K.K. Downing Ex-Judas Preist Guitarist Sides with Mick Mars on Motley Crue Lawsuit

Mick Mars has found another supporter in his lawsuit against Motley Crue: former Judas Priest guitarist K.K. Downing.

Last week Mars filed suit against Nikki Sixx, Tommy Lee, and Vince Neil, after claiming the band is intentionally cutting him off financially and trying to fully remove him from the band since announcing his retirement, last October, due to his decades-long battle with ankylosing spondylitis. Mars claimed the band tried to force him to sign a severance agreement that would remove him from all current and future Motley Crue businesses.

Downing, who quit Judas Priest in 2011 shortly before they launched their Epitaph World Tour (which at the time was supposed to be their final tour), said he understands Mars’ frustrations. “I do sympathize with Mick because I’m going through exactly the same thing,” he stated in an interview. “And it’s pretty unsavory, to say the least. After spending a lifetime building the band’s name, reputation, popularity, and value, in particular brand name, it should be all right for people to retire, especially through illness.”

Downing said that at the time of the Epitaph World Tour, he stated that he was “having pressure put on me to write for an EP to support that tour, which I absolutely was not gonna be any part of. … I certainly didn’t want to finish my career with an EP. So, I threw the towel in and sent a retirement letter in.”

at the time Downing was under the impression that Epitaph World Tour was meant to be the band’s last.  “So essentially my decision was just not to do the final tour of the band. Of course, I didn’t know that the band would continue, at that time, right up until today,” he said. “Otherwise things and decisions may well have been different. But, as I said, I sympathize with Mick because the circumstances between the two of us seem to be pretty much… well, identical.”

Downing further claimed that frontman Rob Halford, bassist Ian Hill, and guitarist Glenn Tipton “ganged together” and kicked Downing off as a director of Judas Priest Music Limited, which controls the band’s assets. (Which is similar to what Mars is accusing his bandmates of doing.)

The guitarist urged other musicians to proactively shield themselves from band legal drama. “I think to safeguard any other people that may be coming around to being in this position that may well be acquaintances of mine or even good friends of mine, I wouldn’t like them to be in the same position,” he said. “So, safeguards need to be put in place to avoid even the thought of litigation. But as for me and Mick, it seems that’s our only route.”