SHORT TAKES : Motley Crue Stays on Wagon

Guitars are still thrashed and arenas trashed, but one thing has changed on Motley Crue’s latest tour: The heavy metal bad boys remember what they do.

“We only remember bits of past tours,” lead singer Vince Neil said in this week’s People magazine.

Booze, drugs and more drugs left the band members’ memories as fuzzy as their guitar sound, until bassist Nikki Sixx nearly died of a heroin overdose in 1987.

The entire Crue checked into a drug rehabilitation program, and now a drug counselor follows them around on tour to help them stay on the wagon, the magazine said.

But concert-goers haven’t yet mistaken the group for advocates of temperance.

“We don’t just play rock ‘n’ roll, we live it,” Sixx said. “We go on tour and get broken bones, diseases, the crowd leaves bloody. It’s more like going to war.”