Most rock music fans simply enjoy listening to music – others delve in much deeper – learning about the history of the band, digging into the lyrics for the true depth of the artist’s meaning behind each song. Few fans investigate even further – behind the music – finding the source of the band’s “sound” through writers and producers.
The true diehard Mötley Crüe fan knows that the depths of the Crüe’s music resides in the co-founder of the band – Nikki Sixx (musician, songwriter, lyricist, author, photographer, radio host, fashion designer, philanthropist, and of course, bassist). Sixx’s talent is undeniable, as witnessed by the Crüe’s many hit songs that Sixx authored including “Girls, Girls, Girls”, “Dr. Feelgood”, “Wild Side”, “Home Sweet Home”, “Live Wire”, “Hooligans’s Holiday”, and the song that was inspired by Sixx’s heroin overdose in which he was revived by a paramedic who happened to be a fan, “Kickstart My Heart”.
Nikki Sixx was born Frank Carlton Serafino Feranna, Jr. on Dec. 11, 1958, after his father, whom he inherited his Italian-American ancestry. Nikki suffered a tough upbringing, after his father left the family – Sixx was raised by his single mother Deana Richards who later abandoned him, too. Nikki moved in and out several times of his grandparents’ home, falling in with the wrong crowd, becoming a teenage vandal, and finally getting expelled from school for selling drugs. At this point in his teenage life, his grandparents sent him to live with his mother in Seattle, which became the time of his life in which he learned how to play bass guitar.
By the age of seventeen, Nikki found his first true love – music – and moved to L.A. where he joined the group Sister, led by Blackie Lawless, and shortly after formed the group London in 1978, which would go on to feature Izzy Stradlin (Guns N’ Roses), Fred Coury (Cinderella), and Sixx’s former bandmate from the band Sister, Blackie Lawless (W.A.S.P.).
Only a couple of years later, in 1981, Nikki co-founded Mötley Crüe with drummer Tommy Lee, writing legendary rock hits with the band over the next two decades. During the band’s fame and fortune, Sixx fell in love for the second time… with heroin. And somehow, through the pain and paranoia of drug addiction, Sixx continued making music, really good music… relying upon his God-given talent.
When the Crüe took a hiatus in 2002, Sixx took on the side project bands Brides of Destruction for a couple of years, and Sixx:A.M. in 2007. By 2008, Sixx:A.M. was touring as part of Mötley Crüe’s “Crüe Fest”, but it was Sixx:A.M.’s debut album, “The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack” that hit the perfect chord with radio, with the release of the hit song, “Life Is Beautiful”. Three EP’s followed: X-Mas In Hell (2008), Life Is Beautiful (2008), and 7 (2011), with the band’s most recent studio album also released in 2011: This Is Gonna Hurt.
Sixx:A.M.’s first studio album release was a soundtrack to Sixx’s life, of which he became a New York Times bestselling author twice over with his books “The Heroin Diaries” (’07) and “The Dirt – Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band” (’01) ( that he co-authored with his Mötley Crüe bandmates.
2011, Nikki Sixx is clean. Many would believe his time with fame would be over, yet Sixx’s talent continued to evolve into the realm of photography with his book that coincided with the band’s second studio release: This Is Gonna Hurt: Music, Photography, and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx, his groundbreaking book and recording – exploring beauty and our own perceptions of ourselves and the beauty of others – based upon his journals, observations, and for the first time in print, his photographs. Through his lens, Sixx tells tales for the voices of the unique, the freaks, the rarely beautiful – from brothels to crack houses and staged photo shoots at his Funny Farm photography studio. Nikki displayed his perceptions of beautiful for the world to enjoy. In and around his photography are his very personal journals – from discussing his institutionalized sister he barely knew growing up, to his relationship and eventual breakup with Kat Von D (TLC reality television’s L.A. Ink tattoo artist).
After decades of legendary music and becoming a New York Times bestseller twice, Sixx found time to launch his own clothing line in 2006 with Kelly Gray, the former co-president and house model of St. John. Sixx designed first for men and then expanded into women’s apparel. Sixx also grabbed the ears of many through his syndicated rock/alternative music radio programs “Sixx Sense” and “The Side Show Countdown” – both hosted by Sixx and his co-host Kerri Kasem, daughter of the famous radio personality – Casey Kasem.
The rocker has a heart and is a philanthropist at the end of the day, founding “Running Wild in the Night”, a fundraising initiative for Covenant House, a nonprofit charity that comes to the aid of the homeless youth. Sixx knows firsthand what it’s like to have to fend for yourself on the streets, also donating a portion of the profits from Sixx:A.M.’s album The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack and autobiographical book.
“I tried like hell to die, and now it’s like I’m scratching and clawing to be alive,” Sixx says, talking about his new lease on life. “I want to be alive. I want to fucking inspire people. The great thing about death is that once you’ve faced it, you’re no longer afraid of it. I’m so inspired to do better with my life and to take on challenges. “
Now in his third decade with Mötley Crüe, Sixx tours once again, but this time with fellow legendary rockers, KISS. Simply dubbed, “The Tour”, the 40-date North American tour kicks off in Bristow, VA, on July 20th, with both bands joining musical forces and each playing 90-minute sets. “The Tour” hits Vegas on August 11th, 2012 at the Mandalay Bay Arts Center.
Today, Nikki Sixx is a family man, driven by his many side projects, continuing down his straight and not-so-narrow path, striving to remain clean and free from drugs as a father of four. SLV
The Heroin Diaries:
A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star
a book by Nikki Sixx and Ian Gittins
By Alan Stanford
Excerpt from “Heroin Diaries”:
“…two major things happened to me in ’83… Shout at the Devil went platinum… I crashed my Porsche drunk, dislocated my shoulder and started smoking heroin to numb the pain. The problem was, I carried on smoking—and then started injecting—long after the pain was gone.” —Nikki Sixx
“Alcohol, acid, cocaine… they were just affairs. When I met heroin it was true love.”
On the night of December 23, 1987, Sixx was declared dead for two minutes after a heroin overdose, only to be revived with two adrenaline shots to the heart by a persistent paramedic who was a Mötley Crüe fan, (this incident was the inspiration for the hit song “Kickstart My Heart”). Sixx estimates he overdosed “about half a dozen times.”
TOMMY LEE: “We all went to that dark fucking place at various times-but Nikki seemed to like it there more than any of us.”
Bassist for the legendary rock band Mötley Crüe, Nikki Sixx shared his most private and gripping details of one of the most unique memoirs of drug addiction ever published in his best-selling book, “The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star” in ’08. If you haven’t read it – pick up this very true read – a compelling journey through addiction – educate yourself – and more importantly, educate the young around you, who are so tempted to start the “habit”.
Nikki Sixx’s “Heroin Diaries” brings you behind the rock ‘n’ roll dream and into the dark, seedy world of drug addiction. Every turn of the page, you get drawn deeper into Sixx’s own private hell he personally orchestrated at every turn, and a glimpse at the people (the vultures, the parasites) who enabled him down his chosen path of self-destruction, and even to death, over and over… and over again.
Candid accounts of “on-the-road” debauchery are revealed through Sixx’s distorted perspective of the “rock ‘n’ roll” way of life, and then recounted through the eyes of his band mates: Tommy Lee, Vince Neil and Mick Mars. Slash, Rick Nielsen, Bob Rock and ex-managers and ex-lovers also reflect on Sixx’s downward spiral of coke and heroin addiction.
Excerpt from “Heroin Diaries”:
Van Nuys, 4:15 a.m. (1987)
“The best part of freebase is before the first hit. I love that moment, right before I put the glass pipe to my lips…that moment when everything is sane, and the craving, the salivating, the excitement all feel fresh and innocent. It’s like foreplay…the ache that’s always better than the orgasm. Yet as soon as I hit the pipe, within 30 seconds all hell breaks lose in my brain…and I keep on doing it and doing it and doing it and doing it, and I can’t stop. Every day that I sit here and write, it’s always the same. So-why? Why do I do this? I hate it…I hate it so much, but I love it even more. The worst part of freebase is running out. But I have a new jones – speedballs of any kind. The junk just isn’t enough anymore…I feel like I’m only halfway there…”
At first, I found it entertaining, then, page after page, I found myself thinking: ‘Why are you doing this?! Why do you keep repeating the same mistake over and over and over…?!’ I just couldn’t put this book down. All I thought about was my friend, (another victim who fell prey to the seduction of heroin), and how blind I was to what he must have been going through. I’ll never look at people “partying” the same way again. This book had a profound effect on the way that I view the whole “rockstar” way of life, and drug addiction, itself. Though Sixx comes off as a self-centered, arrogant rockstar, his diary really opened my mind to how powerful an addiction can be – whether it’s drugs, gambling, sex – you name it… Addiction can suck you in by seducing you innocently at first, only later to claim your very being, altering your perception of right and wrong—fucking with your every sense of reality. SLV
(Source: striplv.com)
