What is Tommy Lee's Net Worth?
Tommy Lee is an American drummer and musician who has a net worth of $70 million. Tommy Lee is most widely known for being a founding member of and the drummer for Mötley Crüe. With Mötley Crüe, he has released 20 albums (studio, compilations, and live), six of which have gone platinum. Tommy has also enjoyed a successful solo career and is the founder of the rap-metal band Methods of Mayhem.
In the 1990s, Tommy gained significant global fame thanks to his infamous relationship with actress Pamela Anderson. A home video made by the two while they were on their honeymoon in Mexico became a global phenomenon and the eventual subject of countless news stories, lawsuits, and a 2022 Hulu original series.
Early Life
Tommy Lee was born Thomas Lee Bass in Athens, Greece, on October 3, 1962. His father was a U.S. Army sergeant. His mother was Miss Greece in 1960. He has a younger sister named Athena. His family moved to California when Lee was about a year old. When Lee was four, he received his first drumsticks. He was a teenager when he got his first true drum kit after he discovered hard rock and heavy metal, particularly Kiss, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple. Lee was a drummer in his high school marching band before dropping out his senior year to focus on his dream of being in a rock band. Lee's first band, Studio 19, played the Sunset Strip in the early 80s. Lee met future Mötley Crüe bandmate Nikki Sixx at a Studio 19 show. Other not-yet-famous bands playing the Sunset Strip in the same era included Van Halen and Quiet Riot.
Mötley Crüe
When Tommy Lee met Nikki Sixx, Sixx was looking to form a band that would be highly theatrical and specialize in heavy metal anthems. When Sixx saw Lee play with Studio 19, he knew he had found his drummer. Sixx talked Lee into leaving Studio 19, and together, they formed the beginning of what would become Mötley Crüe. Guitarist Mick Mars joined the new band not long afterward. Lee recommended Vince Neil, a singer he knew from high school, to round out the new band. Mötley Crüe's first release, 1981's Too Fast For Love, was released on the band's own independent label. Not long after, Elektra Records signed Mötley Crüe and re-released Too Fast For Love in 1982. Over the next decade, Mötley Crüe released a string of hit albums, including Shout at the Devil (1983), Theatre of Pain (1985), Girls, Girls, Girls (1987), and Dr. Feelgood (1989).
Lee was known to employ a number of special effects and stunts during his drum solos, including having his drum kit float above the audience while he played. Tommy Lee and Mötley Crüe were known for their partying both on and offstage, as well as the excessive amounts of drugs and alcohol they consumed, as was depicted in the 2019 Netflix movie about the band, which was titled "The Dirt."
Other Projects
Lee formed a supergroup-style rap-metal band called Methods of Mayhem in 1999. That same year, the band released its first album, Methods of Mayhem, and embarked on a tour in support of the self-titled record. Lee released his first solo album, Never a Dull Moment, in 2002. That same year, Lee's solo band joined the lineup of the heavy metal music festival Ozzfest.
In 2004, Lee and the rest of the original lineup of Mötley Crüe reunited to release a double-CD anthology album called Red, White, & Crüe. The band's fans were eager for the new release, which went quadruple platinum, and the band launched a massive tour to support it as well. The Red, White & Crüe Tour 2005: Better Live Than Dead was the band's first tour in six years, and played 81 shows.
In 2005, he starred in his own reality series, Tommy Lee Goes to College, in which Lee attended classes at the University of Nebraska and played drums in the school's marching band. That same year, Lee released his autobiography, "Tommyland," and his second solo album, Tommyland: The Ride," in 2005.
In 2020, Mötley Crüe was scheduled to perform a series of stadium shows on tour with Poison, Def Lepard, and Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, which have been postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
(Photo by Mark Mainz/Getty Images)
Personal Life
Lee's first wife was Elaine Starchuk; they were married in 1984. They divorced in 1985.
On May 10, 1986, Lee married actress Heather Locklear. The couple divorced in 1993. Locklear went on to marry Bon Jovi guitarist Richie Sambora, with whom she has a daughter, Ava (born in 1997).
After he divorced Locklear, Lee was then briefly engaged to model Bobbie Brown.
On February 19, 1995, Lee married Pamela Anderson. They had met just four days earlier. They have two sons together: Brandon and Dylan. The couple divorced in 1998.
In 1998, Lee served six months in county jail after pleading no contest to kicking Pamela Anderson while she was holding their son Dylan. Allegedly, Anderson refused to call and ask her parents not to come over to the family's house, and then Lee assaulted his wife. After Lee got out of jail, he and Anderson reunited briefly in 2001. Lee and Anderson got back together at one point in 2008 and even moved in together with their sons, but they split for good soon, not long afterward.
Lee was engaged to Prince's ex-wife, Mayte Garcia, from 2002 to 2003.
In September 2007, Lee was kicked out of the MTV Video Music Awards ceremony after engaging in a fight with Kid Rock.
Lee was engaged to Greek-German singer Sofia Toufa from 2014 to 2017.
On February 14, 2018, Lee announced that he had proposed to his girlfriend, Brittany Furlan. They were married a year later, on February 14, 2019.
Real Estate
On February 14, 1995, Tommy paid $837,886 for a home in the hills of Malibu. This is the home he would soon share with Pamela Anderson. They actually married just a few days after he bought this home on a beach in Mexico. Upon returning from Mexico, Pamela and Tommy settled into the home and began a major renovation. In their garage, they kept a large safe. In that safe, they stored the white bikini she wore during their wedding, a bunch of guns, some jewelry… and their infamous home video sex tape.
In October 1995, a disgruntled electrician named Rand Gauthier orchestrated an elaborate scheme to steal the safe from the garage as an act of revenge over an alleged $20-30,000 bill that Tommy refused to pay. It was Rand who soon seeded the home to the masses.
This Malibu home is the one that was toured in a famous episode of "MTV Cribs," which aired in 2000. Tommy sold the home in 2005 for $2.5 million. Here's what the home looked like in a later sale:
Unfortunately, the Malibu mansion was completely destroyed in a fire in November 2019. Tommy toured the home after the fire and posted several photos and a video on Instagram:
View this post on Instagram
In 2007, Tommy paid $5.85 million for a home in Calabasas, California.
In May 2018, Tommy Lee listed his Calabasas, California home for $4.65 million. The 10,000-square-foot home has six bedrooms and eight bathrooms, as well as an atrium with indoor waterfalls and a retractable glass roof. The home also has a koi pond, a stone saltwater spa, and a saltwater piano-shaped pool. It also has a full gym, home theater, wine room, a second kitchen, and an outdoor area for entertaining, complete with a barbecue, fireplaces, and torch lighting. Lee converted the 13-car garage into a recording studio. He had previously listed the home in 2016 for $6 million.
Tommy ultimately took a large loss on this home when he accepted $3.65 million in May 2023.
Here's a video tour of Tommy Lee's former Calabasas home:
