New York ? Rock music’s biggest freak show is taking its show on the road.

And the bigger question for Mtley Crüe is whether the band known for its excesses (sex, drugs and fighting) can keep it together for a year on tour.

“This tour could last a week. It could last a year. I just don’t know,” drummer Tommy Lee recently told The Associated Press. “But it definitely brings a smile to my face. You know, the danger part of it, the whether these guys are going to make it a month question.”

For the band that gained its rock foothold in the 1980s as a glam metal band, the spotlight will be shining bright on their antics as much as their stage production when they open the U.S. leg of the “Red, White & Crüe Tour 2005 … Better Live Than Dead” today in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The tour follows the release of “Red, White & Crüe,” a greatest hits album that includes three new songs.

Mtley Crüe has reportedly auditioned midgets, contortionists and strange animals as part of the stage production, a 2 1/2-hour show with no opening act.

“It’s a traveling freak show. We’ve always been called that, and we said ‘Why don’t we take that and take it to the next level,”‘ said bassist Nikki Sixx.

Mtley Crüe has always pushed “the level.”

For those who haven’t seen the band’s infamous episode of VH1’s “Behind The Music,” which featured the band’s sordid tale of success, here’s a quick recap:

The band was founded in 1981 when Sixx met Lee. The two answered an ad placed by guitarist Mick Mars (who Sixx described as Cousin Itt from “The Addams Family”) looking for bandmates. Then they were joined by singer Vince Neil. They quickly lit up the Los Angeles club scene and recorded an album, which was released on an independent label. A short time later they were signed by Elektra and released 1983’s “Shout at the Devil” and 1985’s “Theater of Pain.” But it was 1987’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” and 1989’s “Dr. Feelgood,” which debuted at No. 1, that put the band at the top.

Rock group Mtley Crüe, from left, Mick Mars, Tommy Lee, Vince Neil and Nikki Sixx pose at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles. The group was at the Olympic on Feb. 11 preparing for its upcoming tour.

Along the way, they were using drugs and drinking and having lots of sex. Neil got into a drunken driving accident that killed Hanoi Rocks drummer Razzle. Sixx overdosed on heroin, “dying” before returning to life. Lee married Pamela Anderson and made an infamous sex tape. Mars drank and did drugs.

By the 1990s, the band was falling apart. Neil left (or was fired, depending on who tells the story) the band in 1992. He then reunited with the band for 1997’s “Generation Swine.” Then Lee left in the late 1990s.

The band regrouped a few months ago after Sixx wrote some songs and asked Neil if he would sing them.

But the band says they noticed a resurgence in interest in Mtley Crüe several years earlier.

Neil said he was at a mall once when he saw three teenagers wearing old Mtley Crüe concert shirts: “I was like ‘How do they know us? Where did they get these T-shirts?”‘

Tickets for the tour went on sale in December with some venues selling out in hours.

So what is it about Mtley Crüe that two decades later seems to grab such fan loyalty?

Part of it is the music and part of it is that most of the band members have continued to be in the spotlight, says Jim Richards, regional vice president of programming for Clear Channel.

“They are celebrities individually, above and beyond their collective band status,” he said.

But Richards says more than that — there may be a morbid curiosity.

“A curiosity of watching a train wreck. Can they keep it together for a year?” he said. “What sports book in Vegas is accepting bets on this?”

When asked whether the band plans to follow up the tour with a full-length studio album, Neil doesn’t have an answer.

“We’re really not saying,” he says. “We’re just going to watch and see and see what kind of happens,” he said.