Mick Mars Speaks Out on Motley Crue Lawsuits: ‘I Can’t Believe They’re Pulling This Crap — I Carried Those Bastards for Years’ (EXCLUSIVE)

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The guest list for Willie Nelson’s 90th birthday all-star concerts at the Hollywood Bowl has been significantly expanded. Sixteen additional names were announced Wednesday for the already packed two-night lineup, representing a roughly 50% expansion of a bill that was advertised with 30 stars when it first went on sale — and immediately sold out — in January. Newly added stars from the worlds of rock, country and other genres include Dave Matthews, Emmylou Harris, Jack Johnson and fellow Texans George Strait and Gary Clark Jr. Nelson’s sole surviving fellow Highwayman, Kris Kristofferson, has also been appointed to the lineup. The son of one of those Highwaymen, Shooter Jennings, is joining the bill as well. Others freshly named to appear this Saturday or Sunday include Dwight Yoakam, Stephen Stills, Rodney Crowell, Booker T. Jones, Buddy Cannon, Daniel Lanois, Jamey Johnson, Waylon Payne and Lily Meola.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic A copyright trial in a Manhattan federal courtroom pitting Ed Sheeran against the heirs of a co-writer of Marvin Gaye’s classic “Let’s Get It On” saw the pop star taking the stand Tuesday, offering strong retorts to attorneys’ arguments that he had stolen elements of the 1970s hit for his own “Thinking Out Loud.” One piece of evidence that the judge had left in limbo in pre-trial hearings was a fan-shot video of Sheeran mashing up the two songs in concert in 2014. U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton, who had previously left the matter of whether to allow the medley unresolved, ultimately ruled Tuesday that a 30-second clip be played, despite Sheeran’s attorneys’ argument that it was “irrelevant and prejudicial.”

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Metallica came in strong on this week’s Billboard 200 with a No. 2 bow for the group’s latest album, “72 Seasons,” which came in almost within sight of the chart’s recently indomitable leader, Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time.” Wallen extended his run at No. 1 to seven weeks at a time, and counting, with 166,000 more album-equivalent units added to his tally, while Metallica debuted with 146,000 units. On the Billboard Hot 100, meanwhile, SZA finally landed in the No. 1 spot she’s been circling for many weeks with “Kill Bill.” The song had spent eight weeks at No. 2, then dipped to No. 4 last week, before getting the boost it needed to finally become a chart-topper in this latest frame.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Drummer Bill Kreutzmann, one of the founders of the Grateful Dead and a member of spinoff group Dead and Company, will not be a part of the latter group’s farewell tour this summer, the band announced in a social media post Saturday. Although fans might assume his exit could be health-related, since he has had to sit out some Dead and Company shows in recent years, the group declared that was not the case in its post, and added that he is not retiring from music. Rather, the statement said, Kreutzmann’s departure was due to a “shift in creative direction.” No further explanation of what that might mean was forthcoming in the statement.

EXCLUSIVE: One day after New Mexico dropped criminal charges against Rust actor and producer Alec Baldwin in the tragic set death of DP Halyna Hutchins, Deadline has learned that the Oscar nominee and multi-Emmy winner is set to star in Mike Hatton’s feature directorial debut, Hollywood Heist.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Eric Clapton announced Monday that his recurring Crossroads Guitar Festival will take place in Los Angeles this fall, with a roster of 41 guest musicians or bands set to take the stage across two nights at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles Sept. 23-24. Musicians due to perform one or both nights include Santana, the War on Drugs, the John Mayer Trio, ZZ Top, Sheryl Crow, Gary Clark Jr., H.E.R., Buddy Guy, Los Lobos, Vince Gill, Stephen Stills, Jimmy Vaughan, Robbie Robertson, the Del McCoury Band and Joe Bonamassa. Others announced include John McLaughlin, Albert Lee, Doyle Bramhall II, Keb’ Mo’, Roger McGuinn, Robert Randolph, Jakob Dylan, Sierra Hull, Marcus King, Eric Gales, Sonny Landreth, Pedro Martins, James Bullard, Andy Fairweather Low, Samantha Fish, Ariel Posen, Ben Haggard, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, the Bros. Landreth, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Gustavo Satnaolalla, Danial Santiago and Bradley Walker.

Lee Mack revealed people refuse to believe he met his wife Tara before finding fame and fortune because she's so stunning.

Nikki Sixx has confirmed that Mötley Crüe are in the studio and working on new music.The founding member and bassist of the hair metal icons shared a picture of himself, drummer Tommy Lee and new guitarist John 5 in a songwriting session. Sixx also said the band were working with producer Barry Pointer.Sixx shared the photo on Thursday night (April 13) before following up with more news yesterday (Friday, April 14).

Mötley Crüe's manager claimed Mick Mars' representatives are "taking advantage" of the guitarist amid the group's recent touring dispute. In court documents obtained by Fox News Digital, Mick Mars accused the band of forcing him to resign after he chose to stop touring. However, the band's manager Allen Kovac and a lawyer for the band claimed representatives for Mars, including the guitarist's lawyer, "manipulated" him into the dispute.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic When Bob Dylan made a performance film, “Shadow Kingdom,” that streamed via the Veeps platform for one week in July 2021, Variety reviewed the special, writing that it had “new arrangements so good that pretty much everybody who was watching Sunday was clamoring for a soundtrack to the event, preferably on LP.” That wish is coming true, two years later. (But not just on vinyl.) The music from “Shadow Kingdom” will be released in album form in June. The album version shall be released June 6 on streaming platforms and as a CD and double-LP. The film itself, out of circulation since that initial one-week pay-per-view window, will become available for rental and download for the first time in June, as well.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress has issued its annual list of 25 recordings that will be added to the esteemed list, covering a range that runs a gamut from the very first time mariachi music was captured for posterity in the early 1900s to Daddy Yankee’s “Carolina” about a hundred years later. In-between are some curiosities and monster hits that the Library deems worthy of preservation for all time — although, in the case of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” the prospect of it the recording falling into disrepair due to neglect will probably not be an issue any century soon. Among the enduring smashes from the second half of the 20th century that made the list: Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” John Lennon’s “Imagine,” Queen Latifah’s “All Hail the Queen,” Crosby Stills Nash & Young’s “Déjà Vu,” Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville,” John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe,” Irene Cara’s “Flashdance… What a Feeling,” Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” and the Police’s “Synchronicity.”

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic It may take a greater elixir than anything Dr. Feelgood has to offer to elicit positive vibes in the war of words — and writs — between Motley Crue guitarist Mick Mars and the other three members of the group. Following a headline-making lawsuit filed by Mars against the band last week, lawyers or managers for both sides have spoken with Variety at length about the positions they are doubling down on. If you had to sum it up in a hard-rock song, it might be: “Grievances Grievances Grievances.” Until now, the Crue camp had only issued brief statements and a frustrated tweet from Nikki Sixx. But the band’s manager of 29 years, Allen Kovac, was so angered by an interview Mars gave Variety after the suit was filed that he agreed to go on record addressing what he believes are the musician’s most scurrilous accusations — including whether or not the group’s performances are largely on tape. “I have a lot of regret that I’m having to do this,” the attorney says, pointing out that he talked Nikki Sixx, the group’s unofficial leader, out of talking to the press himself, wanting the bassist to keep “taking the high road.”

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Amazon has come on board this month’s Stagecoach Festival in California to provide a livestream of the country music gathering. Live action from the April 28-30 festival in Indio will be streamed on both Prime Video and Amazon Music’s Twitch channel. It marks the second year that the festival will be extensively streamed, albeit the first involving Amazon. In 2022, Stagecoach livestreamed most of the main attractions on its own YouTube channel. In some years prior to that, Yahoo had had exclusive rights to stream select artists’ sets. Coverage from the festival will begin at 3 p.m. each of the festival’s three days. Stagecoach and Amazon did not immediately reveal how many or which sets will be streamed from the festival; a press release promised that performances from the Mane Stage will be seen.

Depeche Mode appeared on BBC Radio 2’s Piano Room, where they performed three songs accompanied by the BBC Concert Orchestra, and spoke to presenter Gary Davies.Performing at BBC’s Maida Vale studios for the first time, the duo – Dave Gahan and Martin Gore – shared versions of ‘Walking In My Shoes’, ‘Ghosts Again’ and a reworking of Gordon Lightfoot’s ‘Sundown’.During the show, Davies played some listener questions, one of which was: “I’m really interested to know if you have your own idol, musically or otherwise?”Gahan replied: “Yeah, I mean straight away, even when you’re saying that sentence, it’s always been and always will be Bowie. I got to know him a little bit as well in the last few years of his life just because our daughters’ went to the same school in New York.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Muse was making its eighth visit to downtown L.A.’s Crypto.com Arena, frontman Matt Bellamy reminded the audience, shortly into the trio’s return engagement Thursday night — except rather than call it by its current name, he said the venue would always be Staples Center to the band. He added a joking, mumbled reference to “weird fucking con artists,” presumably a reference to his lack of faith in the state of cryptocurrency. Digital assets are fleeting, but office supplies are forever, right? There is some kind of loose analog there — no pun intended — to the situation with Muse, which is forever using futuristic imagery in its shows but reigns as one of rock’s best bands by its rootedness in a slightly pre-digital past.

Mötley Crüe guitarist Mick Mars has spoken out about his recent legal battle with the band, following the lawsuit he filed against them over his share of profits.In a new interview with Variety, Mars detailed his thoughts on the ongoing arbitration, as well as his feelings towards his ex-bandmates.“Those guys have been hammering on me since ’87, trying to replace me,” he said. “They haven’t been able to do that, because I’m the guitar player.

Mars announced he’d be retiring from touring due to a chronic inflammatory disease.The lawsuit, obtained by the New York Times, claims the rest of the band (Tommy Lee, Nikki Sixx and Vince Neil) called an emergency shareholders’ meeting in which they schemed to fire Mars from the band’s corporations and entities. “It is beyond sad that, after 41 years together, a band would try to throw out a member who is unable to tour anymore because he has a debilitating disease,” Edwin F. McPherson, Mars’ lawyer, told The Times.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic In 2002, director Sam Jones made what is widely considered a benchmark for 21st century music documentaries with “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco,” a movie that lucked into just about all the subject matter that could make B-roll footage of the making of an album into A-list material. It had conflict within the band, between an auteur and another member of great talent; conflict with the soon-to-be-ex-record label, over the basically unwanted classic-to-be “Yankee Foxtrot Hotel”); and said auteur doing his own demon-wrestling, outside foils notwithstanding. Now, it’s easier to see that Jones’ good fortune in happening upon all that wasn’t all luck. More than 20 years later, Jones has come up with another gold-standard music doc, in the form of “Jason Isbell: Running With Our Eyes Closed,” newly streaming on HBO Max. This time, as the creation of another amazing record — Isbell’s “Reunions” (recorded in late 2019 and released a few months later) — is put under the filmic microscope, there are no record-company bookkeepers as unseen baddies in the backdrop to a making-of. Major labels and the conflicts that come with them are so 2002, right? But one common thread is intra-band tension… as it probably will be in most good rock docs now or 20 years from now. It gets more interesting than that, though. In this instance, the difficult vibes are between bandmates who double as a married couple — Isbell and his fiddler-spouse, Amanda Shires. Here, unlike the by-now iconic beefing between Jay Tweedy and Jay Bennett, we know no one’s ultimately going anywhere, right?

Mötley Crüe guitarist Mick Mars has filed a lawsuit against the band over his share of profits.Mars has alleged that he was “unilaterally” removed from the band after announcing his retirement from touring due to ongoing struggles with an arthritic disease called ankylosing spondylitis last October. As a result, he claims his profit share was cut from 25 per cent to five percent.According to legal papers filed in Los Angeles County’s Superior Court yesterday (April 6) Mars’ attorney, Edwin F.

Mick Mars countersued Mötley Crüe on Thursday and accused the band of forcing him to resign after he chose to stop touring. Mötley Crüe previously claimed that when Mars announced that he couldn't tour anymore, he was resigning from the band. However, Mars alleges that he told the band members that he could still play in a residency situation and could still record, according to court documents obtained by Fox News Digital.