn't believe what I used to do just to go see you" and I told her all about the waiting in line to
see her in the Runaways. It was really cool.
FIB MUSIC: No doubt.
Don: Anyways, just to highlight, back in the old days when we had
the Starwood, before it was shut down because of the Eddie Nash thing that became the whole John Holmes thing. I mean, back then
you could see Judas Priest, you could see Blondie, you could see Detective with Michael Des Barres, you could see
Blue Oyster Cult, ACDC, all these great groups who later became something big.
FIB MUSIC: Eddie Nash was the drug dealer in the movie Wonderland, right?
Don: Yeah. Adel Nasrallah. Eddie Nash was his Americanized name. Eddie Nash owned
the Starwood, which was a very rustic, basic place, but it was really the biggest club in L.A., at the time. You could
jam about 700 people in there for a show. Whereas, the Whiskey, you could fit about 350 to 400 people in,
before the fire department came.
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Joan Jett
Lita Ford
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Motley Crue 45
featured "Toast of the Town" &
"Stick to Your Guns"
Laurie Bell
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FIB MUSIC: Do you remember the first time you met Nikki Sixx?
Don: Sure, I went backstage. You know when you are younger and you don't know what
you don't know. I would just go up and approach people, "hi, I'm Don Adkins" and hand them a card. So, I basically did that
with Nikki and he says, "come on back" and I just sat there and talked music with him. He was a very, very nice guy; very
approachable. Also, very insecure at the time. He was also like, "I'm too fat".....I'm too this, I'm too that, oh, I want to
do this....I like what I saw in London and got to know him. Later, we built a really good relationship. I did their first ever
record cover shooting, again at my mom's house in Cerritos. I did the "Stick to Your Guns, Toast of the Town" 45. There were
only five hundred copies of that pressed and I think only about 300 went out and I have five of them. I've had people hunt me down
and try to get a hold of one. Yeah, that was shot in my parent's living room. Nikki, by this point, had hooked up with this
manager from up north. This guy had made his money in real estate, or as a developer and he was looking for something else to
do with his money. His name was Allan Coffman and he was Motley Crue's first manager. Coffman would go ahead and
pay all the bills. So, we release the single and they started playing L.A. When it came time to do some
publicity shots, they said, let's go back to Don's stuff and let's do something different. Nikki would spend a lot
of time with me on the phone saying, "I want this kind of concept". Usually the concepts revolved around, "let's do
something that gets attention, let's do something that shocks, or something that creates a buzz". He was really into
the Alice Cooper kind of thing, combing theatrics, visuals and rock....something heavier. He also liked what groups like
the Tubes did, because they were really outrageous. He would say that later when he made it, he would want the greatest finale in
the world on stage....where you would have all kinds of special effects; you'd have midgets, hookers and all kinds of stuff
on stage that would just leave people in shock.
So, in talking with that kind of visual in mind, the next time they came back for a shoot, they were like, well, now we need to
put together a press kit and Allan is going to pay for this really, really nice press kit. "Don, we not only need black and whites,
but we need some really great color images and we need to do something that's outrageous." So, I went ahead and went and got
one of those blue swap meet plastic tarps and stuck that on the wall of my living room. Then the guys came over and they had some
new clothes made by their girlfriends and then Mick Mars came over with his guitar which was just a basic black and I said, "I wonder
if there is something to do to dress it up". My mom comes out and said, "I have this". It was basically this tape that you use
when you want to tape off the floor area, if you don't want people to pass. It was yellow and black.
Mick goes, "oh, that's wicked". So, we go ahead and start taping his guitar and we got this really cool yellow and black look where
he lined up all the stripes and that wound up being the look that was in the photos. Along with that, I think even one of the
shots we even wrapped Nikki in my camera strap. We did this shot of them in front of the backdrop and we had this kind of
party scene, with confetti and silly string and that wound up becoming their shots they used for their promo kit and
also the shots that they showered L.A. with posters everywhere.
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FIB MUSIC: Weren't you there when they chose the name Motley Crue?
Don: Yes I was. Nikki lived in the valley with this girl named Laurie Bell, who
had this group called,
The Orchids, which was another
Kim Fowley group.
FIB MUSIC: That was Nikki's girlfriend at the time?
Don: Yes. I used to go up to the valley and just hang with them and it turned out
to be the time he was formulating Motley Crue. We're all up there and......I was basically doing a drop off, dropping some
photos off. We're sitting around the couch in his living room and they were trying to come up with a name for the group and they
were going to call themselves Christmas. They kind of laid out the concept for Christmas and Nikki was starting to get into it. He said,
"we've got to go ahead with the name, because we have this show coming up". So, we're sitting around the couch and I got to meet and
talk with Mick Mars.....so, we are sitting there and that's when Mick goes, "look at us, we're a motley crew" and Nikki goes, "what?" So Nikki
writes it down on a piece of paper and then goes, "Don, what do you call those two dots in german", I go, "those are called umlauts". He says,
"look, I put some of those here and then some over here" and me being the analytical one go, "Nikki, that's not grammatically correct".
He says, "But it looks cool." So, that was the genesis of the name Motley Crue.
FIB MUSIC: Amazing.
Don: It was really, really cool. I wound up being there for there very first
gigs, before they even hooked up with Allan Coffman. Nikki said, "we need some buttons". At the time, I was making these
little rock buttons of some of my favorite groups. So, I went ahead and made them about 100 buttons, where I basically took
the Motley Crue logo, reduced it, took over to the printers, printed out all these logos on a sheet of paper, cut them out, glued them
on cardboard and then put a clasp pin on them and that's what they would pass out at their shows.
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FIB MUSIC: Why don't you end up doing the photos for "Too Fast for Love"?
Don:
Quite honestly, I was a good photographer for the initial shot of really good promo shots, or live shots and I wound up finding ways
to cheat by shooting album covers in 35mm, but to really do it right, you need a larger format camera and I was not
equipped with that. Nor was my career heading in that direction where I wanted to even make photography a full time thing and make that
kind of investment. So, when it came to that, Nikki basically hooked up with some others and he said they got him next to nothing
or free, only the cost of materials. However, I was there for the recording of "Too Fast for Love".
FIB MUSIC: Anything stand out from those recording sessions?
Don: Yeah. We were in the studio and the thing that stands out was watching....what
kind of sound they wanted to have and where they wanted to go with the sound. I remember Tommy Lee.....he went ahead....I mean, all
of them were really good about, what do we want to sound like and where do we want to go and then they would go ahead and find
out how others did it. Tommy Lee would say, "I want this kind of drum sound" and he would listen to this
German group called Accept. He would say, "listen to this sound, everything that comes out of Germany has this
sound and I want to have this sound". The thing about "Too Fast for Love", they probably spent about eight hours micing and getting
the sound right for the drums. In any rock n roll recording, the drums are always the hardest to capture. So, they experimented with
every single combination of room mic and making sure they had the right kind of isolation and they really nailed down the sound for
the drums. When they actually started laying down drum tracks to tape, that's when they would all come in separately and go in
these isolated rooms and start laying down their guitar tracks.
FIB MUSIC: Do you have any stories about any of the songs
from the "Too Fast for Love" release?
Don: Yes, "Merry Go Round". Basically, Nikki was living in the projects outside Seattle, WA. He was
really struggling in the projects and one day he came out to this playground area right outside of his place and there
was this guy there that had lost it. The guy had just lost his job, or something and lived there in the projects and he was
just going round and round on the merry-go-round and Nikki said it just struck him.
FIB MUSIC: I am looking at these photos you took, were these taken at a music store?
Don: Yeah. They were in Goodman Music, up in the valley. I think it was in Sherman
Oaks or something. One of the things their manager, Allan Coffman, made sure of is that they were equipped with really good
equipment. Nikki also did a really good job selling the idea to Allan, because he knew Allan had a lot of money. Nikki did
a really good job, saying "we need the best equipment, that's the only way we are going to make it". Allan was very good with
money and they thought they drew up a pretty rock solid agreement for Allan Coffman (laughs), which later turned out not to be.
They were able to get sponsorship deals, where they would appear in Goodman Music advertisements and in turn get some o
equipment out of it. That's what that photo is from. We were doing an appearance at Goodman's.
with Alan Coffman
The other shot was the very, very first album cover shoot, in front of that green thing, that was a garage in Cerritos. So, after
the shoot I took them outside, photographed them against my garage. Part of it was for shock value just to show my neighbors. Right
after that, I said, let's go have some fun. So, we all drove down the street, I live 2 miles from the Cerritos Mall and I had
a girlfriend working in the mall at Spencer Gifts and I thought, hey, I'll surprise the hell out of my girlfriend. So, I took them
all to the mall, all dressed up, we walk through the mall and you should have seen it.....the whole mall was stopping and as they
are marching along, I'm photographing them. About five minutes goes by and here comes security. She's like excuse me, what are
you doing, you can't be doing this in a public place....and Vince Neil starts talking to her and he just starts working it and pretty
soon she is just charmed by him and then next thing you know, we're walking through the mall again and I'm taking pictures with
her and the group together. That was the kind of charm they could pull off. What turned into a thing like, we're going to throw
you out of the mall into them posing with us.
There's also a shot of the first Motley Crue video shoot, which I have seen turn up on that episode of Driven and it was in one of
their videos, The History of Motley Crue, or something like that. For that, we set up this giant stage in this studio, it was
an eleven hour day, about nine hours of that was their hair (laughs). The hair ritual was always funny, they would all be
hanging upside down, spray the hair perfectly, walk out on the stage, with their heads hanging down and then only at the last
second, they would go ahead and put their head up, so their hair wouldn't fall. We did a bunch of still shots like that and then
they recorded this video and the video was shot by Bell Piper,
Randy Piper's wife. She went ahead and did the video for cost or free, just to get in on the ground floor with
these guys.
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FIB MUSIC: Any story to the Vince Neil & David Lee Roth shot?
Don: Sure. After they were already managed by Allan Coffman and they were
really building a good L.A. buzz. They were starting to pack the Whiskey, pack the Starwood and they were invited to
be the New Year's band at the Troubadour. Here they are being this big New Year's Eve band and David Lee Roth shows up for
the show....he's become good friends with the band, by this point. So, basically they have this incredible New Year's Eve show, high
energy, a big party and afterwards we all went upstairs backstage to have a great time for the night. David is up there hanging out
just being David and I grab him an Vince and said let's get a shot together and that's when they posed. Later, after the Troubadour, it
was already getting well into 2 AM and the club needed to shut down, so the guys said let's take it back to our
apartment. There was this apartment they all lived in that was above the Whiskey....it was Vince, Nikki and Tommy that all
lived together. We all go back there, a lot of the people that were backstage went as well and the party went into the morning, with
David Lee Roth and all of us hanging out. A really good night.
FIB MUSIC: Any good tales from that night?
Don: Nothing really good from that night. The funnier story would be, sometime later, a
matter of months, it was still that same winter. I was out shooting a show out in the valley and I was coming back over the hill, I'm
on the freeway, extremely hard pouring rain....I'm driving in the fast lane of the freeway about 40 mph, I was by myself and all
of a sudden my car hydroplanes and my car spins all the way across the traffic, hit the side of the freeway and my wheel went up
into my wheel well. So, I'm our of commission, my car is dead. The police were there and I had my car towed. I wasn't going to
call my parents in Cerritos in the middle of the night, so I went ahead and called Tommy at the apartment they all lived at. So I
say, "Sorry to bother you, but I just had a car wreck, can you come pick me up" and he said "sure man". So, Tommy comes over in his
van and picks me up, which was really cool and I said "can I just crash at your place for the night and have my girlfriend pick me
up in the morning" and he says "Yeah, come on". We go back to the apartment, turns out he was the only one there, everyone else were
out doing stuff. Tommy went ahead and set up a bed on the couch, which was really nice, he said here's some pillows and blankets, just
crash here. I go to bed and then about three in morning and suddenly there's a knock at the door, "Tommy, come on out". They wake
Tommy up and they say "let's go out" and Tommy's like "ok". They went to like Barney's Beanery. There was never any issue with
Tommy wanting to eat, he was always hungry. So, they come back at like 4 or 5 in the morning, I'm laying there asleep and I see Tommy
laying on the floor on his back and he's lighting his farts on fire. At that time, I didn't even know you could do that. That's
what I woke up to. So, finally the guys left and I went back to sleep. In the morning, the guys come out and the greatest visual was
Vince, Nikki and Tommy all sitting on the couch, turning on cartoons and eating KABOOM cereal. I wish I had a camera to photograph that
one moment, because it was guys with bathrobes on, they were trying to be like Hugh Hefner, but with a glam look, eating KABOOM cereal and
watching Looney Tunes on tv.
FIB MUSIC: Were you in contact with Nikki during the time right before he began forming Motley Crue?
Don: Yeah. I was heavily with the group through the "Too Fast for Love" thing. I remained
very close to them, part of the inner circle. They would play live and I would be backstage with them. They did the Southern
California, I was riding with them in the limo. They had their first really big headlining gig at the Santa Monica Civic, which they
sold out. I was on the stage photographing it. I was backstage with them and here's another thing where I have some shots. By this
point, they had built up quite a buzz, so backstage there's Elvira. So, I got some shots of the group with her, which I think ended
up on the Driven episode. Robbin Crosby, from RATT, was also there and I got some photos with him and the band. He was one of those guys that
even though there was this competitive spirit, you'd see these guys hanging out all the time.
FIB MUSIC: That's what I thought. Weren't they all really good friends at that time?
Don: Yeah. There was always a little bit of competition, but they would always
hang.....the biggest competition was between Kevin Dubrow and Nikki Sixx. Those guys would get into all the time and throw these
verbal lashings out and Kevin, at the time, had this group called Dubrow, which later became reinvigorated again and became
Quiet Riot without Randy Rhoads. Those guys used to love taking jabs at each other.
FIB MUSIC: Wow. Even back then huh?
Don: Yeah, back then.
FIB MUSIC: I interviewed Kevin and he talked about how Nikki had auditioned for Quiet Riot and that
Nikki didn't know the names of the notes on his bass.
Don: Yeah, but you saw Nikki's talent come out elsewhere; he turned out to be
a really good songwriter and a visionary for what the group should be and what the look should be and as far as his
bass ability.....it's kind of like what you have with KISS, where KISS aren't really the most accomplished musicians, but the
package and what they bring and the power they bring.
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FIB MUSIC: Sure. I have always thought that you take these guys who are phenomenal on their
instrument, but they can't write songs.
Don: Right. Nikki was great at creating a power bass sound, but he wasn't going
to be Al Di Meola.
FIB MUSIC: What was Vince Neil like back then?
Don: Originally, the first incarnation of Motley Crue, they had this guy named
Odeen. I don't remember his first name, but that they always called him Odeen. We were working on this Motley Crue concept and
we were rehearsing in the I.R.S. studio and they had Odeen as a lead singer.
FIB MUSIC: What was he like?
Don: He looked like a black haired version of Paul Williams. Paul Williams was a songwriter
who worked with the Carpenters and even did a song for Three Dog Night, "Just an Old Fashioned Love Song", he was this short little
blonde guy. Odeen looked like the black haired version, short lead singer, kind of stocky, kind of intense, looked closer to
Mick Mars kind of look. They laid down a couple of tracks with him, "Stick to Your Guns" and "Toast of the Town". Their relationship
was not that good, they started to get on each others nerves. I think it was Nikki that fired Odeen. That inspired a really good
song, they used to do this cool song called, "Killing Yourself", but they never recorded it. In true rock fashion, you know
when someone pisses you off and you write a song about them......I still remember some of the lyrics....."what does it take to
get through to you, why are you killing yourself, why are you killing yourself", they wrote that about Odeen, but then they never
recorded it. So, they were without a singer and I think toward the end of Odeen, I think it was Tommy and he knew of Vince being
in this band called Rock Candy. Rock Candy was this power pop group and Tommy had seen them playing in Lakewood of all places and
Tommy says, "you know, I found this funky group, but they have this great lead singer, with the most unusual voice I've ever
heard". So they wound up talking to Vince and tried to get him in the group. I still remember Nikki saying, "he's got this
outer space sounding voice". So, it was up at I.R.S. studios and they invited me out there and said, "Don, we want you to hear
what this new lead singer sounds like". It was just about a half dozen of us that went to see them perform together for the first
time in the studio. We had never heard a voice like that before and it fit. Even my girlfriend at the time was like, these
guys are going to be big. It all came together, with Odeen they were good, but with Vince, it all came together and they were
spectacular. So, that laid the seeds to redo the tracks on the single with Vince on vocals. Vince was always very nice, just
a really cool nice guy, had a little boy at the time, who we would sometimes see at shoots or backstage. He was a seemingly
really caring father, at the time. He had an older woman, a girlfriend named Lori.
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Kevin Dubrow
Randy Rhoads
Stephen Pearcy |
FIB MUSIC: How old were the guys in Motley Crue at that time?
Don: I think Vince and Nikki were around 21 or 22, Tommy was 18 and Mick, who had
already been in bands for a long time was somewhere around 40.
FIB MUSIC: Do what?.....Mick was 40 in 1981 / 1982?
Don: Yeah. He's in his late 60's now.
FIB MUSIC: I knew he was older, but I thought he was probably
around 30 when Motley Crue started to make it.
Don: No. He was 40-ish.
FIB MUSIC: Almost forty or over forty?
Don: He was over forty. You won't get anybody to admit that, but you can probably do some
research and find out. I remember when I saw him playing on the reunion tour a couple of years back and I remember telling my
wife that he was 66 or 67 at that time. He's really that old.
FIB MUSIC: That's amazing.
Don: Yeah.
FIB MUSIC: He's seems like a really cool, laid back, quiet guy. What was he like?
Don: Yes. He was more inward. He had a very interesting, seasoned way of talking. He
was not as talkative as the rest of the guys, but when he talked you listened more. Nikki or Vince would go, "Oh, that's rad dude" and
Mick would just go, "that's maniacal" (laughs).
FIB MUSIC: How does your relationship end with Motley Crue?
Don: It ended when they brought on Doc McGhee and that stuff.
FIB MUSIC: When was that?
Don: They were getting ready for the
"Shout at the Devil" thing. They severed ties with
Allan Coffman, their manager, and basically went with this whole other thing with Doc McGhee and got the deal with Elektra. At that
time, they shocked me and really their whole inner circle of friends they went ahead and just changed everything....all their
relationships with their friends.....and a lot of us just kind of got left out. They got the deal with Elektra and a lot of us
were just cast off.
FIB MUSIC: That's interesting, when I interviewed
Lizzie Grey, he said the same thing with
both
Blackie and
Nikki.
Don: Right.
FIB MUSIC: So they got signed after they released "Too Fast for Love" or did they get
signed for "Shout at the Devil"?
Don: The originally released, "Too Fast for Love" on Leathur Records and then later they got
signed, but it was for "
Shout at the Devil" and Elektra picked up "Too Fast for Love" and re-released it. The difference between
the original release and the Elektra release is the lettering is in red, versus the black and white.
FIB MUSIC: Plus they redid the vocals, right?
Don: Yeah....and they got Roy Thomas Baker to reproduce the album. Again, they really, really
listened to who has great sound, who has great production, who has great engineering and Nikki really liked the Roy Thomas
Baker sound, the bigness. He had listened to Queen, he listened to the Cars and just go...that sound. Even before they signed with
Elektra Nikki would say how great it would be to work with Roy Thomas Baker. He basically just took the existing stuff on
"Too Fast for Love" and worked and reengineered it.
FIB MUSIC: So, once they sign the deal with Elektra, you don't talk to them anymore?
Don: Yep.
FIB MUSIC: Wow, that quick, huh?
Don: That quick. It's really too bad.
FIB MUSIC: Have you ever talked to any of them since?
Don: I talked to Nikki one time after
"Shout at the Devil", backstage a little bit and it
was someone else's show at the Country Club. It was probably a year or so after they were signed and that was it, it was like
yeah, we got to be in touch and that was the last I talked to him. It's sad that they kind of severed the relationship, but I keep
a positive outlook on things. I really enjoyed the time I had. Seeing all this stuff happen. It was just a wonderful
time.
03/10/08 - We will resume a regular schedule of interviews and will
once again post every Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. Thanks for your patience, especially for the last eight months, while we put
Fibits.com together. There is still more to this interview, but that was the end of the
Motley Crue, Too Fast for Love era. See you next week. -AI
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