Interveiws



Dear Superstar: Nikki Sixx
The Mötley Crüe bassist and former junkie on pharmaceutical mishaps, mother-daughter sex teams and those confounding umlauts.

By Adam Higginbotham

Blender, September 2007
It’s 11 o’clock in the morning and, not for the first time, Nikki Sixx is feeling unwell. Pulling up to his North Hollywood studio in a gleaming black Bentley Continental, he emerges into the merciless June sunshine clutching cigarettes and a packet of sliced ham: breakfast.

But, despite his present sniffles, the dope-sick mornings and hung-over afternoons of the once-most-depraved member of Mötley Crüe have long been a thing of the past: “There’s some kind of cold going around,” he says; it’s one of the perils of clean living. “It’ll do it every time. My friends that are always fucked up are never sick.”

Inside, he fetches a Diet Coke from the fridge and lights up a Marlboro Medium: “It’s my last vice. I’m going to quit — and then I’ll be a complete monk.” Now 48, Sixx is a busy man: He’s the father of five children and, since separating from his second wife (like the first, a former Playboy Playmate) last year, single again. His new book, The Heroin Diaries, adapted from the journals he kept at the peak of his addiction, between 1986 and 1987, forms a dark companion piece to the superhuman excesses catalogued in the classic 2001 Crüe memoir The Dirt and is accompanied by a soundtrack he recorded with his new band Sixx:A.M. He’s also taken up photography and has recently announced plans to write a novel.

Having experienced his own clinical death, an adrenaline-shot-induced revival and more than 25 years in Mötley Crüe, he isn’t about to let the prospect of Blender readers’ impertinent questions worry him: “Can you say anything bad about us?” he asks. “Really … honestly? That hasn’t already been said?”

Have you always kept a diary — and do you still keep one now?
rev_it_up, Concord, NH
The earliest diaries were ’78, ’79. I used to carry a book around and draw pictures of what the stage set would look like, ideas, band names, that kind of stuff. By the beginning of Mötley Crüe, I felt like I really had something to write down. Some of the ones from the Shout at the Devil era are really raw and barbaric — like, “Slept with four girls. Two were on their period. Can’t remember any of their names. Me and Vince got in a fistfight. Sold-out show. 100,000 people. Nikki.” And then the next one would be, “I miss my grandparents.” By the time I got to about ’85, my writing really started flowing. And that’s pretty much how I do it now — stream of consciousness.

Your mother dated Richard Pryor. What’s the thing you remember most clearly about him?
Skullz23, McPherson, KS
We used to live on Sunset Boulevard, in an apartment in the Sunset Tower. I had a very young sister, and my mom would take off and do her thing — and I would watch my sister for a couple of days at a time. I have one very clear memory of playing in the parking garage with my sister and a car pulling in and my mom and Richard getting out. They were blasted. And she said, “Oh, I love you so much,” and just went straight up to the apartment and left us in the garage. That’s the clearest memory.

How did you pick the name Nikki Sixx — and is it true there used to be two of you?
Indecent_Mike, Clearwater, FL
I had a band called London and everything was about Britain, and I was Nikki London. And I was like, “I wanna change my name: I don’t want to be Nikki London of London.” I used to date this girl, Angie Saxon. I was going through her scrapbook and I saw a guy that she used to date named Niki Syxx in a band called Jon & the Nightriders. So I stole his name. I just liked it.

When Mötley Crüe started, you were no good at playing the bass. When did you learn to do it properly?
frethead, Midvale, UT
Well, it’s really funny. There’s this thing out there that I can’t play bass. Every time I jam with other musicians, they’re like, “Dude! You’re a pretty good bass player!” And I’m like, yeah. I’ve toured the world 20 times, you know? Played in front of millions and millions of people. Duh! Am I interested­ in becoming Flea? Absolutely not. Can I sit down and do a bass solo for you? Oh, hell no. I don’t care too much.

In the ’80s you stopped showering for weeks at a time. What’s the longest you went unwashed?
thrillkill29, Detroit
I think I went a month at one point. For us it was always, Let’s set a goal for something stupid and see if we can do it. We would put bounties out on stupid shit, like whoever could sleep with the fattest chick. And managers would start getting involved — one of them said there was a $10,000 bounty out for whoever could sleep with a mother-daughter team. Then that became too easy, so it was a mother-daughter-grandmother team. You couldn’t pay me now to do half that stuff.

Who’s going to play you in the movie of The Dirt? And how much of it will they really be able to put on the screen?
nick.king, Buffalo, NY
Don’t know yet — we keep having director problems and script rewrites. It’s a pain in the a**. I think that we need young, fresh talent — an unknown actor who’s willing to push the envelope, and not have people look at a known actor and go, “That isn’t what Tommy would do; that isn’t what Nikki would say.” It’s definitely an R-rated movie — we’re not going to go for the X.

What’s your novel about?
Sizzler9000, Los Angeles
I can’t tell you. I just started writing one day — that stream-of-consciousness stuff — and I couldn’t stop. I went and bought some books on character development and stuff like that. It’s very embryonic right now — I wouldn’t get too excited. But I’ll do it. I give you my word.

Do the umlauts make any difference to how you say “Mötley Crüe”?
mc_jenna, Bethlehem, PA
We didn’t think so — until we went to Germany the first time, and everybody was saying, “Moo-tley Kruh! We love you!” And we were going, “What the f*** is that? Why the f*** are they calling us Moo-tley Kruh?” And then the record company says, “Well, with the umlauts, that’s how you say it.” So right from the beginning, we got it wrong.

What’s the worst thing anyone’s ever written about you in a song?
Flesheater353, Memphis
Someone said that “Tattooed Millionaire” by Bruce Dickinson was about me, but I don’t know. It was something to do with the fact that I fucked his wife, and I think he was upset. That wasn’t my fault, by the way — I want to go on the record. She was his wife, but I didn’t know that. I don’t think Bruce found out about it until The Dirt — I should have kept that a secret. Dire Straits’s “Money for Nothing” was about Mötley Crüe — “Money for nothing and the chicks for free … that little faggot got his own jet airplane.” They were in a store that sells televisions, and there was a row of TVs all playing Mötley Crüe — and that’s where it came from. Isn’t that great?

What lyrics are you most proud of writing?
18_and_life, Washington, D.C.
I like the lyrics to “Primal Scream.” They’re pretty powerful. It deals with my mom and my dad — I’ve always felt a connection to the line that says, “If you want to live life on your own terms, you’ve got to be willing to crash and burn.”

You’ve swallowed lightbulbs, and you’ve shot up heroin just hours after a near-fatal overdose. What do you think is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done?
Starpower99, St. Louis
Well that would be two right there, wouldn’t it? I think going headfirst into heroin addiction was one of the stupidest things I ever did. I had no second thoughts. It was just like, Oh, I’m invincible. My heroes have been junkies — I’m goin’ for it. Ridiculous.

I’m thinking of getting engaged to my girlfriend — do you have any advice for me?
Lani1980, Honolulu
Yeah, I do. I’ve been through it twice, and trust me: Don’t do it. Love them, buy them flowers, chocolates, seduce them with romance, live together, have cute little names for each other. Do. Not. Get. Married. EVER.

When was the last time you punched someone?
Sgt._Pain, Baltimore
On the 2005 tour. Somebody threw a bottle  and it hit Vince in the head. And I asked the audience to find him and bring him backstage. He was brought back, and I told the security guys to leave us alone. And I had a word or two with him. And … yeah. He apologized.

Have any of your kids asked to get a tattoo yet? And what would you say when they do?
Pizzaguy69, Asheville, NC
They haven’t — they’re not old enough. My son will be in two years, but I don’t think he’s a tattoo kind of kid. My 13-year-old daughter is a bit conservative. She always tells me, “Dad, you can’t wear that, it doesn’t match,” or “Your shirt’s unbuttoned too much.” I’ll pull up to school with a cowboy hat on listening to jazz really loud in a tank top, all covered with tattoos, and she’ll be like, “Dad!” So for me it’s about letting them be themselves.