Motley Crue: Number Four With a Mullet

Hope you didn't throw away the spandex and hairspray. Motley Crue, the consummate '80s hair metal band, is back with a hit album, the wonderfully titled, "Generation Swine." For the week ending June 29, "Swine" sold 81,000 copies, making it the nation's No. 4 album, according to SoundScan. The top five showing is mighty impressive for an act -- and a genre, for that matter -- that's been dormant for nearly a decade. But the record's true test of popularity will come in the next few weeks, assuming all the hardcore Crue fans ran out and bought the record its first week in stores.

For the most part, it was a quiet sales week, with the biggest news coming from the Insane Clown Posse, a group that sold 18,000 records despite the fact that its album was supposed to have been pulled from record stores shelves.

The Spice Girls' "Spice regained the No. 1 spot (with sales of 123,000 copies). It was followed by Hanson's "Middle of Nowhere" (98,000); Tim McGraw's "Everywhere" (90,000); "Generation Swine"; the soundtrack to "Batman & Robin" (80,000); Bob Carlisle's "Butterfly Kisses" (79,000); "God's Property" (73,400); the Wu-Tang Clan's "Wu-Tang Forever" (70,000); the Wallflowers' "Bringing Down the Horse" (68,000); and Jewel's "Pieces of You" (63,000). The only other top 20 debut was "Carnival," the solo album from the Fugees' Wyclef Jean, which sold 52,000 copies to come in at No. 16.

But the week's real story was down at No. 63, in the form of the Insane Clown Posse's "The Great Milenko." The Walt Disney Co.-owned Hollywood Records pulled the white rap duo's album from stores on June 24, claiming it contained inappropriate lyrics. But "The Great Milenko" still managed to sell 18,000 copies. When a label requests returns on a record that has already been shipped to retail, as "Milenko" had been," stores have the option to comply or not to. Obviously, most retailers hung onto their copies of the album.

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  MUSIC 100 Greatest Debut Albums
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  MOVIES 'Great Gatsby' Is a Crushing Disappointment
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  TV Why You Should Watch 'Happy Endings'
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  POLITICS No Price Big Banks Can't Fix

Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

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