Mötley Crüe Manager Recalls Band’s Biting Spree, Fight with Van Halen, AC/DC

• Mötley Crüe made a game of biting people, but those outside of the band weren’t amused
• Manager Don McGhee recalls when some “friendly” biting led to a brawl at a Swedish hotel
• McGhee recalls memories from the band’s wilder days in Nöthin’ But a Good Time: The Uncensored Story of ’80s Hair Metal 

Things could get kind of crazy when the biggest bands in hair metal hit the road.

In the recent documentary Nöthin’ But a Good Time: The Uncensored Story of ’80s Hair Metal, photographer Mark Weiss recalled getting on a tour bus with Mötley Crüe once when Nikki Sixx turned around and bit him.

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

The band’s manager, Don McGhee, explained that “the whole Mötley Crüe had this thing called the 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, stating that while others played along, he wasn’t interested.

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

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

McGhee then recalled an incident ahead of Monsters of Rock in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1984, when mayhem erupted at the band’s hotel over a biting incident.

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

Van Halen wasn’t amused, even less so when Tommy Lee went up and also bit him.

“Now everybody’s pissed,” McGhee continued. “Fifteen minutes later, Vince [Neil] goes over to bite him. Eddie grabs Vince by the face, throws him on the table, they start fighting. Then Malcolm, the drummer from AC/DC, looked at Nikki and said, ‘You bite me, mate, and I’ll chew your f—— ear off.’ Nikki grabs him by the hair and slams him against a wall.'”

Meanwhile, “Tommy and David Lee Roth are up on the table, doing some kung fu fighting or some s— like that.”

The incident led to them all getting kicked out of the hotel, something that didn’t bother Mötley Crüe the next day. When McGhee reminded Lee he’d bitten Van Halen, he said, “Dude, we just bit him because we love him.”

McGhee said, “I told him, ‘You’re f—– up. You don’t bite people.”

Nöthin’ But a Good Time: The Uncensored Story of ’80s Hair Metal is now streaming on Paramount+.