Mötley Crüe — Wild Side

JUL 01 1987 · 12:00

Mötley Crüe — Wild Side (1987) Director: Wayne Isham Era: Glam Metal / Hair Metal Peak Era (1987) - Mid-period MTV dominance; Sunset Strip hedonism at commercial apex; arena rock spectacle as primary music video grammar High-tier archival specimen of the 1987 MTV glam metal apex. Confirmed Wayne Isham direction, documented concert locations, and direct production testimony (via The Heroin Diaries) make this an unusually well-sourced artifact. The visible-crew aesthetic, gyroscopic drum-kit footage, and warm tungsten-saturated cinematography are irreplaceable primary documents of late-80s arena rock visual culture and the Girls, Girls, Girls tour specifically. Context: Released in August 1987 as the second single from the quadruple-platinum album Girls, Girls, Girls, 'Wild Side' arrived at the absolute commercial zenith of the Sunset Strip glam metal scene. The video's raw, all-access concert aesthetic — cameras scrambling openly on stage, no narrative conceit, pure spectacle — embodied the era's ethos of hedonistic excess and rock-star untouchability. The song's lyrical subversion of the Lord's Prayer and its setting in sold-out arenas represented the moment when the Sunset Strip's underground debauchery had fully metastasized into mainstream American entertainment. The warm, low-contrast, smoke-filled visual palette is a direct record of late-80s arena rock production design. Director notes: Confirmed multi-source: IMDb (tt7013384), IMVDb, FilmAffinity, Songfacts, and Ultimate Classic Rock all credit Wayne Isham as director. The video was shot at Market Square Arena in Indianapolis, Indiana (with additional footage from the Omni in Atlanta, Georgia) during the Girls, Girls, Girls tour. Isham deliberately placed cameras everywhere on stage and made no effort to hide the roving crew, per his stated creative philosophy of avoiding 'the same old' approach. This was part of an ongoing collaborative relationship — Isham had previously directed Mötley Crüe's 'Smokin' in the Boys Room' and 'Home Sweet Home.' The video is notable for its footage of Tommy Lee's gyroscopic rotating drum kit. Isham's quote about the production — 'we decided to do a really mental over-the-top live video' — is documented in Nikki Sixx's 2007 memoir The Heroin Diaries and cited by Ultimate Classic Rock.