Nothing wrong with stroking your chin to the likes of Radiohead, but sometimes you need to throw a few shapes to something patently ridiculous yet undeniably great. This is where Mötley Crüe’s fifth and, by some considerable distance, best record Dr Feelgood comes in.
Reissued yet again to celebrate its quick-think-of-something 35th anniversary, this is where the reprobates who made Aerosmith seem abstemious and resembled what might arrive if you ordered Guns N’ Roses off Temu got it utterly, and perhaps unexpectedly, right. Sobering up at least a bit and drafting in the production know-how of Bob Rock, they birthed an album so gloriously over the top it’s coming down the other side screaming and shouting.
Kneel in awe before the titanic title track which sports a riff sharp enough to use in a street fight then genuflect in thanks before Kickstart My Heart, which quite rightly declares that the band are ‘still kicking ass’. OK, the rest of it isn’t quite up to that high standard but it’s still great sport.
Going by the evidence presented in big ballads Without You and Time For Change (and you could see that key change coming from the moon) Vince Neil was never really going to make it as an opera singer (or a poet) but you’ll still be looking around for a cigarette lighter to wave in the air. If you find one, hang on to it for the marvellously monikered Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away).
What remains – the what’s-wrong-with-being-sexy glam grind of Sticky Sweet (hey, if it’s good enough for Steven Tyler and Bryan Adams to provide backing vocals…), She Goes Down and Slice Of Your Pie – is pretty much by the numbers, but they’re good numbers and Mick Mars is always just around the corner with the kind of guitar solos tennis rackets were invented for. If Same Ol’ Situation (S.O.S.) does nothing for you then, well call a doctor. Dr. Feelgood, for example.
This hey-why-not edition is fleshed out with some surprisingly robust live tracks and several superfluous demos, including the god-awful Get It For Free which shows how easy it is to stray across the line from inspired to insipid, but the main event is the essential meat of the matter. It would soon be all over, bar the shouting for the Crüe, the grunge horde from the Pacific Northwest moved in. But their stupid-like-a-fox masterwork Dr Feelgood still rocks like a rowboat in a typhoon.
