Reviews list for Mötley Crüe - Dr. Feelgood (1989)

Notwithstanding that it is a non-metal release (and complete commercial sellout material to boot), Dr Feelgood was one the first vinyl records I owned.  A shopping trip with my grandparents wound up with me returning home with this and a copy of Hot in the Shade by Kiss under my arm.  How times have changed!  To pour further cold water on my extreme metal head credentials, this record still stands up to this day, some 30 years after it’s release, as being one the best examples of cock-rock that ever saw the light of day.

Dr Feelgood was brash, bold and unashamed in 1989 and it has carried that weight all the way through to 2022 as far as I am concerned.  I can recite the album track by track in my head, such was it’s infectious nature and also in no small part due to how much I have played this record over the years.  Nothing else from Vince and co has ever stuck with me and as the eighties fell into history it was this album that acted as my one time gateway album into a band whose discography has otherwise remained alien to me.  From the grandiose opening and title track, through to the catchy tropes of Kickstart My Heart and the cheesy as fuck Without You, this album just had mass appeal madness written all over it.

Sounding every bit as sleazy as that artwork suggests, Dr Feelgood delivers exactly what it says it will from the very off and rarely slips away into anything any less captivating.  Whether you view it as guilty pleasure or not (no guilt here folks) the pure nostalgia this album evokes in me is enough to get it 3 stars as a minimum, but there really is so much more than that on offer here and I continue to play this with a smile on my face some three decades after I first heard it.