When Motley Crue and Ratt Members Nearly Formed a Band

Ratt frontman Stephen Pearcy discussed the band he nearly formed with Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee of Motley Crue.

Along with late Ratt guitarist Robbin Crosby, they rehearsed several times around 1981 before each group decided to follow their own directions. At the time, Ratt were known as Mickey Ratt and Crue were still in the early stages of getting together.

“Robbin and I used to go out all the time into Hollywood… ‘You’ve gotta be seen; you’ve gotta be out there.,’” Pearcy told Tommy London on SiriusXM (as reported by Blabbermouth), admitting that some of the details remained hazy to him. “Nikki, Tommy, Vince [Neil], they’d be doing the same thing – you know, tripping down the Strip, going to the Rainbow, going here, getting fucked up. […] So anyway, we meet them on the Strip, hanging out. We became friends and we became the Gladiators, which was our street thing.”

He believed that Sixx wasn’t “really satisfied” with how his career was developing. “Musicians were coming and going in bands, as the whole implosion was getting going – ’81, ’82 in L.A. and that whole Strip thing. He wasn’t happy with his band at that moment.”

Pearcy continued: “Robbin, Nikki, Tommy and myself, [with] me on guitar, were rehearsing at Mickey Ratt’s rehearsal in Culver City… I believe we rehearsed a couple of times. I don’t know if we wanted to start a band or if we were just jamming, but something was getting intense in there.” But it didn’t go much further. “Nikki is, like, ‘Nah – I’m gonna go do my thing.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m here. Me and Robbin are doing our thing.’ And so be it.”

He speculated that, had the project continued, they’d almost certainly have called themselves the Gladiators. “I’d have to check with my roadie guy back then,” he said. “I forget shit. We were kind of almost taking it seriously, if I remember… it happened a couple of times.”

He added that a more detailed version of the story will appear in an upcoming memoir, which will follow 2014’s Sex, Drugs, Ratt & Roll: My Life in Rock. ”I’m doing another book, part two, next year,” he said, “and that’s actually one of the stories that I kind of held back.”