Rock Music Trivia
Janis Joplin at Woodstock: The Raw Truth Behind the Set
Remember Janis Joplin at Woodstock, where nerves and talent met in a legendary performance late Saturday night.
Sam
August 20, 2025
When you hear the name Dr. Feelgood, a couple things might come to mind. The British pub rockers from the ’70s. Maybe a shady nickname you’ve heard in old blues songs. But for most rock fans, Dr. Feelgood means one thing: Mötley Crüe’s biggest hit.
Released in 1989 as the title track of their fifth album, Dr. Feelgood became the band’s first Top 10 single and their highest-charting album. It was sleazy, loud, and unforgettable — everything you’d expect from Crüe at the height of their powers. But underneath the swagger, the song had a real story.
Dr. Feelgood isn’t about a doctor at all. It’s about a drug dealer. The lyrics sketch out the rise of a guy named Jimmy who runs his own little criminal empire:
“He’s the one they call Dr. Feelgood / He’s the one that makes you feel all right.”
In other words, Jimmy’s supplying the goods — coke, pills, whatever people are hooked on — and making a killing while doing it. The song paints him like a twisted kind of businessman: flashy cars, women, money rolling in. He’s not just a street dealer, he’s got an operation.
It’s part cautionary tale, part celebration of excess. Exactly the kind of thing Mötley Crüe knew firsthand.
By the late ’80s, Mötley Crüe weren’t just playing the Sunset Strip anymore. They were the band — stadiums, MTV, multi-platinum records. And they had lived the lifestyle that Dr. Feelgood describes. Nikki Sixx, who wrote the lyrics, had survived heroin addiction and overdoses. The band was infamous for drugs, booze, and chaos.
But here’s the twist: Dr. Feelgood was recorded right after they all got sober. Producer Bob Rock pushed them harder than anyone had before, and for the first time, they weren’t clouded by substances in the studio. That gave the song a punch — it’s tight, it’s heavy, it’s sharper than their earlier stuff.
So when they sang about Jimmy the dealer, it wasn’t some abstract story. It was a reflection of the world they had been drowning in — and barely crawled out of alive.
The song has become one of Mötley Crüe’s defining anthems. It’s sleazy, it’s catchy, and it captures everything the band represented at the peak of their fame: danger, indulgence, and just enough truth to hit hard.
And that riff? Mick Mars built a monster — chunky, swaggering, impossible not to move to. It gave the band their heaviest, most arena-ready sound yet.
Even now, decades later, you can put on Dr. Feelgood and instantly feel that mix of danger and energy that made Crüe larger than life.
So what’s Dr. Feelgood about? On the surface, it’s about Jimmy the drug dealer. But at its core, it’s about the very culture that fueled Mötley Crüe — the highs, the crashes, and the razor’s edge between making it big and burning out.
It’s not a love song. It’s not even really a celebration. It’s a snapshot of a lifestyle that nearly killed the band… delivered in the most badass, fist-pumping way possible.
And that’s why it still stands tall as one of the greatest hard rock songs of the ’80s.
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