Vince Neil biography

After hours of constant drinking and drug use, Neil and Razzle decided to make a run to a local liquor store. Neil, driving drunk, lost control of his car and veered into oncoming traffic. Two passengers in the oncoming car he smashed into suffered serious brain damage. Razzle Dingley was killed. The events of that night continue to haunt Vince Neil, both privately and publicly. At the time of his arrest after the accident, Neil's blood alcohol level was 0.17,

far above the California legal limit at the time of 0.10. The singer faced charges of vehicular manslaughter and driving under the influence. In July 1986, he received a relatively light sentence of 30 days in jail, five years probation, and 200 hours of community service. He also paid $2.6 million in damages to the victims' families. Neil was out of jail in fifteen days on good behavior and spent the rest of his sentence in rehab.

In 1985, with Neil's legal case still pending, Mötley Crüereleased a new album, Theatre of Pain, dedicating it to the memory of Razzle Dingley. In the same year, Neil divorced Beth Lynn and met a woman named Sharise Ruddell at one of his "Naughtie Nightie" parties, in which he would invite female mud wrestlers over to wrestle in his house to entertain guests. Sharise came as a wrestler and eventually became Neil's wife and mother to his daughter, Skylar, before the pair divorced in 1993.

Following his brief jail term, Neil and the Crüe released the widely popular Girls, Girls, Girls set in 1987. Shortly after the album was released, Nikki Sixx overdosed on heroin. Although he was legally dead for several minutes, Sixx miraculously revived and regained full consciousness. After that brush with death, the entire band went into rehab and then released their biggest album ever, Dr. Feelgood, in 1989.

Breaking Up the Band

Vince Neil went solo in 1992 after a series of heavily publicized disagreements with his band mates, later saying that he "never really had a voice" when it came to Mötley Crüe. Lawsuits followed, and then came 1993's Exposed, Neil's first solo album. In Vince Neil's telling, the true story of Mötley Crüe's breakup will never be fully revealed because everyone involved has a different version of what happened. "We're still family. We still, basically, love each other. It was a business decision for me. When I was — depending on how you look at it — fired or I quit the band, I was a part of Mötley Crüe Inc. And I chose not to come back into that. I looked at myself as a free agent on a football team. I didn't have to be worried about any corporate decisions. All I had to do was show up and sing." Neil followed Exposed with Carved in Stone, but the album's production was put on hold as his only daughter, Skylar, fell seriously ill with stomach cancer. Skylar died tragically at age four in 1995 and Vince Neil set up the Skylar Neil Memorial Fund in her honor, donating millions of dollars to children's cancer research.

By the time 1997 rolled around, both Vince Neil and Mötley Crüe were losing money.