POP MUSIC : Pop Eye : Tommy Lee’s in the Mood for Mayhem

So you think you’ve seen everything there is to see of Tommy Lee? No, not the bootlegged movies of him and Pamela Anderson. We mean his musical talents.

What could the former Motley Crue drummer do but more of the same ol’ metal, dude? Well, Lee’s got a few surprises tucked away with Methods of Mayhem, a new project that was signed to MCA Records recently after a big bidding war.

Rather than hair-band circa 1985, his new music--created in partnership with Tim Murray, a.k.a. TiLo--rocks somewhere between Limp Bizkit and the hardest Nine Inch Nails tracks, with Lee rapping convincingly. Bizkit’s Fred Durst, in fact, guests on the upcoming album, as do hip-hop stars Snoop Dogg and Lil’ Kim and funk godfather George Clinton.

Lee says he couldn’t take the thought of playing the same old Crue hits over and over.

“I needed to get away,” he says, noting that his old band was at best indulgent about his new musical directions. “I even got [grief] from management--’Yeah, you can do the solo album, but we’ve got this tour to worry about.’ But I couldn’t fake it anymore.”

The revelation came last spring during Lee’s four months in jail after pleading no contest to charges that he kicked Anderson--who then filed for a divorce that was completed, though the two are now back together. He left the Crue after a greatest-hits tour last fall.

“I did a lot of reading and a lot of thinking,” Lee says of his time in the cooler. “And I realized, ‘Dude, you’re in jail for a reason.’ That’s when it came to me--I wanted to do something fresh. [With the Crue] we came, we saw, we kicked the world in the ass. It’s never going to be like that again [for the band]. But they kept thinking it was. I could have continued touring with them and making a lot of money. But it really shows who you are when you jump ship on the gravy train.”

On the M.O.M. album, which is due Nov. 9, Lee addresses autobiographical matters, including the bootleg video of him and Anderson in action. In the video for the first single, “Naked,” it’s not just he and Anderson sans clothes, but everyone on TV--news anchors, athletes, sitcom characters, the works. He hopes the humor will undercut press and public sensationalism.

“On a lot of the songs I’ll take a few seconds and make it intensely personal,” he says. “But then I’ll make fun of it and go on. I don’t want it all to be personal.”

THE 435TH BEATLE: Imagine being asked to edit the Bible, with the Pope and his cardinals looking over your shoulder. Peter Cobbin, senior recording engineer at London’s famed Abbey Road Studios, was given a pop-music equivalent of that job--remixing and remastering the Beatles music used in the animated movie “Yellow Submarine” for the current reissue of the film and the new “song track” collection, which is due in record stores Tuesday.

That made him the first person other than George Martin, original engineer Geoff Emerick or an actual Beatle to tamper with original Beatles tracks.

“I had to do two things,” says Cobbin, 37, who’s worked at the studio for four years. “I had to make it sound the same as the original ‘60s mixes. And I had to make it sound different.”

In other words, his task was to clean, brighten and sharpen the sounds, but in a way so that no one would really notice any changes.

And while Martin, who oversaw the mixing of vaults tracks for the “Anthology” series, sat this project out, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr all did indeed look over Cobbin’s shoulder at times.

“They were extremely enthusiastic about what they heard,” Cobbin says. “There were actually no real changes that they wanted made. But for me it was lovely to hear them enjoy their own music in a way. I don’t suppose for one minute that they sit around all day and listen to Beatles tracks. But they showed a lot of interest in these tracks--’How’d we do that?’ and such.”

PECK OF PEPPERS: Let’s see, what’s on auction? Red Hot Chili Peppers items. . . . A poster, a rare CD single for about four bucks. Ah, this looks interesting--two double CD-ROM sets of concert footage, and the owner is asking . . . what? $50,000 each? And wait, he’s also selling nine hours of raw concert video footage for $250,000?

Those are the real asking prices L.A. video documentarian Richard White has listed on Amazon.com as minimum bids for that material. He’s looking for someone not who wants it as a collector, but who will release the footage for profit.

Which comes as news to the Peppers’ management and attorney. Contacted by Pop Eye, they questioned whether White has the right to sell any of this material. White, in an e-mail, noted that he had shot concerts and interviews between 1988 and 1991 with permission from the band’s then-manager, Lindy Goetz. But Eric Greenspan, the band’s lawyer, says he is unaware of any agreement allowing White to sell the material.

White taped a lot of L.A. bands during the ‘80s and early ‘90s, including the first and last shows by the original Jane’s Addiction lineup, and his shots of a riot that took place outside a 1990 North Hollywood show by Bad Religion were aired on ABC-TV news. He later made arrangements with the band to produce a one-hour video documentary of that event, and the result, “Bad Religion: The Riot,” has been sold nationally. Attempts to call White were unsuccessful.

As of press time, no bids had been made on White’s wares.