Uh, this is one way to pay the bills before becoming a rock legend!
Long before Mötley Crüe was packing arenas and selling millions upon millions of records, Tommy Lee says life looked very, very different. In fact, the drummer is opening up about a surprising chapter from his pre-fame days that sounds more like the plot of a Hollywood movie than the backstory of one of heavy metal’s biggest stars!
Related: Tommy Lee Comes To Brittany Furlan’s Defense Amid Ronnie Radke Scandal!
During Wednesday’s episode of Dax Shepard‘s popular Armchair Expert podcast, Tommy looked back on the band’s early struggle years, when he was living in an apartment with future bandmates Nikki Sixx and Vince Neil and trying to survive on almost no money at all.
According to Lee, things were so tight that their manager was only giving each member a tiny $20 weekly allowance. That’s when an unexpected opportunity landed in their laps. As Tommy explained:
“Very beginning when we all had moved into an apartment together, and then we meet this lady who’s the madame. She was a few years older than us, and that’s where we met, and then started talking. She’s like, ‘I got work for you guys.’”
Um… what work?!
Apparently, the struggling musicians quickly realized there was a lot more money to be made through escorting than waiting around for their big musical breakthrough. Yes, escorting! For rich older women!
And honestly, when you’re chasing a dream and barely scraping by, it’s easy to see why the offer caught their attention. Lee recalled:
“Each guy got $20 a week [from their manager]. We saw some big numbers [from escorting], and we were like, ‘OK, f**k it, let’s do it.”
Talk about a financial upgrade!
According to Tommy, he ended up going on roughly nine or ten dates through the arrangement — though not every encounter turned into the wild situation some people might assume.
In many cases, the women simply wanted someone to enjoy an evening with. He shared:
“Sometimes go and just sit and have dinner with them. Just dinner, literally. Just want company just to dine with. … But you know what? I think I was lucky too, because a couple of the older women that I got, they were actually really fun.”
Wow! Not exactly the scandalous rock-and-roll image fans might picture!
Oh, and Tommy said he was making around $500 per date — an absolutely massive jump from the $20 a week he had been living on while trying to make it in the music business. No wonder the opportunity was difficult to pass up.
Of course, that chapter didn’t last forever. Mötley Crüe, co-founded by the guys in ’81, soon found its footing. By 1983, the band’s breakout success with Looks That Kill and the Shout at the Devil album launched them toward rock superstardom. And escorting went by the wayside. But still, what a job!!
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[Image via MEGA/WENN]
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