There have been few fans who these days have remembered the Mötley Crüe classic, “Home Sweet Home” in their networks, now that we are forced to stay a few days in our “home sweet home”. Finally, it has been the band itself that has revived their song by giving it a new lyric-video with images from the biopic ‘The Dirt’, with which they encourage all their followers in these times of quarantine.
But there’s a story about the song;
When Motley Crue showed their record label with a new LP that incorporated an emotional ballad, the label refused it completely. But the group pushed for the song because they believe fans supported songs by power-charged rock bands that quieted down for big emotional outcome.
The track was a response to Crue’s history during their 1983 tour in support of Shout at the Devil record. “It was our first time,” Nikki Sixx said in the documentary included with 2016’s The End – Live in Los Angeles. “A tour bus picked us up at our little tiny apartments and we took off to go play some shows, and 18 months later we got dropped back in our little apartments.”
Discovering themselves puzzled, Sixx noted, “We didn’t know what to do, so we started writing songs for Theater of Pain, and ‘Home Sweet Home’ started to come out. The lyrics came out of that feeling of being gone so long and wanting to come back, which is ironic … because all you ever want is to get in a band and go on the road, but then you’re on the road and you want to come home.”
Vince Neil once explained how it was composed, mentioning that he recalled: “like it was yesterday, sitting in the recording studio when Tommy [Lee] came up with the piano chords, and I almost immediately started humming.”
The group believed in the tune from early on – but when presenting it Theater of Pain to Elektra for the first time, they suffered unenthusiastic feedback. It wasn’t the first experience. “We were always at war with that record company,” Sixx recalled in 2012. “They never really believed in us. … When [Theater of Pain] got turned in, with ‘Home Sweet Home’ on it, they rejected that album. They said, ‘This is horrible, and you have to take that song off the record. You guys aren’t a ballad band.’”
However, the group revealed a cheat code for the label execs: Motley Crue frightened them that they would take their business elsewhere. Even though the album was published as the band desired, and “Smokin’ in the Boys Room” did great as the initial single, the band was rejected financial support to publish “Home Sweet Home” as a single. “So, we funded it, we shot the video ourselves, went on MTV and the rest is history,” Sixx said.