Hard-rockin’ and hard-livin’ former Motley Crue frontman Vince Neil firmly believes the old adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

Which is why Neil, who joined ’80s hair-metal heroes Poison and Vancouver’s Headpins on stage recently at the Shaw Conference Centre, in Edmonton isn’t worried about his latest run-in with the law at a Nevada brothel.

“Absolutely nothing happened,” a downright chipper-sounding Neil said in a phone interview from the tour’s stop in Regina.

“It’s called a wacky broad just wanting money.”

Neil’s referring to a charge of misdemeanor battery laid against him after a sex worker at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch brothel near Carson City alleged the rocker grabbed her by the throat and pushed her against a wall during a July 10 post-concert visit.

“The girl was never touched by anybody, it’s just all a bunch of bull,” maintains Neil, 42. “That’s what happens. People know you got money, and they figure you’ll just pay them off not to go through something like this. But I’m not really going through anything.

” The funny thing is, this isn’t really bad press – it’s just press.”

Spoken like a man who’s had his fair share. Ranging from the very bad (a conviction for vehicular manslaughter in the 1984 crash that killed Hanoi Rocks drummer Razzle Dingley) to the, well, very weird (a XXX-rated video of Neil and porn star Janine Lindemulder was released commercially, trumpeted as “Janine’s first boy-girl scene!” and “proof that Tommy Lee isn’t the only rocker who loves his women on videotape!”)

“It’s pretty obvious that when you have one person with their head blurred out, that’s the person who sold the tape,” said Neil, referring to the unidentified second woman seen in the steamy menage-a-trois.

“I never got a cent from that, Janine never got a cent from it.

“It’s just old news. I didn’t think about it then, I don’t really give a s— now. I didn’t want it to turn into the Tommy/Pam thing, where they talked about it all the time. I figured if I never talked about it it would just go away, which is basically what it did.”

Motley Crue’s legendary tales of drugs, booze and sex will likely live on forever as part of heavy metal lore, though, even if Neil has settled down a bit.

“You gotta put that into perspective,” he said. “That was the very beginning of our career, and you hand people a lot of money and a lot of fame and put these 20-year-old guys on tour to tour the world, yeah, you get crazy.”

Neil says he’s having just as much fun touring with his current band, which has been playing Motley Crue standards like Kickstart My Heart and Girls, Girls, Girls during their one-hour opening set ahead of Poison.

“I’m out to do the songs people have asked for, and it’s Motley Crue stuff,” said Neil, who released a pair of commercially unsuccessful solo albums in the mid-’90s.

“It’s all about the people and fans wanting to hear what they want to hear.”

They’re not likely to hear Motley Crue songs played live by Motley Crue itself any time soon, though. At least not with Vince Neil providing the vocals.

Although Neil was punted from the band in 1992 and replaced with singer John Corabi, the original lineup (including Nikki Sixx, Mick Mars and Tommy Lee) has reunited in the past for an album and concerts.

But right now Neil has no plans to go back to his old Crue-mates.

“I have no relationship with those guys,” Neil said flatly. “Nikki’s trying to get everyone back together. Tommy’s already agreed to do it, Mick’s already agreed to do it. I really don’t want to do it.

“I’m having too much fun doing this. There’s no brain damage, it’s fun, you just go out and play.

“Basically nobody likes each other in Motley Crue, so why would I put myself in that kind of position when I’m perfectly happy doing what I’m doing now?”

Though the Poison tour isn’t scheduled to play in Calgary, Neil will use his Saturday off from the tour to play a concert with his band at the Cowboys nightclub there.

“What I do is play a few songs, then we take requests the rest of the night,” he said.

“If we know the song, we’ll play it. Sometimes we’ll even just try to play it.”

Edmonton will always hold a special place in his heart, though, especially the band’s legendary 1982 show at the long-gone Scandals disco downtown at the Sheraton Caravan, which ended with thrown beer bottles, flying fists and an anonymous call from someone saying they’d waste the band onstage.

“Motley Crue, on our very first tour, got death threats in Edmonton,” Neil said. “While we were on stage, they had two police standing on the sides. It was pretty crazy.”

Posted by Gene Ross