Sixx Appeal

Crue bassist Nikki Sixx Talks exclusively to Classic Rock about The Dirt, Donna, drugs and the future of Motley Crue.

Nurse's uniform: Philip Wilding

Vince Neil's naked reporting of the prolonged death of his daughter Skylar aside, it's bassist Nikki Sixx who constantly crashes the edges of confrontation and baffling, breathtaking honesty in Motley Crue's appalingly explicit autobiography, The Dirt. Real adult entertainment is rarely as grotesque or compelling; if it were a live sex show, it would be the biggest bang for anyone's buck ever. Already a hit on the New York Tiems Best Sellers List, The Dirt goes to the very heart of a band who at one time were one of the biggest and most excessive acts in the world.

With sections written individually and then collated with the help of journalist Neil Strauss, The Dirt details almost two decades of turbulence, hedonism and sheer craziness. It's a trip that looks like it has no end.

Earlier this year, band founder Nikki Sixx contacted Strauss to tell him of more tales of extraordinary madness from the Motley Crue camp, but unfortunately, the deadline for the book had already passed. Says Strauss: "They're a band that attracts drama and feeds on drama. Every month there was something happening that could make a whole new chapter. Just the other day Nikki sent me an e-mail saying that he had almost died again."

Meanwhile, Sixx himself recently went to the band's website to write an open confession to his wife Donna D'Errico (and God) admitting that he'd been unfaithful to her and had starteddrinking and taking drugs again: "I'd cheated on my wife with pigs and whores who weren't worthy to lick her shoes," he posted on the site. "I lost my dignity and then I took hers away..."

More recntly, of course, former Crue drummer Tommy Lee made the headlines when a four-year-old friend of his son Brandon drowned at Lee's home during Brandon's birthday party. Lee is currently being sued by the dead boy's parents. As Straus puts it: "The first night I met them, Nikki and Tommy got hauled off in handcuffs, Tommy wearing his leather shorts and nothing else. These guys are total shit magnets."

For his part, Vince Neil says reading the other band memebers' extracts gave him a greater understanding of how they really saw him, and that it also gave him the opportunity to finally articulate his feelings about the death of his daughter, Skylar. Amid the wreckage of the rest of the book, Neil's recollection of his daughter's protracted death really does read like a solitary voice speaking in the silence, as if things had finally come to a halt. From there on in, though, it's business as usual, as he insisted in a recent interview: "We were Motley Crue and everything was at our disposal - drugs, women, parties and money. There was always someone to clean up our escapades. We didn't have the sense of responsibility or repercussions of what we did. Why we gelled together so well is because we were all hungry for the same pot of gold. We shared a lot of the same wants, women and drugs."

The band recently got together to do a sell-out book signing at Tower Records in Los Angeles, but when it comes to the future of the band things aren't so clear. Nikki talks about the original line-up getting back together, though he isn't wholly convinced or convincing, while Vince is even less enthusiastic when it comes to the idea of the classic Crue line-up ever touring or recording together again: "Tommy? I don't think he will be back," he says. "Never say never, but I don't plan on working with him. Once upon a time I new a great guy... but our relationship is so far buried at this point."

Tommy, of course, is working on the second Methods Of Mayhem album that's due for release in October, so, for now, at least, Motley Crue are on hiatus. But as Vince says: "Nikki died a few times, but he always came back." Hopefully the same can be said of Motley Crue.

A few days ago Classic Rock spoke to Nikki Sixx at his Californian home. He'll be 43 at the end of this year, and he does seem older and wiser, stoical almost. He laughs occasionally, but mostly seems to be resigned to the current situation he find himself in - Nikki Sixx: rock star, father, husband, junkie, alcoholic and now best-selling author.

You've just returned from Mexico, where you attempted to reconcile your marriage with Donna D'Errico. Is everything OK now?

It's been a long ride. I fucked up with drink and drugs again, as usual. I went straight off the deep end... Me and Donna are OK now, it's great. I started using heroin again on the last tour, and when I'm using, then it's full-on. I moved out of our house and everything. I'm such a bad alcoholic and drug addict. It's a very intelligent disease [Tommy Lee said heroin was so good that it scared him], it's much more powerful than you can ever imagine it to be. I was six years clean - no drinking, nothing - and one day on the tour it was just there. Now, there's so many reasons for me not to be using; there's so much mroe to me to get out of life.

How did The Dirt come about?

It was something that had to be done. There have been some cool books out there about us, but we wanted something - we probably needed something - to put our energy into. The whole point was that fout guys did the book and didn't get to see each other's parts. I like that idea of the conflicting viewpoints, the different takes on different situations. We'd met Neil [Strauss] a few years ago when he interviewed us for Spin magazine. Usually people edit out the good stuff, but Neil wrote that piece so well. He even called up Sylvia [Rhone, of Electra Records] and asked her what she thought about my calling her a cunt from the stage at one of our shows. I'd never actually read the Manson book that he did [The Long Hard Road Out Of Hell], but I'd seen it, and I know that Neil was involved in that and I liked the quality of it - the artwork and the way it felt and looked, the illustrations and stuff. I wanted the Dirt to feel like something, not to be some kind of tear sheet.

Talking of conflicting viewpoints, it's interesting the different takes Tomy and Vince had on their fight at Las Vegas airport, where they both blamed the other for starting it.

As for Vince and Tommy's fight at the airport, I don't think either of their view were correct, to be honest with you.

Whose version would you say was the closest to the truth?

Who cares? [laughs]

The book's crossed all kinds of cultural boundaries. People who've never heard a Motley Crue album or would never even think of buying one are reading it.

I know. The reaction's been amazing. A guy I know was working in the studio with Bad Religion, and he said they were all reading it and were really into it.

The book swings through some amazing highs and lows - Vince's recollection of his daughter's death is so tender and honest.

The whole thing where Vince wrote about that, it was all so raw and sad, it's almost beautiful in a way.

It's a side to Vince that I'm sure a lot of people have never experienced; his rock star persona always seems to be set at full tilt.

[dryly] It's always the flash and the flame with Vince. He took to being a rock star very well.

You all seemed to take to it pretty well. It seemed to be that you had everything you wanted whenever you wanted it.

It was. It took over for a long time. It changed my life in all sorts of ways, not all of them good. It takes time to get through it, to get past that lifestyle, to get clean and stay clean. The band has been a freight train of excess, and that was scary in itself, but to stop and get off that train is just as scary as staying on the thing. I went into rehab this time.

In the book, you say that rehab didn't work for you because you couldn't come to terms with the idea of a higher power. You told your councellor "fuck you and fuck God", then jumped out of a second-storey window with your guitar and attempted to walk five miles home in your hospital gown. What changed?

Because this is the first time that I've really faced down the demons of my childhood. That was one of the things that the book really opened up for me. It helped with all of that. I was more ready to face things this time. That hadn't happened before.

The whole story of your success was always tainted by tragedy - death, heartbreak, jail. Did you ever think the band was going to have to slow down, or that it would eventually crash and burn?

You know, there's always been a tragic side to Motley Crue. We knew we'd crash, we just laughed at the idea of it.

Do you think the Crue's extraordinary story has overshadowed the bands musical legacy?

Yes, I do think that, in a way, our songs have always been overshadowed by that legacy. The shadow was so great from all that excess that sometimes you'd get people who wouldn't even hear the songs. But I don't think we're the only band who's had to contend with that.

Talking of music, on the reissued 'Girls, Girls, Girls' (1987), there's an excellent unreleased track called 'Rodeo', detailing life on the road. It's a remarkable song, given that you've admitted the album was patchy then why didn't that song make 'Girls...' or the following albums originally?

[sighs] That's the thing about bands, they get so self-centered and so self-destructive, and the egos... It goes back to what I was saying earlier. Either Tommy or Vince hated that song, despised it for some reason. And once we'd recorded it and put it away it became that whole thing of, well, our new stuff is better than our old stuff, why would we want to go back and listen to that stuff? That's what you're dealing with, that kind of thinking.

Going back to your musical legacy, do you agree that the band never really got the respect that it deserved?

We ended up being put alongside with all those hair bands. People called us hair metal, but we were always darker than that. We were lpstick and syringes, we were outrageous, and somehow we got rolled in with all those other bands. I despised that all. I enjoyed our reputation. We meant the things we did, there was no pretence. When we started biting each other and other people [they bit AC/DC and Eddie Van Halen's hand, among others], all that stuff, that was who we were.

In the book, Vince still maintains that he was pushed out of the band. You say he jumped. Which was it?

We still say he left, he still says he was fired. All that stuff was so adolescent. If only someone had sat us down and talked to us about our responsibilities, that we were a band, that we were also a business. But no one stopped us, not the management or anyone. If we'd taken time out from it all... We were out for three tours for 13 months and we couldn't call a halt to anything when we were on the road. I think as far as Vince leaving when he did, if that hadn't happened, if we could have kept it together, then I think we could have been like AC/DC; we could have stood the test of time and earned that kind of respect. Eventually, we were our own demise.

Looking back, what do you think of the 'New Tattoo' album now?

I actually like 'New Tattoo'. I really like the song itself. But I had to write that album in 30 days. I don't know, I don't think we put as much into it as we should've done. We've done that on albums before now, it's nothing new.

With the phenomenal success of The Dirt, now would seem to be the best time to put the band back together and go out on tour.

We've decided to put the band on hold for 24 months. I'm not even writing music for Motley any more. I think it's going to take these two years to totally get away from everything and everybody and just leave us alone for a while. Let us figure out what we want to do musically. I think it's going to take a serious, serious recharging of the batteries, because they've been completely sucked dry by our own demise. But right now I have no intention of doing anything Motley Crue-related musically at all. In a couple of years the songs will come, the energy will come, the band will come back together, and it's going to be something very spectacular. If we do get back together, then it has to be the four original members; if it doesn't happen, then we've left a great legacy, a trail of needles, drugs and bottles...

So are you saying there's a possibility that Motley Crue might have come to an end?

I don't know, I really don't. I was driving down the road today, coming back home, and I heard Mott The Hoople playing on the radio, and I thought to myself: "Why would a band like that have broken up? That was such a stupid thing to do." And then I thought to myself and it suddenly struck me: "Hold on, look what I've done to Motley Crue..."