The Dirt (2002)
The Dirt is a 2002 motley crue book written by Neil Strauss.
Four musicians tell the story of Motley Crue in their own voices, and the account is as reckless as the band was. Tommy Lee, Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil and Mick Mars trade turns with journalist Neil Strauss, recounting the Sunset Strip clubs, the records, the addictions, the marriages and the wreckage that came with 1980s hair-metal fame. The book is candid to the point of squalor, funny and grim by turns, and unsparing about the cost of the excess. It reads like the band handing you the unedited tapes, glamour and disaster left equally on the page.
Quick answers
What is The Dirt about?
Four musicians tell the story of Motley Crue in their own voices, and the account is as reckless as the band was. Tommy Lee, Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil and Mick Mars trade turns with journalist Neil Strauss, recounting the Sunset Strip clubs, the records, the addictions, the marriages and the wreckage that came with 1980s hair-metal fame. The book is candid to the point of squalor, funny and grim by turns, and unsparing about the cost of the excess. It reads like the band handing you the unedited tapes, glamour and disaster left equally on the page.
When was The Dirt published?
The Dirt was published in 2002.
Who made The Dirt?
The Dirt was written by Neil Strauss.
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The Dirt in our writing
- Companion guide: Music & Musicians
A few thoughts on The Dirt
The 2019 Netflix film The Dirt casts the mayhem the book narrates. Then go to the source and play Shout at the Devil and Dr. Feelgood, the records made in the middle of all that chaos. Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous catches the same touring-life romance and burnout from a gentler, more elegiac angle.
The music that fueled the same reckless decade
The Dirt lets Motley Crue narrate their own chaos, and the era had a soundtrack to match. Shout at the Devil is their own record from the thick of it, while Iron Maiden's The Number of the Beast and Piece of Mind carry the same theatrical menace, and Almost Famous captures the touring-band delirium the book describes from the inside.
Real people who told their own reckless story without flinching
Tommy Lee, Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil and Mick Mars never soften their own worst nights, and these seeds share that candor. The Wolf of Wall Street and Goodfellas turn real men's addictions and crimes into first-person spectacle, Catch Me If You Can follows a real con artist's audacity, Just Kids gives the music scene equal weight, and Michael reconstructs a musician's rise on the same unflinching terms.