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This is for real.
Tommy Lee, after 19 years behind the drum set with Motley Crue,
finally steps up to the mic for the first time, teaming up
with pint-sized rapper TiLo for the drill in hip-hop,
punk-rock, techno, and pent-up aggression that is Methods of
Mayhem. And no rock drummer has ever produced something like
this: sexed-up raps with Lil' Kim, raw DJ skills from Mix
Master Mike, old-school funk with George Clinton, frenetic
techno with the Crystal Method, and mind-blowing
collaborations with Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst, Snoop Doggy Dogg,
Kid Rock, and more.
Methods of Mayhem is not a side project, an
experiment, or a transitory phase. This is the music that has
been percolating in Lee's mind for years, agitated by a
stretch in jail, constant harassment by tabloid reporters, and
creative gridlock with Motley Crue. "This is now what I
do," says Lee. "It's my life. I have Methods of
Mayhem tattooed on my ass cheeks."
Lee first met with TiLo (Tim Murray) when the
rapper was touring with the Newport Beach punk-rap group Hed
PE as an opening act for Motley Crue. Both found themselves
creatively stifled in their respective bands, and by
coincidence quit around the same time. The two met for a
one-day jam session, and it turned into four months, with the
homeless TiLo moving in. Soon, they were recording at producer
Scott Humphrey's Hollywood studio, the Chop Shop, around the
clock, with friends dropping in to add vocals, scratches, and
ideas.
Some may wonder how this unlikely pair hooked
up collaborations with Kid Rock ("New Skin"), Snoop
Doggy Dogg ("Who The Hell Cares"), the Crystal
Method ("Narcotic," "Spun"), U-God of the
Wu-Tang Clan ("Mr. Onsomeothershits") and, on the
deeply spiritual single, "Get Naked," Fred Durst,
George Clinton, Mixmaster Mike, and Lil' Kim.
"Fred Durst and Kid Rock were partying
in L.A.," Lee remembers, "and one day at 1:30 in the
morning they called my home studio and said, 'Hey dude, what
are you doing?' I told them I was in the lab, making new music.
They said, 'Alright, dude, we're coming by.'"
The exact moment when Methods of Mayhem was
born can be traced back to a London club on New Year's Eve,
1997, when the DJ put on a record by Josh Wink. "It was
like a frequency assault," Lee remembers. "I had to
duck from these big filter sweeps that were coming through the
speakers. I felt like I was on ecstasy, and I was completely
sober. I thought, "This is where I need to be. This is
what I want to make. I want to do shit that freaks people out
sonically!'"
Methods of Mayhem's first recordings were
made using the cheapest technology available: the one-track
recorder known as the answering machine. While in prison last
year, Lee had a friend leave an outgoing message on his home
machine stating that collect calls were accepted. Then,
whenever Lee had an idea for a lyric, melody or guitar lick,
he'd call home collect and leave it on his machine. This is
the origin of the operator message that begins this record, as
well as some of the album's angriest, most soul-searing songs,
like "Hypocritical" and "Anger Management."
It is also the origin of phone bills so astronomical that he
was forced to take this album to a rich major label instead of
releasing it independently.
Many of the album's more lyrical melodies
were conceived behind bars, for example "Metamorphosis,"
an apt word to describe what happened to him creatively and
personally in jail.
Back on the road with Motley Crue after being
released, Lee lugged his home studio up to each hotel room on
the road. The late hours he once spent partying, he now spent
laying down beats, adding guitar noise, and
cutting-and-pasting samples. On the tour bus, he sat in the
back lounge listening to Fatboy Slim, and any DJ compilation
he could get his hands on. It was the antidote to the
frustration he had been feeling for years as a prisoner to his
past successes; it was exciting him to be making
musicccccccccc again.
"In my heart I was wanting to do
something a lot more hybrid, something new, something I hadn't
heard yet," Lee says. "And the only way I'd get to
do that would be doing it on my own, or during my drum solo in
the live performances. That's when I would get a chance to
completely freak out and do something with techno or jungle or
breakbeat or sampling. That was my chance to let my creativity
flow with no boundaries, but a drum solo is only about three
or four minutes."
Now, Lee has taken every artistic impulse he
wanted to jam into those solos and stretched them into a whole
album on which he sings, drums, raps, makes beats, and plays
keyboards and guitar. And that album has taken on its own life,
thanks to the street-smart rapping of TiLo, the studio
wizardry of Scott Humphrey, and a host of unprecedented
collaborations.
It is, as Lee sings, the dawn of a "New
Skin." "Like a snake shed my skin/ Leave my past
where I've been/ Can you feel what I feel?"
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