Mars

In the beginning, it was 1981 and bassist Nikki Sixx left London, the glam metal band he’d formed in Hollywood three years earlier, to start a new project with drummer Tommy Lee. Then, they pulled in guitarist Mick Mars, who responded to the duo’s classified ad for a “loud, rude, and aggressive guitar player,” and eventually persuaded singer Vince Neil, a former classmate of Lee’s, to leave his band Rock Candy for Mötley Crüe.

From its start with 1981 debut “Too Fast for Love,” Mötley Crüe lived up to its mismatched epithet, from its diabolical breakout “Shout at the Devil” in 1983 to the late ‘80s with its most commercially successful release, “Dr. Feelgood.”

Addictions, near-death experiences, hiatuses, departures and reunions — Mötley Crüe survived them all. Each step on its musical journey is commemorated on “From the Beginning,” an album that includes the band’s first single “Live Wire” through its most recent track, “Dogs of War,” released 43 years later. The band also revived a Mötley Crüe classic with a newly recorded version of its “Theatre of Pain” ballad “Home Sweet Home,” featuring Dolly Parton, which reentered the charts in 2025 at No. 1, 40 years after the original recording’s release.

“Mötley Crüe and Dolly Parton together is the ultimate clickbait,” says Sixx, with a laugh. He previously played bass on the country legend’s 2023 “Rockstar” album. “I guess it’s part of that wow factor that has been part of the Mötley Crüe fabric for a long time.”

Proceeds from the new recording of “Home Sweet Home” benefit Covenant House, the nonprofit with which the band has partnered for nearly 20 years through its Mötley Crüe Giveback Initiative. Sixx first worked with Covenant House around the publication of his 2007 memoir, “The Heroin Diaries,” and helped develop a music program at the Hollywood center. In October 2024, the band also played a series of intimate club shows, dubbed Höllywood Takeöver, at the Troubadour, the Roxy and Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood, which helped raise $350,000 for the organization.

“These kids are everything,” says Sixx. “These kids are the future. They might end up changing the world. What if one of these kids can cure cancer and they just didn’t have a shot?”

Playing those smaller shows in 2024, which also included the Underworld in Camden, London, and the Bowery Ballroom in New York City, is the bare-bones sound, much like rehearsals, that Sixx has always loved.

“One of my favorite parts about being in a band is rehearsal,” he says. “There’s nothing like it. It’s raw, just bass, drums, guitar, and vocals off the floor. Then, you add all the bells and whistles as you go along. When we can do things like that, it just reminds me who we are.”

It’s also part of what keeps Lee excited at this stage of the band’s career, which includes its third residency in Las Vegas in 13 years, which kicked off last week and runs through Oct. 3 at the Dolby Live at Park MGM. (A portion of the ticket proceeds from the 10-show residency will benefit the Nevada Partnership for Homeless Youth.)

“I’ve been married to Nikki and Vince for over 44 years,” says Lee. “Like with any marriage, you gotta create ways to make it exciting, to keep it fun, or else you find yourselves at the breakfast table, with your face in the paper saying ‘Pass the butter.’ So Vegas in Dolby Atmos, new music, club shows, crazy videos, Dolly — we’ve always been trying different stuff to make the audience and us go ‘Oh, f— yeah.”

For Mötley Crüe, Las Vegas has nearly become a second home since the band’s first residency at the Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel in 2012 and its “An Intimate Evening in Hell” a year later.

“We’ve got this great body of work that you don’t really realize until you get this far,” says Sixx. “But now, we’re in one of those interesting places where, if we don’t play the hits, we get
s—, and if we do play the hits, we get s—.”

“From the Beginning” is Mötley Crüe’s new compilation album.

(Chris Walter)

Some deeper Crüe cuts worth inclusion in the set include “Stick to Your Guns,” a non-single on “Too Fast for Love,” and a song that the Runaways’ ex-manager, producer Kim Fowley, asked a then-teenaged Sixx to write for Blondie in 1979.

“I was 17 years old, and we recorded that song, and because no record company would sign us, we started our own label and got a distribution deal,” Sixx recalls. “When we finally joint-ventured up with Elektra Records in ’82, they said we needed to take a song off since it made the vinyl sound thinner, so ‘Stick to Your Guns’ got cut, but I’ve always loved that song.”

Sixx recently revealed that Guns N’ Roses once considered covering the early Crüe track.

”Now I get people saying, ‘We want to hear, “Stick to Your Guns,” ’ “ says Sixx, laughing. “There’s like eight people that know that song. That’s a good way to shut down an arena.”

For Lee, there’s something more paternal around the band’s lengthy catalog.

“I know every artist says it, but our songs are like our kids,” he says. “And over the years, they grow up and they develop [their] own personalities and character. Some stay pretty close to home, settle down, and start their own family. Others go out on a Thursday night and come home on Sunday with no shoes and a shaved head, but we love them all the same.”

With every song, Lee says, the band members understand each other more. “We know how to push each other a little further, and hopefully get the greatest out of each other.”

While there’s always room to make new music, Sixx, who has been the band’s chief songwriter since its inception, prefers the pace of releasing singles.

“It’s just a different landscape now,” he says, “so to create one or two ideas, or co-write three is manageable, and it’s also digestible for the fans.”

So many things have changed, and he is also aware of some misconceptions about the band. “The music is Mötley Crüe — Mötley Crüe is not ‘The Dirt,’ ” says Sixx, citing the 2019 film based on the band’s 2001 tell-all memoir. “People have it confused because we were so honest and it became such a part of the fabric of us that they forget about the riff on ‘Kick Start My Heart’ and just remember the hotel that we tried to burn down in Ontario.”

Another misconception, Sixx says, is the band’s split with Mars in 2022. After issuing a statement that Mars had retired from touring due to his ongoing battle with ankylosing spondylitis, the guitarist sued Mötley Crüe in April 2023, alleging that he was forced out of the band and that his bandmates attempted to cut his 25% ownership stake. Guitarist John 5 — who has filled in on lead guitar duties since October 2022, prior to the lawsuit — continues to tour with the band.

“[Mick] came to us and said, health-wise, he couldn’t fulfill his contract, and we let him out of the deal,” recalls Sixx. “Then he sued us because he just said that he can’t tour. We were like, ‘Well, if you can’t tour, you can’t tour.’ I will probably come to that too someday.”

Although there was no final settlement in court between Mars and the band, a Los Angeles judge ruled in 2024 that the band failed to provide documents to Mars in a timely manner and was ordered to pay his legal fees, Loudwire reported. The underlying dispute regarding the band’s business and Mars’ potential ousting went into private arbitration.
The arbitration is still ongoing but in the first phase the arbitrator ruled in favor of the band and against Mars. The arbitration is still ongoing but in the first phase the arbitrator ruled in favor of the band and against Mick.

Mars’ claims around the band’s use of backing tracks were another point of contention and something Sixx has continued defending. He says the band started playing around with audio enhancements in 1985 and cites the “Girls Girls Girls” track “Wild Side” as a “perfect example” with its sequenced guitar parts. “Anything we enhance the shows with, we actually played,” he says. “If there are background vocals with my background vocals, and we have background singers to make it sound more like the record. That does not mean we’re not singing.”

Mars, who is currently working on his second solo album, was contacted by The Times but declined to comment for the story.

Sixx calls Mars’ accusations a “crazy betrayal” to his legacy and to the fans. “Saying he played in a band that didn’t play, it’s a betrayal to the band who saved his life,” adds Sixx. “People say things like, ‘Well, if you guys are really playing, then I need isolated tracks from band rehearsal.’ … It’s ludicrous.”

Another battle the band has found itself in involves Neil’s health problems and the criticism he’s faced following recent performances. Originally scheduled to perform in March and April, Mötley Crüe postponed its Las Vegas shows so the lead singer could undergo an undisclosed medical procedure. “He needed time to heal, and he’s been working really hard,” Sixx says.

“You can tell he’s working up the stamina, and a lot of people are like, ‘Oh, man, he’s not kicking ass like he used to,’ but it takes a lot of courage to have a doctor tell you you will probably never go onstage again and to fight through that. If he’s got some imperfect moments here and there. They’re getting erased as the days go with rehearsal.”

Back in Las Vegas, Lee has looked forward to connecting with fans again, even if those in their teens and 20s were turned on to the band via “The Dirt.”

“Our goal is the same for all: to give them an incredible show,” he says, “to leave it all on the stage.”

Now, more than 40 years into Mötley Crüe, it may have been a patchwork journey of emotions for Sixx, but he wouldn’t change the experience for anything.

“We believe in this band,” he says. “It’s been 44 years. We’ve been in the band longer than we weren’t in the band. We’ve seen everything — everything. I guess that’s why it was a movie.”

In the early 20th century it was widely thought that there was intelligent life on Mars, and that we actually knew something about the inhabitants. Fringe theorists and yellow journalists spread this view, but so did respected scientists and the New York Times. The U.S. and much of the rest of the world had Martians on the brain. The mania could be summed up by the philosophy of Fox Mulder, the paranormal investigator played by David Duchovny on “The X-Files”: “I want to believe.”

How this came to pass is the subject of “The Martians.” David Baron’s deeply researched and witty book explores what happened when “we, the people of Earth, fell hard for another planet and projected our fantasies, desires, and ambitions onto an alien world.” As Baron writes, “This romance blazed before it turned to embers, and it produced children, for we — the first humans who might actually sail to Mars — are its descendants.”

Well before there was Elon Musk, there was Percival Lowell. A disillusioned, admittedly misanthropic Boston Brahmin, Lowell came to see himself as a scientist with the soul of a poet, or a poet with scientific instincts. He was also filthy rich, and he poured much of his money into equipment and research that might help him prove there was life on Mars.

David Baron, a Colorado-based science writer, approaches his subject with clarity, style and narrative drive.

(Dana C. Meyer)

He was hardly alone. Other movers and shakers in the Martian movement included French astronomer and philosopher Camille Flammarion, who brought missionary zeal to the task of convincing the world of extraterrestrial life; and Giovanni Schiaparelli, the colorblind Italian astronomer who observed “an abundance of narrow streaks” on Mars “that appeared to connect the seas one to another.” He called these “canali,” which in Italian means “channels.” But in English the word was translated as “canals,” and it was quickly and widely assumed that these canals were strategically created by agriculturally-inclined Martians. Lowell, Flammarion and Schiaparelli collaborated and communicated with one another throughout their lives, in the interest of spreading the word of life on Mars.

Baron, a Colorado-based science writer, approaches his subject with clarity, style and narrative drive, focusing on the social currents and major figures of his story rather than scientific concepts that might go over the head of a lay reader (including this one). The Mars craze unfolded during a period defined by the theory of evolution, which expanded our conception of gradualism and inexorable progress, and tabloid journalism, which was quick to present enthusiastic postulation and speculation as fact, whether the subject was the Spanish-American War or life on other planets. Science fiction was also taking off, thanks largely to a prolific Englishman named H.G. Wells, whose widely serialized attack-of-the-Martians story “War of the Worlds” piqued the Western imagination. All of the above contributed to Mars fever.

One by one Baron introduces his protagonists, including Musk’s hero Nikola Tesla. An innovator in wireless communication and what would now be called remote control, Tesla won over the press and public with his enigmatic charm, which led his pronouncements to be taken seriously and literally by those who should have known better. “I have an instrument by which I can receive with precision any signal that might be made to this world from Mars,” he told a reporter. Tesla briefly had a powerful benefactor in Wall Street king J.P. Morgan, who funded Tesla’s wireless research before deciding the Mars obsession was a bit much and cutting him off.

Baron comes not to bury the Mars mania, but to examine the reasons why we choose to believe what we believe. Lowell, spurned in his romantic life and treated as a black sheep by his dynastic family, found in Mars a calling, a raison d’être. As Baron writes, “Mars gave his life purpose; it offered him the means to prove himself a success worthy of the Lowell pedigree.” The Mars believers were dreamers and misfits, all with something to prove (or, in the case of some publishers, papers to sell).

As Baron points out, the scientific method often fell by the wayside amid the hullabaloo. An acquaintance of Lowell’s bemoaned the habit Lowell had of “jumping at some general idea or theorem,” after which he “selects and bends facts to underprop that generalization.” Lowell himself once advised an assistant, “It is better never to admit that you have made a mistake.” Or later, as he sought photographic evidence of the Mars canals: “We must secure some canals to confound the skeptics” — which, today, carries eerie echoes of “Find me the votes.”

None of which should denigrate the dreams of space exploration. Nobody, after all, imagined we would actually walk on the moon. Carl Sagan, the great science popularizer and member of the Mariner 9 team that captured groundbreaking images of Mars in 1971, concluded that those canals were, as Baron puts it, “mere chimeras, an amalgam of misperceptions due to atmospheric distortion, the fallible human eye, and one man’s unconstrained imagination.” But that imagination, Sagan added, had value of its own: “Even if Lowell’s conclusions about Mars, including the existence of the fabled canals, turned out to be bankrupt, his depiction of the planet had at least this virtue: it aroused generations of eight-year-olds, myself among them, to consider the exploration of the planets as a real possibility, to wonder if we ourselves might go to Mars.”

L.A. Times contributor Vognar recently joined the staff of the Boston Globe.

The billionaire’s Mars mission claim comes despite SpaceX experiencing several failed test launches over recent months.

Elon Musk has said that he believes there is a 50 percent chance that his Mars spacecraft will make its first uncrewed voyage to the red planet at the end of 2026, just two days after the latest test-flight setback for his SpaceX firm.

Musk presented a detailed Starship development timeline in a video posted online by his Los Angeles area-based rocket company on Thursday.

The South African-born billionaire and SpaceX owner said his latest timeline for reaching Mars depended on whether the craft can complete several challenging technical feats during testing, specifically a post-launch refuelling manoeuvre in Earth’s orbit.

In a video on social media platform X, which he also owns, Musk said his Starbase industrial complex and rocket launch facility in Texas was the “gateway to Mars”.

“It is where we are going to develop the technology necessary to take humanity and civilisation and life as we know it to another planet for the first time in the four and a half billion year history of Earth,” he said.

The end of 2026 is when a slim window opens offering the closest trip between Earth and Mars, as the planets align around the sun once every two years. This shorter distance would take seven to nine months to transit by spacecraft.

The first flight to Mars would carry a simulated crew consisting of Tesla-built humanoid Optimus robots. Human crews would then follow in the second or third landings.

In the video, Musk said he believed there was a 50-50 chance SpaceX would meet the 2026 deadline for the first mission. He added that if Starship was not ready by that time, SpaceX would wait another two years before trying again.

Musk’s announcement comes just a day after he confirmed his departure from the administration of United States President Donald Trump, following a tumultuous few months in which his various businesses – including SpaceX and electric car maker Tesla – have come under growing strain.

Musk’s unofficial role leading Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has placed him in the crosshairs, as he has faced intense criticism for overseeing what has been decried as haphazard cuts to government programmes.

Faced with plunging stock prices and shareholder concern – most notably at Tesla – Musk said this week he would scale back his government role to focus on his private ventures.

Missed deadlines

In 2016, Musk said he wanted to send an uncrewed SpaceX vehicle to Mars as early as 2018, while he was targeting 2024 to launch the first crewed mission there.

But the mercurial entrepreneur’s ambitions for interplanetary exploration have been beset by repeated setbacks over recent years.

Most recently, on Tuesday, Musk was due to deliver a live webcast from the company’s Starbase in Texas following a ninth test flight of Starship that evening.

But the speech was cancelled without notice after Starship spun out of control and disintegrated about 30 minutes after launch, roughly halfway through its flight path, failing to achieve some of its most important test goals.

The mega-rocket re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere earlier than planned on Wednesday after a fuel leak triggered uncontrollable spinning in space, according to the Reuters news agency.

Posting on X after the failed flight, Musk said the test produced a lot of “good data to review” as he promised a faster launch “cadence” for the next several attempts.

There was also a failed launch in January – when the craft blew up moments after liftoff, raining debris over parts of the Caribbean and forcing commercial jetliners to change course – as well as in March.

Musk, who has spent billions of dollars on Starship’s development, says the initiative is part of SpaceX’s plan to colonise Mars.

The firm is also working with US government agency NASA to return humans to the Moon in 2027 onboard Starship, more than half a century since astronauts last walked on the lunar surface in 1972.

These efforts are a stepping stone towards launching NASA astronauts to Mars sometime in the 2030s.

Skittles in the US are no longer being made with titanium dioxide, a colour additive that was banned in the European Union in 2022 over possible health risks.

Sweets giant Mars said it had stopped using the ingredient in its US Skittles portfolio at the end of last year.

The move follows years of criticism about the presence of titanium dioxide in the candy and comes as US President Donald Trump’s elevation of Robert F Kennedy Jr to lead the Department of Health and Human Services has pushed concerns about processed foods to the front of public health debates.

Mars had said in 2016 that it would stop using “all artificial colours” in its foods, citing evolving consumer preferences.

The company did not comment on whether consumers would notice any difference after the removal of the ingredient, which can be used to make food shiny or more brightly coloured.

Mars and other firms have disputed claims of health risks associated with consumption of titanium dioxide, a white pigment that is used in bakery products, sweets, cosmetics and other products such as paint.

It is allowed in many countries, including the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand.

In the US, a high-profile 2023 effort in California to ban the ingredient was defeated, but efforts in other states continue to bubble.

The White House’s Make America Healthy Again report published earlier this month also spotlighted titanium dioxide and other food additives as a key concern.

Mars, which also makes M&Ms, Snickers and Kind snack bars, did not explain why it had made the decision, which was first reported by Bloomberg.

The company did not respond when asked whether the change would apply to Skittles sold outside the US.

“Our commitment to quality is what has enabled Mars to be enjoyed by consumers for over a century, and nothing is more important than the safety of our products,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

“All our products are safe to enjoy and meet the high standards and applicable regulations set by food safety authorities around the world, and that’s something we will never compromise on.”

Melanie Benesh is vice president of government affairs at the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a Washington-based activist organisation focused on chemicals that has raised concerns about titanium dioxide.

She credited state-level efforts, rather than federal action, with putting pressure on companies such as Mars to change their recipes.

She pointed out that the EWG had yet to receive a response to the petition it filed in 2023 asking regulators at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ban titanium dioxide.

“The FDA has said a lot of things about food additives but we have not seen them take any enforceable actions yet,” she said. “What has unquestionably made a difference is all of the action at the state level.”

Skittles, which have ranked among the world’s most popular chewy candies, were invented in the UK.

They have been made in the US since 1981. Mars’ Wrigley division bought the brand in 2009.

In 2022, the company faced a class-action lawsuit over titanium dioxide in Skittles, which was dismissed.

EVEN though humans have never set foot on Mars, we’ve still got plenty of photos of the red planet.

And if you went by those pics alone, you’d think the Martian surface was littered with mysterious faces, swarms of monstrous spiders, and even alien beings.

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Of course, Mars is just a barren wasteland – only occupied by camera-toting rovers shipped there from Earth.

So why do we see all of these strange faces and figures on Mars?

Well it’s a phenomenon known as pareidolia, which is a human tendency to see patterns when there isn’t one – and it’s often to blame for those bizarre sightings on the red planet.

Here are some of the creepiest “sightings” from our space neighbour, Mars.

CYDONIA ‘FACE ON MARS’

One of the most iconic Martian faces is from the Cydonia region.

The feature was first captured in 1976, revealing a strikingly humanlike formation on the Martian surface.

Early images of the region were snapped by Viking 1 and Viking 2, a pair of Nasa orbiters tasked with imaging Mars.

It’s since been captured in several later photographs, clearly exposing it as an optical illusion.

Sadly it’s not a giant alien face at all – but a massive 1.2-mile-long Cydonian mesa.

The region is known for its flat-topped mesas.

BEAR WE GO

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Forget Stonehenge – what about a giant bear circle?

That’s what was seemingly snapped by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on December 12, 2022.

It looks like the face of an enormous grizzly, but it’s actually just a weird hill, as Nasa explains: “A V-shaped collapse structure makes the nose, two craters form the eyes, and a circular fracture pattern shapes the head.

“The circular fracture pattern might be due to the settling of a deposit over a buried impact crater.”

LEG IT!

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Several images of what look like terrifyingly large spiders have been captured on Mars.

The first was caught by the European Space Agency‘s (ESA) ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter in October 2020, and the second was picked up by Nasa’s MRO in May 2018.

Thankfully they’re not spiders at all – but a strange phenomenon called “araneiform terrain”.

“This is an active seasonal process not seen on Earth,” Nasa explained.

“Like dry ice on Earth, the carbon dioxide ice on Mars sublimates as it warms (changes from solid to gas) and the gas becomes trapped below the surface.

“Over time the trapped carbon dioxide gas builds in pressure and is eventually strong enough to break through the ice as a jet that erupts dust.

“The gas is released into the atmosphere and darker dust may be deposited around the vent or transported by winds to produce streaks.

“The loss of the sublimated carbon dioxide leaves behind these spider-like features etched into the surface.”

LIVING ON A PRAYER

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In 2007, Nasa’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit captured what appeared to be a person kneeling in prayer.

It made headlines around the world when the image was released in early 2008.

The eerie scene was part of a vast panorama of Martian hills taken during the closing months of Spirit’s mission.

Of course, all we’re actually seeing is an interesting rock, and a trick of the light.

GHANDI’S MARTIAN TWIN

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Pictures from Europe‘s Mars Express probe appear to have captured a Ghandi lookalike on Mars.

The Mars Orbiter has been used to pack out the Google Mars project with satellite-style snaps of the red planet.

And in 2011, Italian space fan Matteo Lanneo thought he spotted Ghandi’s likeness on the surface.

Of course, it’s just another classic example of pareidolia, where we’re simply seeing things that aren’t really there.

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MARTIAN DOORWAY

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In mid-2022, Nasa captured what appeared to be a “doorway” into a mound of rock nicknamed ‘East Cliffs’.

The picture of the mound on Mount Sharp was snapped by Nasa’s Curiosity Rover.

Sadly it’s not really a doorway, as Nasa explains: “The mound, on Mount Sharp, has a number of naturally occurring open fractures – including one roughly 12 inches (30 centimeters) tall and 16 inches (40 centimeters) wide, similar in size to a dog door.

“These kinds of open fractures are common in bedrock, both on Earth and on Mars.”

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