VINCE NEIL: 'Things Have Been Great In My Life — Except I'm Getting Divorced'

Nate Jones of Time magazine recently conducted an interview with MÖTLEY CRÜE singer Vince Neil. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Time: You're semiestranged with the rest of MÖTLEY CRÜE, but you're still the front man of the band and you still tour with them all the time. How does that work?

Vince: We're still family. We still, basically, love each other. It was a business decision for me. When I was — depending on how you look at it — fired or I quit the band [in 1992], I was a part of Mötley Crüe Inc. And I chose not to come back into that [in 1997]. I looked at myself as a free agent on a football team. I didn't have to be worried about any corporate decisions. All I had to do was show up and sing.

Time: In 2005, you had a reality show on VH1 about getting plastic surgery. Not many people from your generation have been so open about it. Why were you?

Vince: It was a point in my life where I wasn't doing anything. I remember getting a phone call, I was sitting at the pool at the Ritz-Carlton, drinking — which I'd been doing for the last few months — gaining weight and not doing anything productive. And the phone call [to do the show] came and I was like, "Maybe this is the fire under my butt that I needed." And it worked. It was nothing to be ashamed of.

Time: Your book has a happy ending. If you're not riding off into the sunset, it's at least you more stable and more mature. But since you've written it, you've gotten divorced and had run-ins with the law. [Neil was arrested for a DUI in June.] Do you think that undercuts the message at the end?

Vince: No, because you're really only getting one side of a story on things that have happened to me recently. Until you get the full facts and stuff, you can't go by that. Things have been great in my life — except I'm getting divorced. That's the main one.

Read the entire interview from Time magazine.