Mötley Crüe claims they have won “a decisive victory” in a lawsuit involving former guitarist Mick Mars. The outcome was “a final arbitration award that rejects every claim Mars made against the band and orders him to pay damages back to the group.”According to a press release issued by the band’s attorney, Sasha Frid of Miller Barondess, LLP, “the arbitrator’s ruling not only vindicates the band contractually and financially but also dismantles the public narrative Mars promoted in interviews with major outlets.”
“Dismantles the public narrative Mars promoted in interviews with major outlets”
That’s an important victory for the band and here’s why.
While the lawsuit was pending, Mick Mars launched a public smear campaign accusing the band of not actually playing live — claims he repeated under oath. Most notably, he made the claim that Nikki Sixx’s bass and Tommy Lee’s drums are pre-recorded. This is of course a very serious claim that strikes at the core of the band’s professional credibility.
The accusations eventually evaporated after scrutiny. Faced with extensive live performance recordings — and testimony from his own retained expert, a New York University professor specializing in music technology — Mars was forced to admit under oath that his statements were false. The expert he brought confirmed that the band was performing live, and Mars formally recanted his prior claims during sworn testimony.
In September of 2025, Nikki Sixx spoke to the Los Angeles Times about Mars’ exit from Mötley Crüe:
“[Mick] came to us and said, health-wise, he couldn’t fulfill his contract, and we let him out of the deal. Then he sued us because he just said that he can’t tour. We were like, ‘Well, if you can’t tour, you can’t tour.’ I will probably come to that too someday.”
Sixx also responded to Mars’s allegation that he was the only band member to play 100% live on Mötley Crüe’s 2022 The Stadium Tour”. Mars was quoted as saying:
(Nikki) “did not play a single note on bass during the entire U.S. tour.”
Nikki’s response to Los Angeles Times was a little more nuanced:
“Anything we enhance the shows with, we actually played. If there are background vocals with my background vocals, and we have background singers to make it sound more like the record. That does not mean we’re not singing.”
Sixx went on to call Mars’s accusations a “crazy betrayal”, and added:
“Saying he played in a band that didn’t play, it’s a betrayal to the band who saved his life. People say things like, ‘Well, if you guys are really playing, then I need isolated tracks from band rehearsal.’ … It’s ludicrous.”
Mars — whose real name is Robert Alan Deal — served as Mötley Crüe’s lead guitarist since the band’s inception in 1981.
While Nikki Sixx wrote the largest part of the band’s material, Mars did take part in co-writing some of the band’s most famous tracks, including: “Same Ol’ Situation (S.O.S.)”, “Girls, Girls, Girls” and “Dr. Feelgood”.
The only credit Mars has on the first two Mötley Crüe albums is the instrumental “God Bless The Children Of The Beast” on 1983’s “Shout At The Devil”.
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