What rare and incurable disease caused Mötley
Crüe's Mick Mars to spiral into addiction? Keep watching to find out. Mick Mars was born on April 4, 1955, in Terre
Haute. When Mars, who was then known by his birth
name Robert Deal, was just three years old, he saw a country music act perform at a fair
in Indiana and decided that music was what he wanted to do with his life. In 2012, he told The Guardian that he immediately
knew he wanted to play the guitar. "I saw this country musician play at the fair;
his name was Skeeter Bonn, and he had on this orange outfit with sequins all over it, and
he wore this large Stetson hat and he played guitar and sang [...] I said, 'That's what
I'm doing with my life.'" Following the show, Mars' mother gave him
an Elvis Presley haircut, the first step in becoming a rock star. Mars told Goldmine that he never wavered from
following his dream. "I had every intention of being who I am today. It didn't matter how many days, or years,
it took, or how many dues I had to pay." Fans of Mötley Crüe may be surprised to
learn, though, that Mick Mars' early musical inspirations were not hard rock at all but
country music. Eventually, though, his musical tastes broadened,
with some of his other early influences being The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and legendary
surf rock guitarist Dick Dale. As a Baby Boomer, it's unsurprising that Mars
is roughly a decade older than the rest of the Crüe. As a teen, Mars dropped out of high school
and relocated to Los Angeles to pursue his music career, performing blues rock and working
odd jobs. He even used the stage name Zorky Charlemagne
in this period, as he had yet to adopt the famous Mick Mars moniker. One of Mick Mars' pre-Mötley Crüe projects
was called White Horse. Fatefully, the members of White Horse were
once described as a "motley crew," and Mars noted the name for use in a future project. Around 1980, though, White Horse stalled out. It was then that Mars placed an ad seeking
musicians for a new group. The ad read in part, "LOUD rude aggressive lead guitarist [seeks]
working band [...]” In a scene dramatized in the 2019 film "The
Dirt," future Mötley Crüe band members Tommy Lee and Nikki Sixx responded. Mars knew of Vince Neil from a group Neil
was playing in at the time called Rock Candy, and it was at Mars' urging that Neil joined
the band. And Mars wasn't just helping to form a new
band, he was also forming a new identity, as he stopped going by Robert Alan Deal and
instead adopted the Mick Mars pseudonym. He told Goldmine, "I was reinventing myself [...] things were
changing, and I needed to change, too." It wasn't long after Mötley Crüe got together
before they were playing sold-out shows at Whiskey a Go Go and The Roxy Theatre, pioneering
a Sunset Strip hard rock and heavy metal sound that would take off on the radio and on MTV
just a few short years later. That later chart-topping success for Mötley
Crüe was directly related to the songs Mars either wrote or co-wrote with the band, including
some of Crüe's most memorable material, like "Girls, Girls, Girls," and "Dr. Feelgood,"
leading many music fans and critics to credit Mars as the engine behind the Sunset Strip
sound. And even though he was a good deal older than
the rest of the group, he didn't act like it or think like it, which he says was key
to his success. He told Goldmine, "My age wasn't my age. I was 30, but I wasn't thinking like a 30-year-old. I was thinking more like a teenager. I was hungry, and I wanted to make it." Soon, Mars and the band began their meteoric
rise after they performed at a major metal festival called Heavy Metal Day and were signed
to Elektra Records who reprinted their first album. Mars told Goldmine Magazine: "We started recording that just a few months
after we were together." By 1984, Mick Mars' band was on top of the
rock 'n' roll world, opening for veteran heavy metal singer Ozzy Osbourne on a U.S. tour. It was at this point, though, that the Crüe
reportedly considered axing their primary axman. According to Ozzy bassist Bob Daisley, the
other three members of Motley Crüe conspired to get rid of Mars behind his back, with the
goal of replacing him with Ozzy guitarist Jake E. Lee. But Daisley told music site Blabbermouth that
he talked them out of it. "I said, 'Well, if you want my opinion, for
what it's worth, I would say do not try to fix something that's not broken. You've got a chemistry there. You've got a functioning unit. Mick Mars is part of that. Don't f— it up. That's my opinion. Just don't do it.' And I think I saved Mick's neck that night
'cause they were getting serious about getting someone else." Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx has disputed
Daisley's story, saying it was completely made up, but Lee has confirmed Daisley's account. Still, Sixx clearly values Mars's friendship,
as he got a tattoo of Mars on his leg. "I wanted to honor him with this portrait
tattoo." "I wish more people could be like Mick Mars." Professional struggles aside, Mick Mars has
also managed several mental health challenges throughout his life, as he revealed in 2001's
"The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band," a Mötley Crüe autobiography
Mars co-wrote with the other band members. Mars wrote in the book that he has been diagnosed
with schizophrenia, which according to Psychiatry magazine is characterized by delusions, hallucinations,
disorganized speech, trouble with thinking, and lack of motivation. He's also struggled with depression and suicidal
thoughts. Mars also recounted a particularly harrowing
experience when he was so inebriated he walked into the ocean in order to kill himself, only
to wake up a short time later. When he returned to the rest of the band,
he wondered if he might be a ghost. Additionally, substance use disorder has also
been an ongoing challenge for the musician. "To help me get through the pain of the disease
that I have, I started taking opiates. I became dependent on them. It turned into an addiction." But in 2012, he told The Fix that he has since
gotten sober. "I don't smoke. I don't drink. I don't have many vices, except playing my
guitar too much. I guess I'm kind of a boring guy these days. But that's how I'm gonna keep going with Mötley
Crüe as long as I can." He added that while being sober has definitely
helped his musicianship, it hasn't helped his attitude. "I'm still no gentleman. I'm still as big an a—--- as ever." Substance use disorder and mental and emotional
well-being are not the only life challenges managed by Mick Mars. According to Yahoo!, Mick Mars was diagnosed
at the age of 17 with a rare spinal disease called ankylosing spondylitis, which causes
parts of a person's spine to fuse together, and in the case of Mick Mars, leads to his
hunched-forward appearance. "But it doesn't work on the back side of your
spine, it works on the inside, so when you get the disease, you come from straight to
being bent." It also causes a great deal of pain, which
Mars pushes through when he performs. He told Goldmine, "I am able to keep touring. I have days that are worse than others, and
there is always some amount of pain with my hips. There are good days and bad days, but it is
more of an inconvenience than anything else. I don't feel sick." The condition has also led to Mars losing
several inches off his full adult height, and according to MTV, he had to have hip replacement
surgery. But Mars told Goldmine that there are some
unexpected benefits. "There is one thing that is cool: I ended
up bent. I can always see my guitar." According to the Spondylitis Association of
America, a combination of environmental and genetic factors contribute to the condition,
described as a chronic form of arthritis. There is no known cure, but through early
detection and treatments and therapies, progression can be slowed and the pain caused by the disease
can be managed. Mick Mars met his first wife, Sharon Deal,
when he was 19 and Sharon was only 16 years old. The two would go on to have two children together. The first, a boy, named appropriately enough
Les Paul after the legendary guitar maker, and the next, a girl named Stormy. But it didn't last. Deal divorced Mars before Mötley Crüe, and
she even had Mars thrown in jail over unpaid child support. Mars would go on to marry Mötley Crüe backup
singer Emi Canyn but they would divorce only four years later. Today he is married to Swiss model Seraina
Schönenberger. Being a world-famous rock star puts a strain
on a father's relationship with his children. This is particularly true in Mars' situation. His third child, Erik Deal, keeps out of the
spotlight and his biological mother has not been made public. For her part, Stormy Deal, who inherited ankylosing
spondylitis from her father, also keeps a low profile, while Les Paul has followed his
father's footsteps to become a musician. In the early `90s, original Crüe singer Vince
Neil was fired from the band. Replacing Neil on vocals was John Corabi,
best known for fronting The Scream. Corabi sang for Crüe on their eponymous 1994
album, and on a follow-up EP, but ultimately left the band during the recording of their
next album, "Generation Swine." Neil was brought back in to record the vocals. Although never as successful as earlier Crüe
records were, Mars has a special place in his heart for the one complete Crüe album
the band recorded with Corabi. He said, "I thought that was probably — to me, and
I can only speak for me, I think that was probably the best album we've done. Musical-wise, the songs, I felt, were strong. And just musically, to me, it was, I guess,
my Beatles 'White Album'; that's kind of how I feel about that one. I'm not saying that any of my other albums
are crummy or anything like that — I love every album that we did — but that one just
has a special thing for me." Mötley Crüe has had an undeniable influence
on generations of young musicians, none more so than John LeCompt and Rocky Gray, former
members of the popular Millennial-era hard rockers Evanescence. After they left the band, both LeCompt and
Gray formed Machina, and their hero Mick Mars sat in with the group, producing a track in
his home studio. Machina drummer Rocky Gray said of the experience, "[T]o play with Mötley and Mick Mars and
Nikki Sixx and Vince [Neil], stuff like that — it is really, really, really cool to be
able to have those experiences and do that. Play those songs that you love listening to
with the people that wrote them you know. It's awesome." Mars has also collaborated with a number of
other artists as well, including Pop Evil, Papa Roach, and Hinder. "Mick Mars was all for working with us, and
being huge Mötley Crüe fans we jumped at the opportunity. We took the song to him, and he killed it! He heard the final version and said, 'It was
a beautiful thing.' We went to his house, and it was like the
Batcave — nothing but guitars and amps. He is a vampire and so are all of us." With all the time Mars has spent playing with
Mötley Crüe, he's still managed to branch out into some projects of his own. A few years ago there were rumors of Mars
working on a solo project, which he confirmed in his Goldmine interview. "Everybody is saying that I'm doing a blues
record. It will be a blues record, per se, but it
will be more like how Edgar Winter interprets the blues. It will have a '70s kind of feeling, but I
will be writing in a more current style of music. I want to mix those two styles together." Promotional teasers released in 2016 revealed
that none other than John Corabi will be appearing on at least one track. And in 2020, one of the musicians collaborating
with Mars on his solo debut, Jacob Bunton, told AL that the album was almost finished. Bunton couldn't give a release date, but he
did take the liberty to describe Mars' guitar playing: "The power goes out it's so loud. It's louder than anything you've ever heard
in your life. Louder than a jet engine — I'm not exaggerating. He runs through so many cabinets and heads
and everything it is insane, but his tone is just the most incredible thing you've heard." The solo album combined with a 2022 stadium
tour planned with his old band, means we definitely haven't heard the last from Mick Mars or Mötley
Crüe. "You're Mick Mars! You're Mick Mars, dude!" "Don't forget it!" If you or anyone you know is struggling with
addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health
Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP
(4357).
