by Daina Darzin

El Paso, Texas doesn't seem destined to be a high point of the Girls, Girls, Girls tour. If, as Nikki Sixx once said, "Motley Crue could go on stage and everything could go wrong, but the magic would still be there," then this looks to be the night to prove it.Ultimately, the Crue do just that. But at 8:30, the "show of doom," as comanager Doug Thaler calls it, is already running an hour behind schedule - sidetracked by one of the semis carrying the set, which broke down in the middle of the desert en route. Outside in the sweltering Texas weather, the audience is becoming increasingly hot, sticky and pissed off about the delay, pushing and chanting, "open the doors." But the sour mood is dissolved once everyone gets inside. Fans make their way to the festival seating floor or hit the concession stand, where overburdened vendors sell gallons upon gallons of soda and beer. In the VIP section of sorts, local groupies freshen their make-up and smoke cigarettes; Cinderella's Night Songs blasts through the P.A.

Backstage, the Crue are hanging out around a large table. Next to a rapidly deteriorating buffet spread, a vodka bottle has been strategically impaled in a watermelon so as to make the fruit highly alcoholic for post-show consumption. Vince Neil, looking healthy and fit enough to join anybody's Olympic team, bounces in and out of the room. A technician enters carrying a makeshift solution to another problem - a bum pedal on the piano they're renting. "We should get mine sent out here," grumbles Tommy Lee, annoyed at the condition of the one he has to play tonight. Nikki Sixx is amusing himself and the assembled group by setting fire to a plastic cup. Everyone theorizes for a few minutes on the applicable laws of thermodynamics-will the part of the cup that has water in it bum? Will the water put the fire out? The cup, producing ominous black smoke, is metamorphising into a puddle on the floor. "Let it drip," says Nikki. "I don't care, I don't live here. It's blue wax, it's making the carpet look cool. It's art." "That's Nikki, he's Mr. Wizard in disguise," laughs Tommy. "This is my art, isn't that pretty?" the drummer adds, pointing to a hot sauce bottle that seems to have crash-landed into a jar of mustard. "And then there's the watermelon," he says in anticipation. "That boy's gonna be bad." "I tell you, it gets boring on the road," Nikki admits. "Once, I cut Doc's [McGhee, co-manager] bed in half. I cut the mattress with a knife, and put the sheet back on. And remember the en B.B. guns? We had those paper targets 13 so we'd have something to shoot at, and we ended up with millions of B.B.s in the wall [of Vince's hotel room]. Waiting, hurry up and wait," the bassist continues, "that's the self-destructive time. Like, let's do another shot of Jack. By the time we're fifty, we're all going to look like W.C. Fields, noses out to here. We used to be worse, though."

During this tour, Sixx is making a stab at counteracting the bad effects of road life. "I've put five pounds on," he complains to no one in particular. "I'm going to the gym tomorrow." His workout routine? "I watch the girls exercise," he quips. In general, Nikki seems to be in a self-critical mood. "I've got a Nick-the-pig face," he says rather unconvincingly. "The only time I get laid is when my bangs are in my face." Nick the Pig, it turns out, is the porcine star of an especially bizarre x-rated movie the Crue has acquired lately. "People give us great gifts," Nikki deadpans. Other video selections on the tour bus include the everpopular Faces of Death, parts 1 and 2, and old Three Stooges movies. Nikki is also reading the Led Zeppelin biography, Hammer of the Gods. And he's enthusiastic about the band's appearance, via an actor wearing a Motley Crue t-shirt, in this year's hottest underground movie, River's Edge. "Wasn't that cool?" he says, and adds, "I saw myself in them" about the kids in the movie, who have to deal with the fact that a friend of theirs. murdered his girlfriend. "[I identified] with a lot of the shit they went through. I'm no different than any other kid on the street, no different at all." Because of his parents' gig with Frank Sinatra's band (his father played the trumpet, his mother was a back-up singer), Nikki moved around a lot when he was young. "I used to live here when I was in the fourth grade," he reveals about the EI Paso area. "I was with my grandparents; then we moved to New Anthony, New Mexico. "I remember getting busted at Piggly Wiggly's for stealing," he recalls of his times in Texas as a nine-year-old. "They'd sell popcorn there, and I'd buy a box and eat some and then - remember Hot Wheels? I'd grab a package of 'em, stick it into the popcorn and walk out. I had no money, but I was a great stealer. Never got caught, either, except that once."

"Nikki, a little bit of duct tape will fix that shoe right up," says Mick Mars with a grin, pointing to Sixx's foot (encased in a Reebok hi-top that's seen better days). "We used to tape our shoes," Nikki remembers. "When I first 'met Mick, he had these worn-out pants, a jean jacket that had hardly any panels on the sides, one shirt, and these boots that were duct taped." "And my Marshalls," adds Mick. On all counts, Motley Crue have come a long way since those times. Now, after several multi-platinum albums and international notoriety, they want to prove they can do it without the make-up and extravaganza of their previous tours. "We planned a very simple set," Nikki explains. "We wanted the stage to be naked, the band to be naked in the context of costume. We wanted the music to be number one. It's really easy to hide behind all that stuff, but to get the respect we deserve, we're not going to do it. "The first few concerts, we're just working out the kinks," he continues. "After that-we're like a boxer in the ring. One thing on his mind, and that's to win."

Despite its late start, the Crue's performance in EI Paso proves to be a winner; the band delivers a genuinely electric set that makes up for any technical imperfections with an abundance of energy and spirit. The show opens with the timehonored stripper's bump-and-grind theme, as the back-wall amps rise to the tune of the music in an appropriately seductive, gradual motion. Motley burst onstage with "All In the Name..." from their Top 5 LP, Girls, Girls, Girls. Though the L.A. rockers do like their pyro, their stage set is indeed simple, and so are their clothes. The Crue's rocking back-up singers, Donna McDaniel and Emi Caynon, make their debut on "Dancing on Glass." Their succession of sexy costumes should satisfy any fan who misses the glitz of the Theatre of Pain tour (plus, give guys whose girlfriends are in love with Vince someone of their own to lust after). But, as promised, the music remains the focus. From the impromptu audience sing-a-long on "Live Wire" to the police sirens of "Wild Side;" from "Red Hot" to "Ten Seconds to Love" to Tommy's spectacular Tilt-a-Whirl drum solo, Motley Crue have it. By encore time (which includes a hot rendition of Led Zeppelin's "Rock & Roll"), the crowd is going absolutely nuts - and even some of the security guys are bopping around to the beat. As Nikki puts it, this is "high RPM, low I.Q. rock & roll" at its finest.

"I Survived Mud Wrestling At The Tropicana" is the joke bumper sticker on an equipment case that's being hastily packed after the show. But the Crue are survivors in earnest, having lived through their own penchant for excess, their stint as the band critics most love to hate, and their courageous changes in sound and image which might have alienated fans less loyal than theirs. "You gotta keep movin', man, or people pass you by," says Nikki afterwards, and confirms that changes are happening for him on a personal level, too: specifically, that Heather Locklear will no longer be the only Motley wife who's a celebrity in her own right. "She's a great lady," Nikki declares about his now-official fiancee, singer/ actress Vanity. "She's a great person and if somebody keeps me happy, it means the music's gonna be happening." But with the sound of Motley Crue, circa 1987, there's really no reason to worry about that.