The First Video That Meant Something To Me: Mötley Crüe’s “Home Sweet Home”

I was probably 8 when I saw Mötley Crüe’s video for “Home Sweet Home” for the first time — we got cable around 1986 — but in the mid-80s MTV was playing it in heavy rotation, as they say, so I saw it a lot. And for an 8-year-old there was a lot to process, like that part in the beginning when Vince Neil kisses the crotch of a scantily clad lady on a poster. Also, the concept of the tour bus: It was clear that this was not just an ordinary bus, but rather some sort of magical, mystical lair where Adult Things went down. I did not yet know what I did not know, but I was starting to get an inkling. The video shows the band performing at an arena show in Houston, and those girls in the audience, gazing longingly up at Vince? That’s who I wanted to be, feathered hair and all. I recently read the Crüe biography The Dirt (highly recommended) and now I know that at the time the band was completely fucked up on drugs and alcohol, hooking up with groupies constantly (well, except for poor, crippled Mick Mars) and fighting with each other, but the video just seemed to portray a band at the absolute pinnacle of stardom — if one that, at least according to that familiar, slightly ominous piano solo, knew there might be trouble ahead.

This is the only version of the original video I could find. It’s the extended cut, and uncensored, which means there are a lot of breasts, and each band member is shown in his natural habitat (Vince: beach; Mick: haunted house; Nikki Sixx: bar; Tommy Lee: party), getting a phone call on a landline, presumably telling him to hurry up and make it to the show, and each one has the same response: “I’m on my way!”

Doree Shafrir is the executive editor at BuzzFeed. She still has all her mixtapes.