Tommy Lee Reminisced About Leaving Motley Crue

The drummer of Motley CrueTommy Lee he is going through a positive period with his band, but it hasn’t always been like this. In the past, Lee left the group more than once, in particular there was a long break that began in 1999. That was a turbulent time for Lee, both personally and professionally, as the drummer recalled during a guest appearance at Zach Sang Show.

Recalling the years around the turn of 2000, the 63-year-old musician born in Athens (Greece) says: “I was slowly dying creatively, both as a musician and as an artist, and I needed an outlet. So I stopped for a couple of years, and that’s when I started Methods of Mayhem and started doing something solo because I needed to change gear. Before, I wasn’t able to do anything creative outside of the context of Motley Crue.”

With i Methods of Mayhem, Tommy Lee he experimented with rap rock, very popular at the time. The drummer began releasing solo material in the early 2000s and continued to do so even after his return to the band Mötley Crüe in 2004. “With my solo projects, it was like being in an adult playground. Literally, everything was allowed. No genre, no style: it didn’t matter. We did what we wanted and had fun. Creatively I needed it, because I was going through a bad period in my life.”

The separation of Tommy Lee come on Mötley Crüe came after the rocker had served four months in prison for domestic violence, for kicking his then-wife, the actress Pamela Anderson. It was a particularly difficult time for the drummer, but it forced him to reconsider his life. “I realized this while I was in prison. I thought, ‘I have to change something, because obviously I’m here. I have to turn my life around, I have to be happy and get out of here.”

The rocker concluded that creativity was the key to his personal happiness, an epiphany that led him to have his own projects outside of Mötley Crüe. “Creativity is a huge part of who I am. If you’re not creatively satisfied and don’t feel like you can continually evolve and create and do things, that’s dangerous.”