Multi-platinum L.A. rockers Motley Crue rose to fame with their debauchery-fueled brand of heavy metal then enthralled readers around the world with The Dirt, a hit memoir that made its way to Netflix in 2019. Here’s all the dirt behind The Dirt on the page and on the screen.
Compared to other rock biography books, The Dirt just has a lot… more. It’s got more stories of illegal activity and heavy metal debauchery, and it’s also got a lot of authors. Five guys are credited on the cover: Mötley Crüe band members Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx, Mick Mars, and Tommy Lee, along with Neil Strauss. He’s the guy who did all the interviewing and assembled a coherent narrative out of what must have been stacks of tapes and copious notes culled from following around four guys for months.
Strauss first hooked up with Mötley Crüe in 1998, when he briefly toured with the band for a profile in Spin. At the time, he was finalizing his Marilyn Manson book, The Long Hard Road Out of H***, and the Crüe members that read it loved it. When publisher HarperCollins contracted the group for a book later on, they immediately asked Strauss to helm the project. Once more, he went on tour with Mötley Crüe and visited each musician at home. Probably the hardest part for him to write: Vince Neil’s account of his four-year-old daughter’s ultimately tragic battle with cancer. Strauss told MTV: “He was crying, I was crying. It tore me apart. When I gave him the book, I said, ‘You might not want to read this.'”
Watch the video for more of The Truth About Netflix’s The Dirt!
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The other Neil in Mötley Crüe | 0:15
Breakfast burritos | 1:19
No crying in rock n’ roll | 2:25
The worst day in Crüe history | 3:21
Fired or quit? | 4:25
New decade, same sound | 5:16
Books are so metal | 6:11
Round and round | 6:58
The movie took forever | 7:49
Changing cast | 8:30
A shocking story | 9:16