Industry Source: Bob Rock Will Be MÖTLEY CRÜE’s “Ghost Bassist” On Upcoming Studio Album (UPDATED)

(April 23, 2023) Once Mick Mars let the cat out of the bag that MÖTLEY CRÜE was basically pulling off a Milli Vanilli with their comeback, Nikki Sixx became hellbent on proving he could accept the challenge of making a new Crue studio album without Mars to prove to everyone he really does have control of the band and is not driving it into ‘financial ruin’ as Mars claims in his lawsuit. That all being said, word is that Sixx hired producer Bob Rock partially due to his ability to also perform on the bass in the studio.

Rock playing for the Crue as their “ghost bassist” is a given. Who else is going to play the parts? Nikki Sixx can’t do it. He even chickened out of the “Jam off” challenge issued by Carmine Appice. The fact is that Sixx has never been able to play the bass well enough to actually perform on the instrument for a Crue studio album, according to an industry insider. Even late QUIET RIOT singer Kevin Dubrow stated right before he passed away that Sixx could not play the bass to save his own life.

As the story goes, Sixx knows he needs Rock to secretly pull double duty.

During an interview with Gibson, Rock looked back on playing bass for METALLICA between 2001 and 2003. Bob played the bass tracks for his final collaboration with the band, 2003’s “St. Anger,” while also jamming a handful of live shows.

Asked on how he ended up as METALLICA’s bassist, the producer replied (transcribed by UG):

“When we did the ‘Mission Impossible’ song ‘I Disappear’ [in 2000], Jason [Newsted, bass] didn’t show up to pre-production, so I played bass just so we can rehearse and get it.

“So, when Jason – whatever happened, that happened – they said, ‘We can’t get somebody, we haven’t even started, can you just play bass while we figure out what we’re doing?’.

“That’s how it happened, by accident. I mean, I’m a guitar player, bass player anyway, you just play the riff, basically, for the most part. I thought it was easy, but it fucking ain’t.”

Nikki Sixx Says New MÖTLEY CRÜE Album Will Be “More Personal” & Have “Huge Walls Of Guitars”

Another rumor going around has ex-CREED singer Scott Stapp performing as “ghost vocalist” on the new Crue album, believe it or not. Vince Neil is in the worst shape of his career and needs to lip-sync at concerts because his voice is so badly trashed from years of partying excessively.

Distractify takes us further down the rabbit hole of the fake music industry:

“Although we continue to lower our bar for pop stars, the one thing we expect is that they at least sing on their own records. Unfortunately, it appears a few singers can’t even do that. From background vocalists singing half the record to choruses being sung by other people, (there are many times) your faves’ vocals were allegedly not 100 percent their own.”

 Jennifer Lopez is credited as singing the song “Play” but in truth, she sings very little actually. The fact is the entire chorus is actually sung by Christina Milian, who wrote the song before she was famous. After Christina found her own fame with “AM to PM,” many fans noticed that the voice in “Play” sounded an awful lot like Christina’s. “Oh yeah, I sing on the chorus,” Christina admitted in 2016. “But I think that’s a known thing.” It’s true that Christina is credited as a background vocalist on the track, but in the music video and in performances, Jennifer mimes to Christina’s vocals.

***UPDATED 9/4/2023: Scott Stapp has secretly cut vocals for the new Crue album with the help of AI technology, allowing producer Bob Rock to recreate Neil’s voice by using vocal samples from earlier Crue albums when Neil’s voice was younger and in pristine shape. This process is called voice cloning.

Voice cloning is a technology that allows you to create a computer-generated version of a person’s voice that sounds like the original speaker. This can be done by training a machine learning model on a large dataset of audio recordings of the person’s voice to create an AI version of Vince Neil’s voice. The model can then synthesize new audio (using another singer to produce the vocals that can hit the full range needed) yet it sounds like the first person that was voice cloned.