Mötley Crüe is declaring a decisive victory in its bitter split with Mick Mars, the founding guitarist who claims the legendary metal band unjustly fired him and cut off payments after he bowed out of a world tour due to chronic illness.
In a final arbitration award filed in Los Angeles that surfaced Thursday, a retired judge ruled that bandmates Nikki Sixx, Tommy Lee, and Vince Neil were within their rights to remove Mars as an officer and director of Mötley Crüe Inc. after he stepped away from a grueling U.S. stadium tour in 2022 because he suffers from ankylosing spondylitis, a painful, disfiguring bone disease.
Mars, 74, previously told Rolling Stone that he never retired from the band entirely and remained available for a residency or studio work. But the band terminated him, he said, triggering the nasty legal fight that ultimately landed in arbitration.
In the final ruling, the arbitrator upheld the band’s firing decision and ordered Mars to repay $750,030 from an advance because he missed 69 live shows. The judge also ruled Mars must sell his ownership stake in the iconic group to Sixx, Lee, and Neil for $505,737. After subtracting the sale price, the arbitrator awarded Mötley Crüe a net payment of $244,293.
“This dispute was about protecting the integrity and legacy of one of the most successful bands in rock history,” the band’s lead lawyer, Sasha Frid of Miller Barondess LLP, said in a statement. “With the arbitrator rejecting every claim and enforcing the parties’ agreements as written, the band has been fully vindicated—legally, financially, and factually.”
Mars’ lawyer, Ed McPherson, blasted the ruling. “The decision is awful,” the attorney tells Rolling Stone. “It’s not fair. This band has never been fair to Mick. When Mick said I can’t tour anymore because of a hideous disease, but I can still write, perform one-offs or residencies, and record, they said, ‘Sorry Mick. It’s been 43 years, but you’re out. Goodbye, and we don’t want to pay you anymore.’ This arbitrator said it’s fine. We need to figure out if we’re going to challenge [the decision]. It’s ridiculous. It’s just a question of whether he wants to keep pursuing this. Basically, he’s over Mötley Crüe.”
Speaking with Rolling Stone in 2023, Mars made clear he was still seething. “When they wanted to get high and fuck everything up, I covered for them,” he said. “Now they’re trying to take my legacy away, my part of Mötley Crüe, my ownership of the name, the brand. How can you fire Mr. Heinz from Heinz ketchup? He owns it. Frank Sinatra’s or Jimi Hendrix’s legacy goes on forever, and their heirs continue to profit from it. They’re trying to take that away from me. I’m not going to let them.”
In court filings, Mars said he initiated the band’s founding, chose singer Vince Neil – though Neil knew drummer Tommy Lee in high school – and named Mötley Crüe. Neil left the band temporarily in 1992, and Lee departed in 1999. Both later returned. While they were gone, they remained shareholders but did not receive income generated by touring.
The band denied abandoning Mars when he went public with his legal complaint in 2023. “Despite the fact that the band did not owe Mick anything—and with Mick owing the band millions in advances that he did not pay back—the band offered Mick a generous compensation package to honor his career with the band,” Frid said at the time. “Manipulated by his manager and lawyer, Mick refused and chose to file this ugly public lawsuit.”
Mars also accused his bandmates of miming to pre-recorded tracks on their 2022 reunion tour. “Nikki’s bass was 100% recorded,” the guitarist told Variety. “Tommy’s drums, to the best of my knowledge, there was a lot…Everything that we did on that stadium tour was on tape, because if we didn’t, if we missed a part, the tape would keep rolling and you’d miss it.”
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Sixx emphatically denied this. He also said they had to use pre-recorded songs to cover up alleged issues with Mars’ guitar playing. “We really were, with kid gloves, always trying to support Mick,” he said. “We’ve always stood by his side. But we couldn’t let his side of the stage just be a train wreck. And now he’s only saying these things because he’s trying to hurt us.”
In a press release announcing the arbitration decision, the band’s law firm said Mars “was forced to admit under oath that his statements were false. His expert confirmed that the band performed live, and Mars formally recanted his prior claims during sworn testimony.”
