Motley Crue - Dr. Feelgood

The masterpiece. Released on September 1, 1989, Dr. Feelgood is not just the commercial peak of Mötley Crüe's career but the record that proved they were capable of genuine greatness, an album built on craft and conviction that has outlasted the era that produced it by decades. It entered the Billboard 200 at number one, sold over six million copies in the United States alone, spawned five rock radio hits, and won Best Hard Rock/Heavy Metal Album at the 1991 American Music Awards. Forty years on, "Kickstart My Heart" still appears in films, television series, sporting events, and video games with a regularity no other song from the glam metal era can match.

The story behind the album is as remarkable as the music. In December 1987, bassist Nikki Sixx was declared clinically dead for two minutes following a heroin overdose before being revived by paramedics. The experience, and the band's subsequent collective decision to get sober, transformed everything. Sixx, Vince Neil, Mick Mars, and Tommy Lee entered rehab and emerged with a focus and discipline they had never before brought to a recording session. As Sixx later wrote, sobriety gave him the time and clarity to cut away the fat of his writing and put the songs through the Mötley machine until they were genuinely great. The title track was inspired by Sixx's drug dealers in Los Angeles. "Kickstart My Heart" was written in the immediate aftermath of his overdose, a song he thought was a throwaway that took on a life entirely its own.

Producer Bob Rock, recording the band at Little Mountain Sound Studios in Vancouver with each member tracking their parts separately to minimize conflict and maximize precision, delivered the tightest, cleanest, most powerful sound of their career. The results speak for themselves. "Dr. Feelgood," "Kickstart My Heart," "Without You," "Same Ol' Situation (S.O.S.)," and "Don't Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)" form one of the great singles runs in hard rock history. Steven Tyler, Bryan Adams, Robin Zander, and Rick Nielsen contributed backing vocals, and Aerosmith happened to be recording Pump in the next studio at the time.

This 40th anniversary reissue on 180g vinyl with remastered audio is the definitive way to own the finest album Mötley Crüe ever made.