MÖTLEY CRÜE – From the Beginning (2025 BMG)

There are two things that Motley Crue are really good at:  Pissing off their fans, and releasing compilations.

In 2019, the Crue released The Dirt soundtrack, featuring four new songs and 14 classics.  In 2025, with the well running very dry, they released From the Beginning, featuring no new songs in its 19 tracks, and just one new version of an old classic.

From the Beginning is at least the 7th Crue compilation of hits, depending on what you count and what you don’t (I’m not counting box sets).  This is a band that has only 10 studio albums.  The well is so dry that this compilation includes several tracks from past compilations.   So much could have been done better.

Let’s start with the fail of the packaging.  It’s always interesting when a band chooses a photo of an old lineup rather than the current one.  The inside fold out also features an old photo, meaning current guitarist John 5 is not pictured here, even though he’s on the album.  There are no liner notes, no credits, just an inner sleeve with eight past Motley Crue logos.  (Corabi’s is of course missing, as are several other mid-period Motley Crue logos.)   It’s cheap grey and black printing, no colour.  Absolutely nothing of value in the packaging for any fan, new or old.

Moving on to the one new version of an old song:  the original 1985 recording of “Home Sweet Home” is remixed to include Dolly Parton, who has reinvented herself as a rocker recently, in duet form.  There have been many successful duets when one artist is recorded many decades later over an old song.  This is not one of them.  It sounds fake, and it sounds silly to have 2025 Dolly singing with 1985 Vince.  The guy’s not dead!  There’s no reason for this, except that 2025 Vince Neil is no match for 2025 Dolly Parton.  This congested sounding remix is truly awful, and not because of Dolly Parton.  When singing without the old Vince backing tracks, she sounds magnificent and still powerful.  Couldn’t they even get John 5 to record a new solo over top?  No; they continue to use Mick Mars on their new releases while publicly attacking him.  With all respect to the incredible Dolly Parton, this version of “Home Sweet Home” shouldn’t even count as part of the Motley Crue discography.

True to its word, From the Beginning is a chronological compilation, beginning with the common Elektra mixes of “Live Wire” and “Take Me to the Top”.  This one-two punch always serves well, and the compilation is off to a good start.  If anything, these songs sound more necessary today than ever, no matter who really played bass (which is very loud on this mastering)!  The crunch of Mick Mars’ guitar belching distortion is a satisfying sound, especially at its most primitive.  The classic suite of Shout at the Devil tracks are “Shout” itself, “Looks That Kill” and “Too Young to Fall In Love”.  Even two past superior compilations, Decade of Decadence and Greatest Hits (1998), didn’t include all three.  Decade featured just two songs per album, and excluded “Too Young”.  Greatest Hits (2009) did include all three, and most of the other songs on this set.  There’s something about these tracks that sound like they might be slightly remixed.  Wikipedia credits them as 2021 remasters, but…there’s something off.

Fortunately for the new fan making their first Motley purchase, the original “Home Sweet Home” is included in the Theater of Pain tracks, along with “Smokin’ in the Boys Room”.  For the old fan, we’ll wish they included something else like “Louder Than Hell”, but fat chance of that.  To the point, there should be a rule that “Home Sweet Home” only appears once on any single disc album.

The usual two from Girls, Girls, Girls (“Wild Side” and the title track) are followed by the usual five (yes, five) from Dr. Feelgood (title track, “Kickstart”, “Without You”, “Don’t Go Away Mad” and “Same Old Situation”).  These exact seven songs also appear on Greatest Hits (2009) though not in the same order, just in the same chunk.  Then, just like Greatest Hits, “Primal Scream” from Motley’s first compilation Decade of Decadence makes it appearance.  This song is like a wake up shot after snoozing through the same-old same-old.

At this point the compilation drops the album-by-album continuity, because as we all know, Vince Neil was fired from the band in 1992 after Decade of Decadence.  Motley doesn’t like to acknowledge several of the post-80s albums in their compilations, including Motley ’94 with John Corabi, and New Tattoo with Randy Castillo.  In this case, they also ignore 1997’s electronica-inflected reunion album Generation Swine and the new songs from the compilation albums of the era.  (These include the aforementioned Greatest Hits which had two new songs, and Red White & Crue which had four, all of varying quality.)  Instead we jump to 2008’s Saints of Las Angeles, a comeback album of sorts, and the last studio album the band would produce to date.  The title track is an appropriate addition and still kicks today with a chorus that is worthy of past glories.

Downhill from here, as we go to the irritating and completely un-memorable “The Dirt (Est. 1981)” from The Dirt soundtrack, itself a greatest hits with four new songs.  The presence of Machine Gun Kelly, who played Tommy Lee in the movie, makes this one a slog and an obvious attempt to lure in new younger fans.  Staying chronological, “Dogs of War” from the recent Cancelled EP is a nice addition since it features the current lineup and John 5 on guitar, but is otherwise forgettable.

Finally, the album closes on the Dolly duet, which we should really refer to as a fake duet since it sounds so achronological, both on the album and as a song.

For a similar but superior listening experience, just buy Greatest Hits, Decade of Decadence, or just the plain old 20th Century Masters, which at least had some text inside.

1.5/5 stars