Mark Bennett: Mick Mars: From Hautean preacher's son to Motley Crue to solo artist

Feb. 22—The sight and sound of a rhinestone-bedazzled country and Western singer on a 4-H fair stage in Indiana caught little Bob Deal's attention.

The youngster saw his future — well, sort of — standing and singing right before his eyes. Not yet a kindergartener, Bob watched alongside his father, Frank Deal.

Nearly 70 years later, that fascinated youngster is Mick Mars, the longtime Mötely Crüe lead guitarist whose first solo album is being released today.

Mars, now 72, remembers that day.

"My father was a country-Western guy, back when it was country-Western, not this [current] country," Mars recalled in a telephone interview from his Nashville home. "And I saw a guy — his name was Skeeter Bonn. And he had on this bright orange cowboy kind of cut suit; it had rhinestones all over it, and crazy stuff. My jaw dropped, and I'm a little kid.

"I decided right then," Mars added, "that's what I wanted to do."

He indeed became a musician onstage, albeit much bigger stages. And "crazy stuff" happened.

Mars and lead singer Vince Neil joined drummer Tommy Lee and bassist Nikki Six to form Mötley Crüe in 1981.

Amid notorious lifestyles, they generated nine platinum and multiplatinum albums — such as "Theatre of Pain" (1985), "Girls, Girls, Girls" (1987) and "Dr. Feelgood" (1989) — selling more than 100 million copies globally. Mars retired from touring in 2022 because of chronic pain from ankylosing spondylitis, a form of arthritis. The change led to Mars suing his bandmates. Today, Mars' first solo album, the surprisingly nuanced "The Other Side of Mars," goes on sale.

And it all started in Terre Haute.

Mars was born Robert Alan Deal in Terre Haute on May 4, 1951, according to Vigo County Health Department birth records. (Mars says he was born in Huntington.) His parents came from two different Hoosier towns — his mother Tena (Daphne) Deal from Huntington, and his father Frank Deal from Terre Haute. Frank's birth family lived near Locust Avenue in Terre Haute, and as his younger brother, Ron, told the Tribune-Star in 2005, "We were not wealthy people. We kind of grew up in the hard part of town."

Frank and Tena raised their own family — young Bob, his three brothers and his sister — at first in the small Indiana towns of Huntington, Bippus and Bracken. Frank became a Baptist minister. "I was the son of a preacher man," Mars said, adding that his father, a "very mellow" soul, didn't "push a lot of religion on me."

"People in my circle — I didn't have a lot of friends, because they were dating — but they knew that my father was a minister," Mars said. "Alice Cooper's father was too."

When Bob was 8 years old, his family moved to southern California, where his father also took jobs in a box factory and a rubber mill. "There was a big mill, and if [dad] did something wrong, he'd probably lose both arms," Mars explained.

Frank's mill job led his son to a decision.

"I didn't want to do that. I was like, 'That's too dangerous,'" Mars said.

Instead, he felt the pull of music, drawn by The Beatles and their movie "A Hard Day's Night." "I was walking to the theater," Mars recalled, noting his young age. "I was just like, 'Wow.'"

Years before, back in Indiana, he'd started plucking melodies to songs like the Carter Family's "Wildwood Flower." Then came The Beatles, followed by more musical exploration and joining bands. "When I discovered the blues and R&B, I was into that heavily," he said. "It had a lot of guitar playing. It taught me a lot."

The psychedelic rock of Jimi Hendrix and progressive rock of King Crimson added another layer to Mars' influences. "I was like, 'This is so much. I'm doing this,'" he said.

As his musical interests deepened, he changed his name at age 18 from Robert Alan Deal to the more rock-and-roll Mick Mars. It fit the persona that he carried through four decades with Mötely Crüe, as the darkly dressed, often top-hatted, tattooed, physically slight guitarist who's seven years or more older than his bandmates.

Just as Mars explored a range of musical genres before his Mötely Crüe years, his new solo album dabbles in areas beyond the band's heavy metal. Mars' thick guitar sound anchors the collection, to be sure, but the album also contains violin, viola and piano. Mars hands over the singing duties on his compositions to seasoned vocalists Jacob Bunton and Brion Gamboa.

"There's a lot of different moods, a lot of different sounds, a lot of different tones, a lot of different vocal sounds, a lot of different things on different songs that are going on," he said. "It's very diverse and takes [listeners] on a journey."

"Loyal to the Lie" is catchy, and "Broken on the Inside" rugged. A slower paced "Alone" features the line, "never thought this thing would ever be this way, but it's all over now." There are gritty, power songs like "Killing Breed," "Ready to Roll" and "Ain't Going Back." The instrumental "L.A. Noir" slowly shows Mars' guitar chops.

His guitar style differs from many heavy metal guitarists, with less speed and more fullness. "It's deeply rooted into blues and R&B. All that stuff turned into rock and roll. A lot of very solid melody solos instead of shredding solos — what goes with the song," Mars said. "I don't think 100,000 miles an hour shredding would fit in Dr. Feelgood."

Perhaps the album's most surprising tune is a ballad — yes, a ballad, complete with orchestral backing — "Memories." Mars wrote the song on guitar, but had keyboardist Paul Taylor transpose it for piano. When Mars heard the recording, he immediately decided it would feature no other instruments. "Just that piano," he insisted.

Mars had Bunton sing the vocal with just the piano. "In one take, I went, 'Perfect. Don't do anything else. Just leave it like it is,'" Mars recalled. "It's like Freddie Mercury coming up on the stage and playing his piano and just singing. That's exactly what I wanted."

Its lyrics could recall Indiana, his band or loved ones. "Caught up in your memory, you'll never know how much you mean to me, I'll never let you go."

Though Mars left his Indiana life decades ago, recollections linger. His otherwise mellow mom sticking up for her family — "If somebody got in the way or tried to say something to us kids, she would bark up," Mars said. His elementary school in tiny Bippus (also the hometown of late ABC sportscaster Chris Schenkel) in Huntington County — "That place is not there anymore. It's just a bunch of bricks," Mars said.

"There will always be a little bit of Hoosier in me," he concluded.

Mark Bennett can be reached at 812-231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.