Even in a career built on excess, one image of Tommy Lee still feels unreal: hanging upside down, mid-solo, stranded in mid-air on a drum rollercoaster while Motley Crue played what was billed as their last ever show.
The night Motley Crue said goodbye
Motley Crue spent two years advertising The Final Tour as exactly that – a last lap around the globe, locked in by a highly publicized “Cessation of Touring” agreement that swore they would never hit the road again after 2015. For a band born on the Sunset Strip and powered by scandal, it was a surprisingly grown up promise.
The story ended where it started: Los Angeles. On New Year’s Eve at the Staples Center, the Crue closed a three night hometown stand with a sold out blowout full of fire cannons, Nikki Sixx’s flamethrower bass, and enough pyro to singe eyebrows in the cheap seats. The set leaned heavily on the glory years – “Girls, Girls, Girls,” “Dr. Feelgood,” “Kickstart My Heart” – before a teary “Home Sweet Home” finale on a small stage in the middle of the arena.
For fans raised on the Sunset Strip era, it felt like closing a book. Motley Crue had gone from hungry club band to global glam-metal juggernaut, dragging the sound and sleaze of early 80s Los Angeles into arenas worldwide. Nikki Sixx had written the soundtrack to that chaos, surviving addiction, literal clinical death and rebirth in the process. This was supposed to be the big full stop.
Instead, the most unforgettable moment of the night was a mistake.
Enter the Cruecifly – Tommy Lee’s flying drum beast
Tommy Lee has never been content to sit still behind a kit. Through the 80s and 90s his drum rigs escalated from tilting risers to full cages that spun him head over heels above the crowd, turning the obligatory arena-drum-solo into a circus stunt.
In the 2010s he took the idea nuclear. First came the 360 degree “Loop” coaster, a circular track that let him rotate completely around, sometimes with a fan strapped in beside him. Then, for The Final Tour, he unveiled the monster: the Cruecifly.
The Cruecifly was less a riser and more a steel creature. Two long truss runs – roughly 150 to 200 feet of track – started at the main stage and arced all the way to a landing platform near front of house, high over the arena floor. Lee’s kit was welded to a motorized platform that crawled along the track, rotating 360 degrees on its axis as it climbed to around 55 to 60 feet above the stage.
From Lee’s point of view it felt like drumming inside a rollercoaster. His description of playing upside down is all about fighting gravity, with feet trying to leave the pedals and arms battling every stroke. The whole rig was so massive that some venues literally could not support it structurally; on those nights, the Cruecifly had to stay in the truck.
Technically, it was intricate engineering: redundant attachments on every major drum, welded plates on the carriage, carefully choreographed lighting along the track to make it feel like an airport runway burning overhead. Artistically, it was pure Tommy Lee – a thrill ride strapped to a drum solo.
The malfunction heard round the world
Halfway through his solo on December 31, 2015, the machine that was never supposed to fail did exactly that.
Lee launched into his Cruecifly showcase, riding the platform off the main stage and out over the crowd as the kit spun and the track climbed toward the rafters. Then, somewhere over the floor at Staples Center, the rig shuddered and stopped with brutal comic timing, leaving the drummer hanging upside down, harnessed to a kit that would not budge.
Cell phone videos show exactly what you would hope from Tommy Lee in that moment. Upside down, blood rushing to his head, he kills the solo and starts talking to the crowd. “Looks like the roller coaster is broken. Well, forget the roller coaster,” he spits, punctuating the rant with unprintable language and mock disbelief that this would happen on the final night of the final tour. It is part comedy, part genuine frustration, and completely rock and roll.
Stagehands climbed the structure to manually right the platform and inch it back along the track. At one point the Cruecifly lurches, jams again, and Lee is forced to unstrap and carefully climb down the side of the framework to the arena floor, still joking with the crowd as he goes. ABC7’s news report reduced it to a “mechanical mishap,” but from the floor it looked like a live action Spinal Tap gag.
Even the band leaned into the symbolism. In their official recap a few days later, Motley Crue described the Cruecifly’s “technical hiccup” as if the coaster itself had decided to retire along with them.
Trapped on film: The End
The LA run was being filmed over multiple nights for a concert movie and documentary, later released as “The End – Live in Los Angeles.” Theoretically, editors could have swapped in clean Cruecifly footage from one of the other shows, where everything worked flawlessly.
They did not. Lee insisted the breakdown stay in. In later interviews he framed it as classic Murphy’s Law and perfectly in character for Motley Crue: of course the big stunt failed on the last night. The Blu ray captures the absurdity – a gravity defying drum solo that literally goes nowhere, and a drummer talking his way through a mechanical disaster without losing the crowd.
In an era when so many “live” films are scrubbed and polished within an inch of their lives, leaving the malfunction in may be the most punk decision on the entire disc.
Why Tommy’s mid-air nightmare matters
On paper, the Cruecifly was another escalation in a long arms race of stage production: more track, more fire, more spectacle. Nikki’s flamethrower bass, giant burning pentagram, confetti storms the size of snow squalls – the final tour felt like Vegas on wheels.
But the malfunction turned all that engineering into something more interesting. For a few minutes, the most high tech piece of the show broke in front of tens of thousands of people, and the only thing left keeping it entertaining was a drummer and his personality. No click track, no safety net, just Tommy Lee hanging like a bat and working the room.
It also underlined how far arena drumming had come. Lee was not just a guy bashing acoustic tubs; by this point he was a hybrid pioneer, layering triggers and electronic sounds under his acoustic hits to keep the drums massive in giant rooms. The Cruecifly simply extended that philosophy visually – if the sound had to be bigger than life, why not the physical performance too?
A farewell that refused to stay dead
At the time, fans believed this was it. The band, the press releases and that famous legal document all said Motley Crue would never tour after The Final Tour wrapped. For a while, they stuck to it.
Then the Netflix adaptation of “The Dirt” landed, a new wave of younger fans discovered the band, and the supposedly unbreakable contract was ceremonially blown up. By 2022, Motley Crue were back in stadiums with Def Leppard, Poison and Joan Jett, kicking off a massive reunion trek that has since gone global.
So no, that New Year’s Eve show did not turn out to be their last stand. Yet the image of Tommy Lee stranded on his steel beast still feels like the end of a particular era – the moment when the original four wrapped up their first life cycle with the most ridiculous stunt failure possible.
What drummers can steal from Tommy Lee’s rollercoaster ride
1. Showmanship is part of your sound
Lee’s various flying kits were not just ego toys; they were extensions of his playing. From the early tilting risers and hamster ball cages to the 360 Loop and finally the Cruecifly, each design asked a simple question: how do you let the audience actually see the drummer work?
Even when stuck, he stayed a performer first – talking, joking, holding the room. If your band is aiming for big stages, your visual presence behind the kit matters almost as much as your ghost notes.
2. Design the stunt around the groove
The Cruecifly did not just spin for the sake of it. The ride up the track was paced so the rotation peaks synced with musical hits and light cues, turning the solo into a choreographed mini show within the show. Drummers planning anything theatrical – from risers to lighted sticks – should work backwards from the song, not from the gadget.
3. Respect physics – and redundancy
There is a reason only a handful of arenas ever saw the Cruecifly: hanging several tons of steel and drums over thousands of people is a structural and insurance nightmare. Lee publicly admitted that some roofs simply could not safely carry the rig, so he had to leave it off certain dates.
Even with careful planning, wireless interference apparently tripped the coaster’s safety systems on that final night and shut the whole thing down mid-ride. If you are dreaming up any mechanical trick for your own show, build in more fail safes than you think you need, and rehearse what you will do when it stops working.
4. You do not need 60 feet of steel to be unforgettable
Most drummers will never have a multimillion dollar coaster following them to every gig. You do not need one. What you can borrow from Tommy Lee is the principle behind it: commit to a visual identity, embrace risk, and make the drummer impossible to ignore.
Hybrid kits with a few well placed pads, smart use of triggers to fatten up your sound, creative lighting around the riser, a camera at your feet feeding to a cheap projector – all of that is attainable and inspired by the same mindset that birthed the Cruecifly.
Closing thoughts: The last great arena rock magic trick
Watch the footage again and it is hard not to laugh. The self proclaimed kings of excess build a flying drum coaster for their farewell tour, and on the final night it strands the drummer upside down in front of the world. You could not script a more perfect heavy rock punchline.
Yet that is exactly why the moment sticks. For a brief, ridiculous stretch of time, the machinery failed and the myth of Motley Crue rested entirely on a guy in a harness, talking trash while the crew scrambled up a steel spine above a hometown crowd. It was dangerous, hilarious and strangely human.
If the 80s gave us the dream of rock as a runaway rollercoaster, Tommy Lee’s mid-air stall at Staples Center was the moment the ride jerked to a stop and everyone looked around and laughed. Then, of course, the band climbed down, lit more fireworks, and kept playing. That is Mötley Crüe in a single scene.
You can watch the moment the Cruecifly failed in 2015 below:
