John Corabi is looking back on his Mötley Crüe years with more gratitude than bitterness, but he says the emotional fallout still matters. In a new interview on This Day In Metal, the former Crüe frontman said the hardest part of exiting the band was not the music business side of it, but the personal loss: “I felt like I was losing three friends.” Corabi joined Mötley Crüe in 1992 after Vince Neil left the band, then recorded and toured behind the group’s 1994 self-titled album before Neil returned in 1997.
Corabi said the split was never something he had planned. He explained that he hates being called a “journeyman” because, in his view, his career turns were mostly about luck and timing. “None of it was me going, ‘F— you, guys. I’m out. I’m leaving. I’m gonna go do something,’” he said. “It was just the way the cards were dealt to me.” If he could speak to his younger self, he said he would tell him: “Don’t become so emotionally attached to anything… If you’re gonna be here, do your job, make the best of it, and move on.”
What still stings most, though, is the distance from Nikki Sixx. Corabi said he still speaks occasionally with Tommy Lee and Mick Mars, but “Nikki [Sixx] and I have no dialogue at all,” which he admitted “bums me out a little bit.” That line gives the whole story its emotional center: he is not presenting the chapter as a feud so much as a friendship that simply never healed.
The background to that tension goes back years. In 2016, Nikki Sixx described the Corabi-fronted Mötley Crüe album as “a very unfocused record,” saying it was “painful” for him because Corabi wanted to participate in the lyrics and Sixx felt the process dragged on. Corabi responded on Facebook by thanking the band for the five years they had together, saying he was proud of the record they made, and insisting he had moved forward on his own terms.
At the time, Corabi took the high road publicly, saying he had “nothing but mad respect for Motley, including Mr. Sixx” and ending with a blunt dismissal of the drama: “I REALLY don’t give a s–t about any of this nonsense!!!!” That mix of dignity and frustration still defines how he talks about the era today. He is clearly hurt by the lack of dialogue with Sixx, but he is also unwilling to let that pain erase what the band meant to his career.
The bigger picture is that Corabi has built a life beyond Mötley Crüe. He has remained active with The Dead Daisies, and he released his first full-length solo album, New Day, on April 24, 2026, while also continuing to promote his memoir Horseshoes and Hand Grenades. In recent interviews around those projects, Corabi has made it clear he is still very much writing his own story rather than living in the shadow of one band chapter.
That is what makes this latest reflection hit so hard. Corabi is not trying to reopen old wounds for attention. He is saying that the music, the opportunity, and the friendships were real to him, and that losing one of those friendships still leaves a mark. More than 30 years after joining Mötley Crüe, that is still the part he has not been able to forget.
