We’ve all heard those songs that sound rather similar to other songs. After all, who could forget the great battle of Coldplay vs. Joe Satriani from 2008? But now former Guns N’ Roses drummer Steven Adler has opened up about whether or not he reckons Mötley Crüe ripped off a riff from his old band.
Back in April, Guns N’ Roses’ former manager Doug Goldstein revealed to GNR Central a number of interesting facts, including how he believed that the riff from Mötley Crüe’s ‘Dr. Feelgood’ was directly lifted
“‘Dr. Feelgood,’ the Mötley Crüe song, that’s a Guns N’ Roses song. Slash and Duff [McKagan] wrote that riff. They wrote it down in Redondo Beach, when I was with them,” explained Doug Goldstein
“[Guns N’ Roses] were rehearsing, and Steven [Adler] would come down once a week, and Duff would come down five days a week, and they were jamming and they came up with that riff,” he continued. “Nikki [Sixx] is famous for taking a recorder to a club and stealing songs from bands, [they got it] because they recorded the recorded before we did.”
Check out Mötley Crüe’s ‘Dr. Feelgood’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XHcPYorSJw
However, speaking to Triple M, former Guns N’ Roses drummer Steven Adler was asked whether or not there was any truth to the fact that Mötley Crüe stole the riff from his band, and responded by simply stating, “None whatsoever. Nikki is a genius. He is one step ahead of everybody. But he didn’t steal nothing from nobody. He’s a freaking genius.”
“I was hanging out with him and John 5 last Thanksgiving, and I’m telling you, he is the sharpest person I’ve ever and just the greatest guy. I mean, he ruled the ’80s; he ran the ’80s. Everything that he did, every band did after he did it,” Adler explained.
“The only thing of ‘Dr. Feelgood’, that ‘Kickstart My Heart’ song, he wrote it about the paramedics took that syringe and did that Pulp Fiction thing to him. But they didn’t do that; they didn’t do that,” he revealed.”I dragged him into the shower with a broken hand and a cast on my hand, I rolled him in, I put the cold water on him in the shower and I started slapping him in the face with my cast.”
“And next thing you know, the purple in his face just disappeared,” he concluded. “And then right then, the paramedics came in and they grabbed him out of the shower like a rag doll, dropped him in the living room and they just pumped his chest with their hands. And that was it. But he got a hell of a good song out of it. It is entertainment, after all.”
So while it turns out that (at least according to Steven Adler) Mötley Crüe didn’t steal the riff, he did manage to set the record straight in regards to one of the wildest rock and roll stories of all time. Turns out we’ve been lied to this whole time. Who knew?
Check out Mötley Crüe’s ‘Kickstart My Heart’:
