Mötley Crüe's drummer was born in Athens to a Miss Greece contestant
Tommy Lee, the drummer famous for playing inside a spinning, airborne drum kit, began life as Thomas Lee Bass in Athens. His father was an American army sergeant, his mother had competed for Miss Greece in 1957, and the family moved to California when he was about two.
Lee was born on 3 October 1962. He got his first drumsticks at four and a proper kit as a teenager, played in his high school marching band and then dropped out to chase music. John Bonham, Alex Van Halen and Terry Bozzio shaped his style. In the late 1970s his club band Suite 19 worked the Sunset Strip alongside rising acts such as Van Halen and Quiet Riot. Around then he dropped his surname and, thanks to his lanky 6 foot 2 frame, picked up the nickname T-bone.
On that circuit he met bassist Nikki Sixx, who admired his playing. When Sixx's band London folded in 1981, the pair formed a new group, adding guitarist Mick Mars. Lee then suggested Vince Neil, a singer he had known casually at school, and Mötley Crüe was complete. They released Too Fast for Love on their own label in 1981, and Elektra reissued it the next year. Shout at the Devil, Theatre of Pain, Girls, Girls, Girls and Dr. Feelgood made them one of the decade's biggest hard rock acts, and Lee and Sixx became known as the Terror Twins for their excesses.
Onstage Lee turned solos into spectacle, rotating his whole drum riser or hoisting it above the audience while he kept playing. Away from the band he launched the rap metal group Methods of Mayhem, issued solo albums from 2002 and toured as a dance-music DJ, logging over 60 club dates in 2007.
His private life drew headlines, including a marriage to Pamela Anderson four days after meeting her in 1995, and a six-month jail term in 1998 for assaulting her. The original lineup reunited in 2004; the 2005 tour played 81 shows and grossed $33 million. A 2014 farewell deal bars any member from touring as Mötley Crüe without all four.
Source: Tommy Lee
