At 58 years old, Tommy Lee may have evolved from his wild ways but he's still rocking out. Ahead of the release of his first solo album in 15 years, titled Andro, ET's Kevin Frazier got an exclusive look at the Mötley Crüe drummer's Calabasas, California, recording studio.
"[I've created] tons of stuff here. We did The Smashing Pumpkins record here, did some Mötley stuff here, Fleetwood Mac and Steven Tyler have done stuff here. A lot of people have worked in here," Lee said of his musical space. "I pinch myself probably on a daily basis."
Lee doesn't have a routine when it comes to creating new music, but he sure has a lot of fun. "I wish I had some sort of method to the madness because it's never really the same," he admits, explaining that creativity comes to him in many ways. "I'll have an idea, sometimes it comes with the drum beat, sometimes it's a melody and I'll just sing it in my phone and then come down here and work it out, or jump on the piano or synthesizer. It's always different."
As for his new album, he calls it a "hybrid" of sounds.
"It is a culmination of a bunch of different flavors that I love. There's some super heavy stuff on it that people would typically think from my background. There's also some EDM sounding stuff on there…There's some funky stuff," he shares. "I covered a Prince song on there. It's called 'When You Were Mine,' which is mind-blowing."
"I separated all the female energy tracks and I separated all the male energy tracks, and that's where the title came from. Andro, which is [an] abbreviation for androgyny," he adds. "There's something for everybody on the record."
Lee also has a music video for his track, "Caviar on a Paper Plate," featuring Mickey Avalon which will also drop on Friday. "The video's ridiculous, it's fun," he teases.
Lee's wife, Brittany Furlan Lee, couldn't have been more excited for his new project to come out -- and covered his Rolls-Royce with his album cover. The surprise, which they shared on TikTok, didn't go over too well, but he still got a laugh out of it.
"She wanted to surprise me and I look and my Rolls is half pink, like, bright pink, and blue and it's got my name on it, the album artwork and stuff and I’m like, 'Oh my god, what have you done?' It freaked me out," he admits. "At first I wasn't that upset because I thought, 'Oh, that's somebody else's car or something.' I didn't know it was mine."
"I realized it was just wrapped and it was for a video," he adds. "I was like, 'Oh my god! Thank you, thank you, thank you.'"
But moments like that make Lee realize that his wife is the perfect partner.
"I think everybody's a little crazy and at the end of the day, how much crazy can you deal with, right? I can deal with that amount of crazy," Lee expresses. "She's got super good crazy, like, I can totally deal with that. I spend a lot of time where my cheeks hurt because we laugh a lot. I think that's priceless and we have something really special together. So she's a good crazy."
Lee's Andro drops Friday, Oct. 16.
RELATED CONTENT:
