Background and career
Robert Alan Deal (born May 4, 1951), known professionally as Mick Mars, is an American musician. He is best known as a former member of the heavy metal band Mötley Crüe, which he co-founded in 1981 as the lead guitarist and played with until 2023. He is known for his aggressive, melodic solos and bluesy riffs.
Mars was born Robert Alan Deal, in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1951. Soon after, his family moved to Huntington, Indiana. Before he was nine years old, his family relocated again, this time to Garden Grove, California. He realized he wanted to become a musician at only three years of age, when his parents took him to see country singer Skeeter Bonn at a local 4-H Fair in Indiana. "He was wearing a bright-orange outfit with rhinestones all over the place, and a big white Stetson hat. I went, 'I'm doing that. That's what I want to do.'" He attended Westminster High School.
His parents bought him his first guitar at age 12 and he began a relentless practice routine, thinking only of becoming a successful musician. He began at age 14 as bassist in a Beatles cover group called The Jades before switching to lead guitar. He dropped out of high school and began playing guitar in a series of unsuccessful blues-based rock bands throughout the 1970s. In his early 20s, he took a job in an industrial laundromat operating heavy machinery while moonlighting with his band Wahtoshi in the local club circuit. After recovering from a serious injury to one of his hands suffered in a workplace accident, he quit to focus on music full time. In 1973, he joined a cover band called White Horse and soon began to be recognized as an accomplished guitarist. "He could copy parts note for note. You give him "Highway Star" and he could nail Ritchie Blackmore's riffs," said ex-White Horse bassist Harry Clay. Former White Horse drummer Jack Valentine says that Mars began using various aliases in the 1970s such as Zorky Charlemagne as a means of avoiding the police, as he was behind on child-support payments to ex-girlfriend Sharon, the mother of two of his children. "Any time we got pulled over by the cops for a taillight or whatever, and the cops saw his ID, they'd throw him in jail. We'd have to figure a way to get him out," recalled Valentine. White Horse had a promising future, and Mars (still known as Bob Deal) began drawing comparisons to another young guitarist named Eddie Van Halen of a rival club band named Mammoth. "Mick Mars and Eddie Van Halen were the two hottest guitar players in LA. There probably weren't two better guitar players on the planet," said Valentine. Mars eventually left White Horse when the band decided to play disco music in the hopes of achieving greater success. He then joined a pop group called Video Nu-R and released the singles "Gypsy Woman/You Drive Me Crazy" in 1978 and "Work, Work/Decadence Plus" in 1979. These singles marked Mars' recording debut.
After nearly a decade of frustration on the California club circuit, he made the decision to reinvent himself. He shaved off his trademark mustache, adopted the stage name Mick Mars, and dyed his hair jet black, hoping for a fresh start. In April 1980 he placed an ad in the LA newspaper The Recycler, describing himself as "a loud, rude and aggressive guitar player" in need of a band. Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee, who were putting together a new band that would soon become Mötley Crüe, contacted him and hired him after hearing him play. Lee opened the door and recalled "he's standing there looking like Cousin Itt from The Addams Family" and immediately turned to Sixx and said "This is our guy, he's perfect, he's disgusting and scary". The name Mötley Crüe came about at the suggestion of Mars. In the early days of White Horse, someone had referred to the band as a "motley looking crew" and Motley Crew was a name they had initially considered using. Sixx liked the name and subsequently altered it to Mötley Crüe. One of the most influential heavy metal groups of the 1980s, Mötley Crüe has sold over 100 million albums worldwide. They have also achieved seven multiplatinum and five platinum US certifications, nine Top 10 albums on the Billboard 200 chart, twenty-two Top 40 mainstream rock hits, and six Top 20 pop singles. While Mötley Crüe gained a well-deserved reputation for partying, Mars was never a fan of drugs. "I went, 'Please don't ever, ever do smack. You can't make music when you're falling down'," he told his bandmates when heroin began to enter the picture. He did, however, develop a serious drinking problem after joining the band. During the recording of their Dr. Feelgood album in 1989 Mars reportedly used so many amplifiers on his guitar that sounds of his guitar could be heard on the recordings of Aerosmith's album Pump, which was being recorded in the same studio at the time:
Steven Tyler was doing vocals with producer Bruce Fairbairn next door, and I remember them yelling at me, 'You've gotta turn your stuff down, Mick! It's leaking into our vocals.' I didn't turn down, though. I just told them, 'Hey, that's the way I play – loud, so yeah, I'm all over the record they were doing. Somewhere in the mix, you'll hear me. When the band made the decision to fire vocalist John Corabi and reunite with original vocalist Vince Neil in 1997 for Generation Swine, Mars was not involved in the decision-making process. "They had no respect for Mick," Corabi said. "Mick was just the grumpy old bastard to them. [Sixx and Lee] gave Mick shit about his finances and the girls he dated. He'd been dealing with over 20 years of this." Mars refers to the Generation Swine era as his only regret as a member of Mötley Crüe, as the band erased much of what he recorded in the studio and hired session guitarists instead. Mars also claims that he had little involvement in 2000's New Tattoo, saying "I didn't write any of those songs, since I wasn't invited. I think I got one lick on that album." Sixx has denied this claim, saying that "This is during the period that [Mars] had disintegrated into opiate addiction." On 2008's Saints of Los Angeles, guitarist DJ Ashba recorded the vast majority of the guitar parts, though his work was uncredited. Sixx has said that the band had no choice, claiming that "Mick was struggling to play his parts." Mötley Crüe reunited in 2018 and started touring again in 2022. However, several years away from the band had convinced Mars that he never wanted to tour again. He made it clear to his bandmates that he was open to recording again but could not handle another world tour, as he could no longer move his head from side to side and was permanently hunched over. Mars says he has never had a close offstage relationship with any of his Mötley Crüe bandmates. "(Sixx) has only ever visited me two or three times at the most," he says. "Tommy came over once, and Vince just came over once, even though he lived just around the corner from me in Venice Beach. It's just the way we worked," he says.
On October 26, 2022, Mars announced his retirement from touring with Mötley Crüe. The next day, the band confirmed that John 5 had taken his place. That same week, they announced Mars' complete retirement from the band, supporting his decision, with John 5 taking his place starting with the 2023's The World Tour with Def Leppard. On April 6, 2023, Mars sued the band, alleging that the group were trying to "unilaterally" get Mars removed from the lineup. Later that day, the band released a statement stating that, whilst Mars hadn't been fired, he isn't touring with the group. Mars would state:
