Mötley Crüe – Girls, Girls, Girls

Written In Five Minutes After A Night Of Club Hopping

Released on May 13, 1987, “Girls, Girls, Girls” entered the Billboard Hot 100 and climbed to number twelve, becoming Mötley Crüe’s second top twenty hit after “Smokin’ in the Boys Room”. The single spent weeks on the chart and reached number 26 in the United Kingdom, marking the band’s highest chart position there. Tommy Lee later claimed he wrote the song in five minutes after a night of club hopping on the Sunset Strip, scribbling down a list of the band’s favorite strip joints from Los Angeles to Vancouver. The album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 behind Whitney Houston’s Whitney, a fact that still rankles Nikki Sixx, who believes the Crüe should have been number one.

The track dominated rock radio and became an MTV staple despite its racy content, transforming what should have been a career implosion into the band’s third consecutive quadruple platinum album. The Girls, Girls, Girls album sold over four million copies in the United States, matching the commercial success of Shout at the Devil and Theatre of Pain. Other hits from the album included “Wild Side”, which depicted an urban nightmare of drugs and violence, and the ballad “You’re All I Need”, possibly the most disturbing song in the Crüe catalogue. Metal Hammer called the album an arena-rock juggernaut and placed it on their list of the top twenty best metal albums of 1987, praising the shift toward Aerosmith-inspired blues rock.

Nikki Sixx originally scribbled the idea after a night of strip club crawling, listing venues like The Tropicana, The Body Shop, and Seventh Veil on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, The Dollhouse in Fort Lauderdale, Tattletales in Atlanta, the Marble Arch in Vancouver, and the famous Crazy Horse in Paris. The song’s first line borrowed directly from Sweet’s 1974 track “Sweet F.A.”, as Sixx was a huge fan of the British glam rockers. The riff came quickly during a rehearsal, dirty and swaggering and unmistakably Crüe, sounding like a bar fight fused with a biker rally. Vince Neil told interviewers he thought Theatre of Pain had been too light and was excited to get into something tougher and meatier, something you could sink your teeth into.

The band started recording with producer Tom Werman in November 1986, working primarily at One on One Recording and Conway Recording in Hollywood, plus Rumbo Recorders in Canoga Park. The sessions were an absolute disaster from the start, with members either failing to show up or arriving so wasted they could barely pick up their instruments. Vince Neil was trying to stay sober but failing miserably, Nikki Sixx was addicted to heroin and holing up with girlfriend Vanity to shoot smack and freebase cocaine, Tommy Lee was hiding his drug use from new wife Heather Locklear, and Mick Mars was suffering from ankylosing spondylitis and self-medicating with booze. Management staged an intervention with celebrity drug counselor Bob Timmins at one point. The production leaned heavily on live-room recording to capture a raw, unpolished feel, with the band layering motorcycle revs and bar ambience effects to give the record a gritty street vibe.

“Girls, Girls, Girls” appeared as the title track and first single from Mötley Crüe’s fourth studio album, released on May 15, 1987. The album marked their final collaboration with producer Tom Werman, who had helmed both Shout at the Devil and Theatre of Pain. Werman later reflected that the album’s more straightforward sound and relatively easy recording process stemmed from the band’s maturity level, though the band members barely remember making the record. The album peaked at number two on the Billboard 200 in its third week, held off the top by Whitney Houston despite Sixx and management insisting they were outselling everyone two to one at retail. The Crüe would finally get their number one album two years later with 1989’s Dr. Feelgood, but before they reached the top, Sixx would hit rock bottom, overdosing on heroin on December 23, 1987, and being pronounced clinically dead for two minutes before paramedics revived him with two shots of adrenaline to the heart.

The official music video was directed by Wayne Isham and filmed on the night of April 13, 1987, at the Seventh Veil strip club on the Sunset Strip, one of the band’s favorite haunts. Isham had started out cleaning floors on the set of their satanic video for “Looks That Kill” and worked his way up to director. He hit up several local adult clubs like Gold Diggers and Jumbo’s Clown Room, where a young Courtney Love once worked, hiring dancers for the shoot. Most were good at their job but lacked the dancing chops Isham wanted, so he brought in two professional dancers to elevate the performances. The fishnet legs of one dancer known only as Connie appear at the opening of the video. Isham deliberately sent MTV an alternative version featuring topless dancers first, which was immediately rejected, forcing the network to accept the slightly less racy edited version. The video became an MTV favorite despite its controversial content and helped cement the song as the definitive hard rock strip club song.

“Girls, Girls, Girls” remains Mötley Crüe’s most unapologetically sleazy hit and a perfect snapshot of the band at their most dysfunctional. The song inspired a 1994 Pauly Shore comedy film and decades of strip club playlists worldwide. Vince Neil opened his own Girls Girls Girls strip club in Las Vegas, capitalizing on the track’s enduring association with the industry. The song has been parodied, covered, and referenced countless times, becoming shorthand for 1980s excess and glam metal hedonism. Nikki Sixx told Rolling Stone that it accurately reflected what they were doing at the time, riding motorcycles and hanging out in strip clubs, young guys having fun. The fact that the band managed to record it at all remains more impressive than the substantial commercial success it achieved. It’s definitely not politically correct and never wanted to be, but it remains an undeniable classic from a band that lived fast, died temporarily in Sixx’s case, and somehow kept kickstarting hearts for decades afterward.