How Mötley Crüe's Biting 'Game' Got the Band Booted from a Hotel — and Into a Fight with Van Halen and AC/DC

• Mötley Crüe made a game of biting people, but those outside the band didn’t find it amusing
• Manager Don McGhee recalls when some “friendly” bites led to a brawl at a Swedish hotel
• McGhee recalls memories from the band’s wilder days Nothing But A Good Time: The Uncensored Story of ’80s Hair Metal

Things might get a little crazy when hair metal’s biggest bands hit the road.

In a recent documentary Nothing But A Good Time: The Uncensored Story of ’80s Hair Metal, photographer Mark Weiss recalled once getting on a tour bus with Mötley Crüe when Nikki Sixx turned around and bit him.

“I say, ‘What’s going on?’ He’s like, ‘Draw blood!’ ” he recalled, explaining, “He wanted me to bite him back, and I said, ‘I’m not going to do that.’ ”

The band’s manager, Don McGhee, explained that “the whole Mötley Crüe had this thing called Dark Angels… They’d bite you right in the middle of the forehead, they’d bite you in the arm.”

“When they bit you, it was like a dog bite,” he added, noting that while others were playing, he wasn’t interested.

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Van Halen in 1984.

David Tan/Shinko Music/Getty

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“Nikki and Tommy [Lee] they were both trying to bite me. I think Nikki came first, I grabbed him and pulled him down. Then Tommy jumped on me and I pulled him over my shoulder,” he recalled.

“I had them both on the ground and I just started punching them, and I punched them so many times I threw up on them,” he laughed.

McGhee then recalled an incident before Monsters of Rock in Stockholm, Sweden in 1984, when chaos broke out at the band’s hotel over a biting incident.

“There’s 15,000 people in a ballroom at the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, Sweden. We’re doing Monsters of Rock, which is AC/DC, Van Halen and Mötley Crüe,” McGhee said. “All of a sudden, Nikki stands up, walks over and bites Eddie Van Halen on the shoulder.”

Van Halen wasn’t amused by that, much less when Tommy Lee went up and bit him too.

AC/DC in 1984.

Michael Ochs/Getty Archive

“Everybody’s mad now,” McGhee continued. “Fifteen minutes later, Vince [Neil] came up to bite him. Eddie grabs Vince by the face, throws him on the table, they start fighting. Then Malcolm, the AC/DC drummer, looked at Nikki and said, ‘Bite me, mate, and I’ll bite your fucking ear off.’ Nikki grabs him by the hair and slams him against the wall.”

Meanwhile, “Tommy and David Lee Roth are upstairs at the table, kung fu fighting or some s—.”

The incident resulted in everyone being kicked out of the hotel, something that didn’t worry Mötley Crüe the next day. When McGhee reminded Lee that he bit Van Halen, he said, “Dude, we only bit him because we love him.”

McGhee said, “I told him, ‘You’re a dick. You don’t bite people.’

Nothing But A Good Time: The Uncensored Story of ’80s Hair Metal now streaming on Paramount+.

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Source: HIS Education