YOU DON’T START A conversation with Mick Mars by asking, “How are you?” It comes out more like, “How are you?” He’s used to it. Ever since the guitarist went public in 2001 with his decades-long battle with ankylosing spondylitis — a pernicious, inflammatory form of arthritis in which the vertebrae grow together and fuse the spine — he’s become accustomed to discussing the state of his health.
“I actually feel pretty good,” he says. Speaking via Zoom from his home in Nashville, Mars sits in a chair and his body is rigid; he’s lost most of the mobility in his spine and has a pronounced head-forward posture. His arms and hands, however, are completely unaffected; he waves them around freely and frequently. He looks frail and almost ghost white, but the truth is, he’s never been the robust sort. “The condition has progressed,” he says matter-of-factly. “Most of the pain nowadays is in my neck, my head and my hips. When I walk, it feels like I’ve got a cinder block on my head.” He smiles a tight-lipped smile. “I deal with it. I have to.”
Mars wasn’t exactly a spring chicken when he hit it big with Mötley Crüe. By the time the band released their breakthrough album, Shout at the Devil, in 1983, he was 32, making him the elder statesman among his young-buck bandmates. He’s 72 now and has finally gotten around to recording the debut solo album he’s talked about for the past 20 years. I mention to him a chat we had in a Portland, Maine, dressing room in 2005 during the Crüe’s Carnival of Sins reunion tour. Sunk into a black leather couch, he laid out his plans to mix the blues with African rhythms while using multiple drummers on the same song. There would be horn sections, too, he said; the music would be as far-and-away different from Mötley Crüe as could be.
“I remember that conversation,” he says, “talking about flying to Africa just to hear somebody beatin’ on logs. I think that’s still a possibility. Musicians are always talking about how they want to do something different, blah, blah, blah. I’m just trying to create what I hear in my noggin, and I’m open to a lot
