Former Motley Crue singer John Corabi confirmed the existence of two unheard songs written in the run-up to his departure from the band and described one as a seven-minute track influenced by Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.
He started work on what would have been his second Crue album, to be titled Personality #9, when industry politics forced him to be ditched in favor of original singer Vince Neil’s return. So, 1994’s Motley Crue was his only release with the band.
Asked on a recent episode of the Chuck Shute Podcast to discuss rumors of unreleased tracks, Corabi said: “There’s a song called ‘The Year I Lived a Day.’ And then ‘La Dolce Vita,’ which just means ‘the sweet life,’ and we wrote that one. That was just jamming.” Describing it as an “odd tune,” he noted that “if this even remotely makes any sense to anybody, it was ‘No Quarter’ by Led Zeppelin meets something from Dark Side of the Moon – Pink Floyd meets Motley Crue, if that came in.
“It was … literally seven minutes long [and it] had all these volumes changes. It was really mellow and it would get really heavy, and then it would come back down again. And then it would go to the left, and it would [have] … guitar riffing, and then come back down again, and then back up. … It was like this really long, epic.”
Corabi denied rumors that producer Bob Rock cowrote the songs. “He may have been involved after I left, but all the songs were written by me, Tommy [Lee], Nikki [Sixx] and Mick [Mars],” he said. Asked what happened to the unheard material, he replied: “When I left, I turned in all my tapes and everything to the band … and that was that.”
Elsewhere in the interview, the singer said his upcoming memoir was likely to upset people, although his intention was to be honest rather than “piss off anybody.” “People ask me all the time, ‘Why have you been in so many bands?’ or ‘Why did you do this?’” he explained. “It’s just the deck of cards that I was handed. … In a million years, I never thought I’d be out of the band. And you just kind of … keep trudging forward – you keep moving, and do the best that you can do.
“If anybody gets anything out of my book, any kind of life lesson, it’s [that] you’ll have setbacks. But you just move forward, man … you just have perseverance. You just keep plugging away, and at some point, you know, shit’s gonna happen for you.”