Joe: Where you headed? Tommy: Back home, LA. My son is getting married. Joe: Oh, congratulations. Tommy: Thanks. Thanks. Which is such a trip, dude. He's 29 and he's getting married and I've been kind of tripping out on that. Like, dude, where the hell did that time go?
He's been seeing this girl for seven years. I'm so proud that he did exactly the opposite of his dad. He used some patience and some love and mixed it all around and put some time in there β your survival rate is going to be way better. Way better.
Joe: And your happiness rate. I think if you're a kid and your dad is Tommy Lee and you've had such a crazy chaotic life, he's probably like, slow down, give me a yard and a picket fence. Tommy: Totally. That's why in the drift of everything, I'm really surprised and really happy he just pumped the brakes. Joe: Especially in LA with a rockstar dad β there's so many bad influences. It's so easy to ruin your life if you're in the wrong circles. LA is the hub of that.
I know people that are good people that have fallen down that rabbit hole. They're not bad people. They're not even stupid, man. They just made a bad decision for whatever reason and next thing you know, they're all strung out.
Tommy: A ton of it's a blur where you have to have somebody else remind you. You're like, "Oh, that's right. I totally forgot we did that." About crazy times. I still every day do the pinch test β is this actually real? Is this actually happening?
No. I'm trying to think of any sort of a mentor kind of dude on how to survive this shit. There was no one to pull Keith Richards aside and say, "Hey man, how'd you do this?"
Instead of mentors, Tommy put his sons to work on tour. "I put him to work out on tour, just so we could hang out and spend time. Get him a radio. All of a sudden, one of my sons is part of the lighting crew helping those guys."
My other son is like, all he wants to know about is, "Dad, I want to be in charge of all the after show passes. I'll go out while you're playing and I'm going to hit all the chicks." And my son is out there just... doing that.
I just released a song called Stupid World a couple weeks ago and that's exactly what it's about. We are at just epic stupid proportions where you're just like, not a day goes by where I'm like, that's ridiculous. How stupid can we get?
Joe: You live in LA, which is one of the stupidest places on earth. Tommy: Dude, I know. It's insane. And I'm doing the same thing too. Like, why do I live here? I love it there, but in the back of my head is always why. Joe: Look, it's one of the most beautiful places on earth. The weather's β most of the people are very friendly. It's only a percentage of the people that suck.
It's slowly becoming a new Detroit. The film business has completely dried up. Television completely dried up. Late night TV, it's dried up, man. And that was fueling a giant part of what made LA special. Nobody has to be there anymore. And they make it intolerable. They punish you with taxes, regulations, they make everything very difficult to conduct business.
People have left LA, but it doesn't matter. You could lose five million people and LA is still too big. If you want to go to Orange County at 4:00 or shoot yourself, it's a real decision. And don't even think about hitting the 405.
Tommy toured with Def Leppard for 2.5 years β a global stadium run. Then, for the first time since 2016, he took a full year off (2024-2025) to just sit at home.
The grass is always greener on the other side. When you're on tour, you're like, "I want to be home in my own bed." Then you're home too long and you're like, "I want to get out and play." We go back out mid-July 2026, and I'm f***ing pumped.
Your fan has kids, and now those kids are on their dad's shoulders singing "Shout at the Devil." A 10-year-old kid air-drumming in the crowd β it gives me chills. Watching an entire generation experience this fresh, that is the reward you can only get from time. That's why it never gets old.
The more AI and digital music we get, the more people are going to want the live experience. People crave the raw, "I'm alive" feeling. It's all about the experience, man. Everything is about the experience.
Joe: He's still here, bro. I saw them at Coachella / Circuit of the Americas a couple years back. They were incredible, man. Tommy: Insane. Mick is like 80, moving around and dancing and singing. Insane, dude.
MΓΆtley CrΓΌe gets to open for the Rolling Stones on Halloween in Toronto. After our set the tour manager comes in: "Mick, Ronnie, Keith would like to see you." I head over there β 20 minutes before they go on. Keith and Ronnie were walking on their lips, falling over with their guitars. I'm like, there's no way they're playing. Lights go out, boom β they start with "Start Me Up." Like a switch flipped. Those guys were money. 100% rocking out.
Tommy on Keith's tax exile joke: Keith used to say, "When I die, tell them I self-exiled because of taxes." Back when the UK was taking 90%+, the Stones ran off to Belgium and the South of France to record. Rockstars figuring out geographic arbitrage before it had a name.