Mick Mars

Mick Mars
Mars performing in Glasgow Scotland on June 14, 2005
Background information
Birth name Robert Alan Deal
Born (1951-05-04) May 4, 1951 or (1955-04-04) April 4, 1955 (sources differ)
Terre Haute, Indiana, U.S.
Genres
Occupation(s) Musician, songwriter, recording artist
Instruments Guitar
Years active 1974–present
Labels
Associated acts

Robert Alan Deal (born either May 4, 1951[1] or April 4, 1955)[2], known professionally as Mick Mars, is an American musician and guitarist. He is known for being the lead guitarist for the heavy metal band Mötley Crüe.

Career

Deal was born in Terre Haute, Indiana,[1][2] but his family moved to Huntington, Indiana soon afterward.[3] Before he was 9 years old, his family relocated again, this time to Garden Grove, California.[3] He dropped out of high school and began playing guitar in a series of unsuccessful blues-based rock bands throughout the 1970s, sometimes using the name Zorky Charlemagne,[4], and occasionally taking on menial day jobs. One of the bands, Whitehorse, had a vocalist named Micki Marz who inspired the later name change, and used the name Mottley Croo to avoid fines for performing at non-union clubs.[4]

After nearly a decade of frustration with the California music scene, he reinvented himself, changing his name from Robert Deal to Mick Mars and dyeing his hair jet black, hoping for a fresh start. In April 1980 he put a want ad in the Los Angeles newspaper The Recycler, describing himself as "a loud, rude and aggressive guitar player". Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee, who were putting together a new band which would soon become Mötley Crüe, contacted him. After hearing him play he was hired for the band. Deal has been the guitarist for Mötley Crüe ever since. In 2015 he played with the band on the final tour and soon after announced he was working on a solo album with former Mötley Crüe member John Corabi. In 2018 Vince Neil announced on Twitter that the band would record new songs for the film based on the bands biography The Dirt. In late September of that year Nikki Sixx confirmed that Deal would record the guitar for the songs.

Deal has contributed songwriting to John LeCompt, a former member of Evanescence and the other band members of Machina,[5] and to the Swedish band Crashdïet. Their second album entitled, The Unattractive Revolution, was released on October 3, 2007 and featured two songs co-written by Mars.[6]

Deal played guitar on the title track of Hinder's 2008 album Take It to the Limit, and contributed a guitar solo to the song "Into the Light" by Papa Roach, on their 2009 album Metamorphosis. Deal also contributed a guitar solo to the song "The Question" on Rock Star: Supernova runner-up Dilana's U.S. debut album Inside Out.[7] In 2010 he co-wrote a song with Escape the Fate for the band's self-titled album, which was instead withheld from the album and reserved for a later release.

Health

For most of his professional career, Deal has openly struggled with ankylosing spondylitis,[8] a chronic, inflammatory form of arthritis that mainly affects the spine and pelvis. It was initially diagnosed when he was 17 years old and has increasingly impaired his movement that has caused him pain. This led to hip-replacement surgery at the end of 2004.[9]

Over the years, the illness has caused his lower spine to seize up and freeze completely solid, "...causing scoliosis in [his] back and squashing [him] further down and forward until [he] was a full three inches (7.6 cm) shorter than [he] was in high school."[10]

Equipment

According to an interview published in September 2009, Mars' main stage guitars at that time were Fender Stratocasters with a single-coil pickup between neck and bridge humbucking pickups. He frequently used a Stratocaster pieced together from components of 1963, 1964 and 1965 models with J.M. Rolph pickups and a Floyd Rose vibrato.[11]

References

  1. 1 2 Rosen, Steven (September 6, 2008). "Motley Crue's Mick Mars: 'I've Always Been About Melody And Tone'". Ultimate Guitar Archive. Archived from the original on December 11, 2015. Retrieved June 11, 2011. Mick Mars came into this world as Robert Alan Deal. He was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, on May 4, 1951
  2. 1 2 Linden, Eric. "Mick Mars Biography". Allmusic. Archived from the original on August 20, 2016. Retrieved June 11, 2011. Born April 4, 1955 in Terre Haute, IN
  3. 1 2 Friedman, David (February 25, 2005). "Mick Mars, Motley Crue's 'quietest' member, ready to make some noise". The News-Times. Danbury, Connecticut. Retrieved November 9, 2014.
  4. 1 2 "Mick Mars's Biography". Last.fm. Retrieved January 28, 2018.
  5. ↑ Machina Collaboration with Mick Mars on YouTube
  6. ↑ "The Official Web Site". Crash Diet. Retrieved July 4, 2012.
  7. ↑ Dilana: The Reality Rocks Interview Part 2, which was also released in 2009.
  8. ↑ Lee, Tommy; Strauss, Neil; Neil, Vince; Mars, Mick; Sixx, Nikki (2002) [2001]. The Dirt (The Anniversary Edition): Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band (reprint, illustrated ed.). HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-098915-7. OCLC 212381899.
  9. ↑ Rashbaum, A (October 6, 2004). "Motley Crue Guitarist Undergoes Surgery". MTV.com. Retrieved August 7, 2008.
  10. ↑ Lee, et al., The Dirt, p. 187
  11. ↑ Sharken, Lisa. "Mick Mars Shows Off a Piece of His Action". Vintage Guiter. Retrieved 14 October 2018.
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