Tommy Lee knows that when most people think of him, the mind inevitably wanders to the famous sex tape with then-wife Pamela Anderson.

He's hoping a memoir might finally shake him of that incident, as well as many others from his wilder days of rocking and rolling. "It seemed like a good time to do this, sort of a halfway point in my life," the 42-year-old tattooed rocker said, sitting cross-legged on a leather chair in a downtown hotel room.

"If I wait too much longer I'm going to forget."

From his early days as the drummer with Motley Crue to the birth of his two sons and the 2001 drowning death of a friend's young son, Tommyland (Atria Books) is a candid tell-all of Lee's life in his own expletive-heavy vocabulary (though it was written with the help of author Anthony Bozza).

Chapter Six, State of Matrimony, begins with his short-lived marriage to a "Penthouse pet" from Canada. He says he got together with her because "she was hot."

He moves on to talk about his seven years wed to Heather Locklear, which broke up after a two-minute-long incident in a bathroom with a porn star.

A large chunk of the book, already a New York Times bestseller, is devoted to his four-year marriage to Anderson, whose own insights are peppered throughout the book.

"I felt like it was time to put it all out there," said Lee, whose friendly, warm demeanour seems a far cry from the man who once threatened paparazzi with a sawed-off shotgun.

"It's almost therapeutic to get rid of it and move on. Hopefully some of the misconceptions of a few things in my life will go away and people will get to know me."

He's mostly referring to the chapter called State of Invasion, where he tries to explain away all the tabloid headlines, especially the grandaddy of his scandals - the steamy videotape of he and Anderson.

He says it was made public after someone stole a safe "as big as a fridge" from the couple's garage.

The incident, he says, just won't die from the public's consciousness, especially with the plenitude of "morning DJs who thinks they're Howard Stern."

"That was eight years ago. Why are we still talking about this? Is everyone in a time warp?" he asks, his arms flailing in exasperation.

"Now I have great answers. It's in the book. Hopefully it works. I doubt it."

The 269-page book makes it clear that Lee remains bitter about being constantly pursued by press. He's even given the cameramen plenty of cutesy names such as "nonstoparazzi," "stalkerazzi" and "poopernazi."

"You guys don't really have that here," he says referring to Canada, where he has spent plenty of time - including a six-month stint in Vancouver in 1989 with Motley Crue.

"I appreciate that. It says something about you people in general. In America, I don't know what the deal is. They find it fascinating to see somebody coming out of a grocery store in Ugg boots.

"There's some people that go to the car race to root for the winner and then there's people that go just to see a huge ball of fire crash. Those are the people that live in America."

But isn't he partly to blame? And isn't he continuing to feed the tabloid appetite? After all, he's signed up for his own reality series with NBC which chronicles his adventures going to college.

"If you can't beat 'em join em," he says with a smirk.

Initially, he refused the offer but reconsidered because he'd never gone to college.

"I got a recording contract at 17. It was my senior year of high school with a month or two to go and I just bailed out on it because I wanted to go rock the planet," said Lee, who was born in Greece but raised in California.

"Maybe it's a terrible mistake but it's certainly been fun and I've learned a lot. It's definitely going to be a kooky show."

As part of his cleansing ritual, the bad boy rocker is selling his Tommyland mansion - the site of the drowning.

"In a therapeutic term it would be called pulling a geographical," he explains cryptically.

He even completed a 54-part anger management course.

"People think 'he must be really angry to go to anger management class.' But everybody gets angry. It's just what you do with it. They give you the tools."

The classes, he says, taught him to walk away from fights before they escalate. He admits to being in all sorts of fights, "sometimes with my penis."

As he sorts out his life, he has faith the public will remember his musical talents over his ability to attract scandal.

"If you look back I've done some pretty amazing stuff on the drums, whether it be flying over the audience or spinning around upside down. Those are pretty historical musical events that hopefully will live on."

But the tape that made him and Anderson accidental porn stars - considered one of the biggest selling explicit videos of all time - doesn't seem to want to go away.

"That (expletive) thing is just going to forever haunt me," admits Lee.

Following is en excerpt from Tommyland:

I am Tommy Lee, born Thomas Lee Bass in Athens, Greece, on October 3, 1962, and raised in a suburb of California by an American father and a Greek mother. At seventeen, I joined Mötley Crüe and we became one of the baddest-ass rock bands in history. We sold over 40 million albums, we wreaked havoc, we scared parents, and we titillated too many fathers' daughters. I've been married three times: once for just a few days to a Penthouse Pet, for seven years to Heather Locklear, and then for five years to Pamela Anderson, with whom I have two beautiful sons. I've gotten into a lot of fights and I've been to jail a few times. But this book isn't your typical journey in a straight line from day one to day now. I'm more interested in revealing what's most important about my life, like how I cook my steaks; what I think of the tabloids, the truth, my ex-wives, my ex-band, my music; and what an innocent observer might find hanging around my house any given Sunday. You'll get plenty of facts and I'll tell you a story, but my real mission here is to paint you a picture of my life. I want to show you how my memories smell.

I'd like to get into it now, so please take your seats. I advise you to keep your arms and legs inside the car at all times. If you have a pacemaker, a heart condition, or if you are pregnant or too damn short to reach the safety bar, I ask that you turn back immediately. Those with weak stomachs, strict morals, or chronic indigestion should put the book down now. For the rest of you, there's one truth that's real across the board: What you send out is what you get back. Send out the good, people, and it will come back to you. There's another thing I've learned over the years, in court, in fights, and in arguments with people I love: There isn't one truth, there are many. This book is my truth.

Reprinted with permission from Simon & Schuster, Inc.