I touched Tommy Lee's drumstick. PAUSE. Let me back it all the way up, because that one moment was thirty years in the making. When I was a young kid, my older cousins put me on to hip hop — and every one of them was different. Some were street guys, some were musicians, some were business owners. So from each cousin I caught a different sound: the raw street stuff, the A Tribe Called Quest stuff. My cousin from England, a bassist, took me to Strawberries and bought me my first 7-inches — Herbie Hancock 'Rockit,' Prince '1999,' and Michael Jackson 'Off the Wall.'
My influences were vast — from street BOOM BAP to Herbie Hancock to a guy running around in high-heel boots. I loved the sound of early hip hop. It was raw, sonically different, something nobody had heard before — not polished like Prince or Michael Jackson. It was like listening to somebody chewing glass.
Humans need visuals, not text. That's why video has killed photography.
My aunt had cable television first in the whole family. That's where I saw Michael Jackson's 'Thriller,' and that's where cable grabbed me. That shit was wild. I'm 52 years old and I still haven't seen anything crazier than cable television. AI is groundbreaking, but they programmed us to accept it. With cable, people went from turning a knob to a hundred channels overnight. It was instant.
Understand me — I grew up on Doctor Who, Star Trek, Star Wars, Tron, the Jetsons. So robots and computers were never groundbreaking to me; that was just the future. But cable television and music videos? That was groundbreaking. You went from KISS 108 FM to music videos overnight, no warning. Video killed the radio star. The Learning Channel was crazy too — you could call the station and get help with your homework. Bananas.
Flipping through the channels one day, I caught an ad for MTV. All I saw was half-naked women in nurse outfits and a sound that was sonically insane. I only watched BET for the hip hop videos, but after that ad I searched through fifty channels trying to find what I'd heard. It took me days. Then I got lucky — I found MTV. And they were playing 'Dr. Feelgood.'
WOW. Instant Mötley Crüe fan. Women, motorcycles, Jack Daniel's. I didn't want to watch men in gold chains and sneakers — I wanted the women running around in little skirts. Come on. 'Hot for Teacher,' or LL Cool J licking his lips? I jumped out the window and dove straight into the rock and roll swimming pool.
Out of all the rock bands, Mötley Crüe was different. They carried a hip hop street vibe — break the law, ten girlfriends. And who doesn't want ten girlfriends?
I got obsessed, and that's when my life took a turn for the worst. By then I was out of high school and thrown out of college. I wanted to be Tommy Lee — because a Tommy Lee is a hundred steps above a rock star. I picked up the drums. A bottle of Jack Daniel's a day, for decades.
When I got into dancehall, on the low, I was a rock star. I never fit the rude bwoy model — I was the rock star. Different. Dancehall's original Tommy Lee. Everything BobbyShakes.com became, all the antics, I learned from watching Mötley Crüe videos.
I remember Tommy Lee telling the story of how he met Pamela Anderson — walked straight up and licked her face. One night I was leaving an after-party. This beautiful thing was walking in as I was walking out. As she passed, I licked her face. She fell in love. That's rock star shit.
Years later, my girl bought me tickets to see Mötley Crüe. I wasn't expecting much — these guys are old now. But the show was visually insane. It took me right back to MTV. The music still sounds great, but the visuals are still next level. In an era of AI, fake followers, and content farming, Mötley Crüe is still delivering visual excellence. That concert is exactly what I fell in love with as a child. Humans need visuals, not text — that's why video has killed photography.
Let me wrap this up. Tommy Lee didn't give us a drum solo. What he did do was tell the whole building to throw our arms up like a goal post — then he kicked his drumsticks out into the crowd. Two lucky fans fought, kicked, and clawed everybody else for them. So instead of fighting the traffic out of Xfinity Center, we set up tables and chairs, cracked open food and drinks, and watched the rest of the idiots battle each other just to get out of the parking lot. I unfolded my chair and uncorked the Jack Daniel's. And while I'm sitting there, one of those lucky fans who caught Tommy's stick walks over to our tailgate. He had a lady with him — their first date. He held up the drumstick. Some things are just written.