[Demdike@Cult Labs]

I ended up watching the Motley Crue video compilation Red White and Crue last night, all two hours of it, rather than a film.

I'd noticed that TOTP2 on BBC4 was from 1987 and featured Def Leppard and Motley Crue.

Leppard were on first performing Animal 'live' in the studio and the Crue's video for Girls, Girls, Girls was second.

What the hell was that i watched? i asked myself.

Talk about BBC political correctness, it was ridiculous. Baring in mind this was two in the morning it was broadcast, the video was cut to shreds.

Gone were the majority of shots of stripping dancing girls on stage, gone was the part where Tommy Lee throws his flick knife into the table and also gone were the scenes of the band riding their Harley's down the Strip, presumably as they weren't wearing helmets and also gone were all the neon signs baring words like 'Sex', 'nude girls' 'XXX' and so on.

In their place were sequences from the earlier videos for Looks that Kill, Home Sweet Home and Smoking in the Boys Room. God knows what they'd have done to the uncensored Girls, Girls, Girls video.

I just had to compare the BBC's cut version with the original video and ended up watching the whole set. What it did prove is that aside from the Theater of Pain album in 1985 Motley Crue were never a 'glam' band. Two years later out went the lipstick and lace and in came the bikes and leather and by 89's Dr. Feelgood album Tommy Lee and Nikki Sixx both had partly shaved heads and looked more like punks.