A shiny new toy — namely a Dolby Atmos for his home studio in Los Angeles — has revived Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee‘s interest in some of his old musical playthings.
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On Friday (May 22), Lee will release Tommyland Rides Again, a freshly refurbished and expanded treatment of 2005’s Tommyland: The Ride, his second solo album after his short-lived side project Methods of Mayhem. Filled with guests — including Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger, Good Charlotte’s Joel Madden, Backstreet Boys’ Nick Carter, Sum 41′ Deryck Whibley, Dave Navarro of Jane’s Addiction, Andrew McMahon (Something Corporate, Jack’s Mannequin), Fuel’s Carl Bell and others — the 12-song set peaked at No. 62 on the Billboard 200 and hit the Hot 100 with the Butch Walker collaboration “Good Times,” which was the theme for that year’s NBC/VH1 reality series Tommy Lee Goes to College.
“A couple years ago, my kids were tripping out and like, ‘Dad, you gotta re-release this,’ ’cause it was 20 years since it came out,” Lee tells Billboard via Zoom. “I didn’t really think much of it, but then the studio got done being built and I was like, ‘I wanna remix some of my stuff’ — one being Tommyland: The Ride, for its anniversary.
“So I learned the process, and once you hear Dolby Atmos, it’s insane. I’ll never listen to regular stereo again. And now we’re going down the rabbit hole and I’m remixing anything.”
At the time of its release, and with its guest list, Tommyland: The Ride was a kind of snapshot of rock music circa 2005. More in the realm of Lee’s 2002 solo debut Never a Dull Moment than Motley Crue’s heavy glam rock or the industrial roots of Methods of Mayhem, Tommyland was decidedly more melodic and focused on songcraft, even downright gentle in spots. “Whenever I do something solo, without Motley Crue, I’m like a little kid in a sandbox,” Lee explains. “It’s just you, and you sort of have the freedom to do whatever it is that’s blowing your skirt up.
“The cover art kind of says it all; it’s basically a, like, roller coaster (track) going into my ear, into my f***in’ crazy, eclectic musical styles mind, and that’s what it’s always been.”
In addition to the new mix, Tommyland Rides Again adds another track, “Stupid World” with Chad Tepper, an uncharacteristically topical song that Lee wrote during the Covid pandemic. “I found a bunch of stuff,” Lee says, “and the second I heard it I was, ‘I gotta do this. The timing couldn’t be better,’ just because of the content. It’s really about how ridiculously stupid the world we live in has become. Things have gotten even crazier since (he wrote it), and I was like, ‘I’m rolling with this. This is meant to be, ’cause shit’s pretty stupid right now.
“I mean, nobody knows what’s real anymore, whether it’s a photograph or a video, a political statement or…just everything. Nobody knows if anything is real, and that’s a really f***in’ stupid place for us all to be in.”
As excited as he is to present the newly mixed Tommyland to the world — he recommends “Hello Again” and the helicopter effect on “Trying To Be Me” — Lee acknowledges that rock music, and the industry in general, was “in a very different place” when the album first came out.
“Back then there was space for things, for music and videos to come out and be heard and seen and paid attention to,” he says. “Now…Spotify releases, what, a half a million songs a day? More? Who the f*** is listening to that? We’re f***ing inundated with content, not only music but all the arts. So how does someone cut through all the static to actually find something that they love?” Nevertheless, Lee notes, he’s still inspired to keep creating amidst those challenges.
“It does inspire me to make things really special so that they do stick out from the static,” he explains. “There’s so much noise out there that it inspires me to be better. But it also bums me out because we are where we are. You can’t really undo it. So it’s definitely more for me, 100 percent.”
Lee did enjoy the trip down memory lane in revisiting Tommyland for its new edition. “It still means what it meant to be then,” he says, including the presence of his various guests. The Nick Carter appearance raised eyebrows at the time, but Lee maintains that it was as natural as having any of the rockers on the set.
“It wasn’t like I sat around saying, ‘Who do I want to collaborate with?’ It just kind of happened track by track,” he recalls. He met the Backstreet Boy when both were featured on an episode of MTV’s Punk’d, “and we became really, really cool friends. I was working on this tune (‘Say Goodbye’) around that time and we were at my house and I played it for Nick, and he just started singing and I was like, ‘Oh, shit, what are you doing for the next couple days, bud?’ He’s such a cool guy, such an incredible voice. I was like, ‘Let’s do it. I’m probably gonna hear a bunch of flak from some metal heads, but f*** them!’”
As Tommyland Rides Again comes out, Lee is remixing more of his catalog, including his other solo albums and his Methods of Mayhem releases. He’s eyeballing some brand-new material for 2027 and also “wouldn’t mind having a crack” at remixing some Motley Crue in Dolby Atmos.
Before all that, however, he’ll be on the road with the Crue for a The Return of the Carnival of Sins! summer tour, celebrating the 20th anniversary of that concert tour and the band’s 45th anniversary. The 33-date mostly amphitheater trek, which also includes Tesla and Extreme, begins July 17 near Pittsburgh and wraps Sept. 25 in Ridgefield, Wash.
“It’s gonna be fun,” Lee predicts. “The last run we did was all stadiums, which was f***ing phenomenal. But I really do love a good outdoor amphitheater, shed vibe. That’s always fun in the summer.” Motley Crue also polled fans for setlist suggestions, which he says “made us go back and dust off four or five tunes that we haven’t played in a long time, so I think the fans are gonna be pumped.” He declined to name what they are, however.
The group has also released some new songs in recent years — “Dogs of War,” “Cancelled” and a cover of the Beastie Boys’ “(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (to Party)” — but Lee says Crueheads will have to be patient for more. “We’re always writing, and we do have some stuff kicking around,” he notes, “but right now the only thing in front of us is going out to do these summer dates. But after that I think it’s safe to say you’ll probably be hearing some new stuff in ’27.”
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