Dr. Feelgood

Just to warn you, this is the first cold night of the year and my apartment has no carpet, so this review might be slightly more negative than I would usually write, but I'll do my best to soldier on. I never was much of a Motley Crue fan, eyeing all things with big hair suspiciously as one would expect from someone born in '91, while I guess the whole "party metal" thing doesn't really work when you don't have any friends who actually like metal, meaning you're mostly listening to albums on headphones in your bedroom. (Not a sob story, I promise, just the way things are.) In any case, one of the songs that did stick with me from the Crue is the title track to this album, which I suppose I saw on television one day and got vaguely hooked by. So when the album turned up on my friend's hard drive full of music, the only thing I thought about was whether I had enough storage space to get all the music on rather than which albums I would really enjoy.

For all the ambiguity of that build-up, I'm fairly confident in saying that Dr. Feelgood is more or less to my taste, though my mood at the time of listening needs to be factored in to make sure that I don't toss my computer across the room. It's more than likely that the mediocre scores on this website are as a result of the average patron of the Metal Archives liking stuff a long way removed from hair metal, so perhaps is not truly representative of the actual quality. In any case, for a chilly evening like this, Motley Crue aren't exactly the fastest band to get my fingers warmed up on the keyboard, but then again they pack tons of energy into the more powerful numbers, meaning that there is plenty of (S.T....) Infectious rock and metal to make me limber despite the temperature. Mick Mars is one of the underrated metal guitarists (and overrated rock guitarists), doing a great job with the danceable licks and groove of 'Rattlesnake Shake' and plenty of howling solos that you wouldn't want to be any less exuberant. The eternal optimism of Vince Neil's voice is also a strong presence across the release, making this a fun and uplifting experience.

In terms of ideas and complexity, there's a little less merit on Dr. Feelgood than one may have seen on earlier Crue efforts like Shout at the Devil and the aggressive debut Too Fast for Love, though I would still take this over something by Ratt, Twisted Sister, or even sleaze giants like Aerosmith. Tommy Lee gives the songs plenty of stadium appeal with his pounding '80s drums (this is '89, so what were you expecting?) and the backing vocals are obviously there as a crowd-pleaser, yet the general pace of the songs and the surprising heaviness of 'Dr. Feelgood' and 'Kickstart My Heart' - especially considering they were the big singles - leaves this sounding a bit more dangerous than your average Bon Jovi release. There are, of course, ballads, but that's par for the course for this commercial style and at least 'Without You' has a fair bit of guitar tasties alongside Neil mourning the potential departure of whatever piece of ass he was doing at the time. (Is it just me or does it seem insincere that songs like 'Slice of Your Pie' and 'She Goes Down' can cluster around a supposedly heartfelt ballad like 'Without You'? Whatever works I guess...)

So I've warmed up a little now by listening to the first half of the album and am surprised to find just how many of the hooks that I can remember from most of these songs, even the ones I thought I had ignored on previous listens. So sure as hell you can add catchy to the list of qualities that Dr. Feelgood possesses. Something else to complement is the consistency of the album, because I really thought it would tail off after the "obvious" hits, but the fact that the band got 5 decent singles out of it should be an indicator that it's not spread too thinly. In any case, I find 'She Goes Down' one of the best - maybe following the title track for preference - and that never made it as a single. There's just something so, I don't know...spicy...about a song that begins with a soundbite of a zipper opening and a salacious laugh, plus Mars's riffwork is really something else with some nice old school jazzy chord fills. The only one of the rockers that I don't really like is 'Same Ol' Situation', the poppiness of which is a bit too much to stomach, partly because it totally misses the anthemic nature of the other cuts. Sadly, the last two tracks have a bit too much soft material to make much impact, though I guess you could cut the album short if that's a major issue.

Therefore, on reflection, I think I shall declare myself generously disposed towards Dr. Feelgood, which certainly marks one of the best commercial metal efforts from the late '80s and proves that having a great guitarist can make everything alright unless you have too many ballads. It's a fine balance and Motley Crue come out on the right side.