Nikki Sixx: Advice from a man who's died twice

and i'm happy to have nikki sixx with me in the studio today how are you doing doing well what's going on uh not too much man i i i don't know where to start here okay we've got one of the most storied questions at the beginning because it's a long story we're gonna go back to the beginning but we're not gonna start at the beginning um you know well let's just go through a few things here you started out playing some hard rock bands in l.a sure you formed motley crew yeah actually started in punk rock bands punk rock bands yeah way back in the 70s which is where you got your your base style yeah exactly yeah uh a couple of best-selling memoirs along the way and you're and you're making music with yet another band yeah 6 a.m yeah still in the game yeah a lot of guys stop uh you know at a certain point you're still going why why i never understood that because uh if you're in it for the money you're in it for the wrong reason and if you're in it for the short game you're in it for the wrong reason um i got in it when i was a kid i didn't even know i was in it because i was into creativity and that's why i write books that's why i do photography it's why i write songs it's why i do everything um i it's about being creative you have to chase the the passion you gotta follow your bliss and everything else comes it really does come and a lot of people have a hard time with that and that means you have to jump off the cliff you gotta take a chance and uh yeah there's rocks below yeah it's scary but that's the joy did you is it because you started taking risks when you were younger is do you think that's part of it i mean i'm just trying to figure out why you the way you put it is so simple right it is simple i mean it could have to do with the fact that i was abandoned by my father so i i had this this uh mistrust uh so i started to believe in myself and my mom the same thing happened with my mom this is my grandparents they love me very much they treated me great they they did everything for me but they they weren't my mom and dad they were my grandparents and i owe everything to them but the same time there was something broken and i started uh traveling a lot because we were very poor we lived in trailers we went from farm to farm my grandfather worked in gas stations when i lived in anthony new mexico i had to walk two miles on a dirt road to the bus stop which was a corner of dirt and dirt i was the only white kid it was all latinos i got bullied i got picked on that's where i learned to fight and through it all you know i i was like this isn't this is not everything like life can not only be this at that young age and i started writing i started writing and i started kind of following these ideas before music you started writing yes okay when i when i got to seattle early 15 maybe years old living with my grandparents in idaho i had stacks of journals and she was married to this guy at the time and um he had a a guitar in the corner okay it had three strings on it it was an acoustic guitar that's it i loved music it's like there's a guitar and i love music if you love music that's all you need it's like wow look at that so i sat down and i started just going ding ding ding and i was like wow that sounds pretty cool and i looked down at some of my words and i started reciting them and and i moved my finger and it was at that moment that was all i needed was to move my finger and it changed the melody and and that kind of started the whole journey i probably would have just been an author or who knows what but music is a way to serve up these words and stories and then of course you get better and better you start playing in bands and you realize what all that's about so it's very exciting but it started early with me that's an interesting story because i heard one just yesterday about another songwriter and he had exactly the same story but on the piano as soon as he moved his hands and changed chords he realized this is a song this is a song yeah it's amazing what about what about the music you were listening to at that time as a teenager what was that well i mean that was in the in the 70s i was born in 1958 so in you know 1978 i was already in los angeles so we have to go back to about 1972 and uh 73 74 you know queen bowie rolling stones black sabbath t-rex british uh what they would call glam rock uh big hooks big melodies uh you know exciting looking people you know i used to think to myself where did these people live like what what where is this because i want to go there they did seem otherworldly yeah and that and and that was you know i started you start you always emulate your heroes yeah that's a great era for rock music great era great era i read that you bought your first base with money from selling a stolen guitar yes and then that's how you i was a lovely child and you fell in love with the bass with the punk style yeah how who were your sort of idols around playing bass well you play you know i i um hung out with these guys remember i kind of started learning how to write songs and there were like these bands in seattle i was writing lyrics for their songs i was like the bernie topping you know i was like all these punk rock bands i'm like here are some words you know what's trademarking i don't know and um it was exciting for me and then started hanging with these guys and started like learning to play more and um went and used to play this gold top les paul every day on my bus i'd take two buses to get to school in seattle and um one of the buses right in front of a guitar store so i'd play this gold top every day one day i was like i got to have that guitar we were very poor we lived in kind of what would be equivalent to projects in seattle and um i asked my friend if i could borrow his guitar case and i just stuck the guitar in the guitar case and closed it up and actually asked for an application for work guy when got the application i ran out the door never been so scared in all my life and then you know got to hang out with my friends and they're like well we need a bass player so i got rid of it and i got a bc rich okay and that was like my first base and uh i always wanted a gibson thunderbird so i figured out how to finagle how to take the stolen guitar turn it into a bc rich and get myself a thunderbird i started playing little punk rock bands and uh i got busted a rolling stones concert because i was an entrepreneur with two ounces of chocolate mescaline i used to make a nice profit right there and i had a choice to go to to go to juvie until i was uh of age or um my mom just signed for me to you know be on my own okay and i had a shattered relationship with mom she signed i took a greyhound bus to idaho worked the fields uh moving irrigation pipes saved up more money had a guitar a boom box a couple cassettes and took off for los angeles and i got off at hollywood and vine balloon i used to be a greyhound bus station there went to live with my uncle who was the president of capitol records and that was the beginning of me working in record stores hanging out with other musicians and just you know interjecting myself into the la scene it was fashion it was art it was music it was it was beautiful the 70s in los angeles was an exciting time punk rock was kind of coming to a peak a new wave was coming around which was boring and you know my reaction to that was you know doing this other band called london which was glam punk okay and i wanted more sabbath i wanted more pistols i wanted more uh i guess aggression i was angry at that point i felt rejected i was going through all those things you go through and my answer was motley crue motley crue that you helped found in 1981 tommy lee mick mars vince neil that band really brought heavy uh hard rock heavy metal to a wider audience there was a lot of uh opportunity for me in motley crue we had a huge audience and on the surface uh the 80s were about a lot of things that were great about the 80s the economy was booming it was you know sex drugs and rock and roll in the best possible way that that could be and it was a celebration of an era but you know i told you i had a bit of a shattered pass i was a dark poet it was bukowski for me you know it was burrows so i would write songs like wildside and everybody go yeah man we're on the wild side but if you go underneath you've got bernie topping in there it's a dark tale of the streets it says a baby cries a cop dies another night on the wild side east l.a at midnight papa won't be home tonight he was just found dead with his best friend's wife so that was always my intent as a lyricist was to take stories and bring them up to the surface where everybody can celebrate them and it takes a special listener to listen deeper and that made that band special a lot of things made that band special um but it was always this underlying bit of hope which is a continuation for me being in success yes i am i mean primal screams about my mom and my dad and you know and how i got through that and i read a book by arthur genov okay which was on primal scream therapy and i actually found it because john lennon had mentioned it so i'm like well if john lennon read it it must be interesting it was fascinating for me and ended up writing a song about it so historically whether i was in punk bands uh glam bands coming out of the punk movement starting motley crew there's always been this like rough and tumble honesty and bam there it is rise you know there it is kickstart my heart you know you you you can get through it all we're in this marrying those two together the hope but also the hard edge yeah with the the i don't really feel i hear a lot i i feel hope in some songs and then i feel edge and turmoil and others and i love those too and i think it's the marrying of those that's a special experience for the listener what else do you think it was that made motley crue so successful you've talked about each of you bringing something different musically we were four individual uh personalities uh tommy lee is a great drummer uh mick's a great guitar player vince has the most unique voice i think my songwriting and lyrics uh it was a perfect time a perfect storm and that what made us original is also what made us uh understand that it was time to disband we have a live uh concert film coming out uh i think it's called the end at this point but you know things change but i think i like that um and tommy said in there you know we're four strong personalities and it's hard to agree on stuff and um that happens yeah like it happens it's creatively it's really rich i'm not sad yeah i'm not sad at all i'm proud i'm happy and i would have been sad if we would have stayed together another 10 years and i would have been in here talking to you and you go so you know tell me how is it you know going well i'm playing the uh the rib joint down the street with just only me in the band yeah you know and it's called motley crew 3 or something i i like integrity you know i'd rather i'd really rather go out on my feet than my knees well that being said how was that last concert uh motley crew concert i mean it was hip it was cool but was it emotional it was i mean that's a big night that's in l.a it's a big nights in l.a uh vince cried um which i thought was really special because i have seen vince only cry a few times that was really nice to see that i felt ready i felt proud when i was walking to the stage i was like we did it we played at the starwood january 17th 1981 nobody cared we couldn't get a record deal and i say we couldn't get arrested actually the only thing we could get was arrested our first show ended in a fist fight in the audience and it wasn't the band fighting each other it was the band fighting people that you know were messing with us and that was the heart and spirit of that ban and i was able to walk on that stage and go this is the last night on earth for motley crew and i'm really proud of where we're at and i wasn't sad i wasn't um i wasn't anything that's the problem i wasn't in the moment i was in the moment yeah i got off stage and um i saw my kids and my wife and they were uh i had a little dressing room and i had some catering for friends i you know walked in and they're like you know how are you and i was like oh i'm great let me just get out of my clothes and let's like jump in the bus because i was going to go to mexico the next morning for a much-needed vacation i go are you sad and i was like that's no i guess i'm not i'm i'm happy i'm like i'm happy that's a good sign it's an interesting sign i don't know i don't i'm very compartmentalized as a man any time my life i've had a relationship that ends i i actually when it ends it it means it's really over um i will take a bullet for you i will be there for anything and everything but when it's over it's over and and i don't think that's a bad thing i don't think that's a bad way to be because you know everybody has their own emotional capacity right and so if you want to be present over here sometimes you can't also be over there i can't have a wife and a girlfriend i can't do that like i can't have i could never have two girlfriends um it's very hard to be in two bands so motley crue is the mother ship mother crew got all my love and 6am was a project that we did really great stuff too when motley crue wasn't working now i have a hundred percent of my heart uh and my time and my energy and my vision in 6am with james and dj and it's very exciting um just back to motley crue just just for one second because this is an amazing trajectory from fighting with the crowd on that first show to uh you know staples center on your final show but along the way it wasn't always smooth sailing no um and it's never and it's never going to be when you're in a gang yeah it never is going to be when you're you're in a gang but you know you've written about all the ups and downs you broke up more than once got back together there was everything illness jail time you name it yeah what kept you guys going during the difficult times i in my heart i i believe it was the music it was the music it wasn't the money the band's made enough money over the years to you know knock it on the head in 1985. um you know we've sold out arenas and stadiums for decades so it was never really about that and you were wise with your money too i've been very wise with my money um i learned because i was so poor um probably out of fear to always take 20 of the net net net and always put that away and never touch it so if i made a dollar in my case i'm in the 50 tax bracket that means i got 30 to live on to do whatever i want to do so 20 since the beginning always went into a special place and we worked it now why do i do that do i do that to sound like a musician who's bragging about his finances and to make people feel bad absolutely no what i'm saying is i'd learn from somebody very smart that if i do that i can make uh decisions in my life that are right for my life and not motivated by money right i say to musicians all the time there's a couple young bands coming up that are blowing up and i said it to them i could see their you know eyes roll back in their head it's really hard you have to not you can't look at this dollar and go i made a buck you got to look at that dollar and go i made 30 cents and on that 30 cents i got to decide where i want to live what my lifestyle is and are you going to make another 30 cents uh you know the next year and the next year and the next year and then how do you spread that out to live i've never had to make a decision in my life based since i was a kid when i had nothing i had nothing to lose but now as a father as a husband as you know someone who does radio photography i have a new band i don't have to do anything based on anything other than strict passion and when i wrote the heroin diaries people said queer suicide when i showed people the photography from this is gonna hurt i had people pull back from the photography and go this is like people aren't gonna get that but when i did book signings five thousand kids not adults but kids lined up with the book that would cry and say i feel like i have strength from this book because i'm not the only one that has a weight issue i have a overbite i'm not the prettiest kid in in school based on uh what other people say and you could and you could go there because you can make creative decisions and didn't have to make it and guess what what if i did it and blew it yeah what if i came on and i talked to you and you said hey that's 6 a.m thing you did dude that's your tanked i say well you know we got another one in us we got another bullet in the chamber well how can you do that compassion i i feel like i have to say this i feel like that might be interesting for people to hear coming from you that's the kind of financial shrewdness right right there for people that are kind of familiar with your old lifestyle sure they might be surprised to hear that i think they would be surprised to hear that and um i i will say it again that if you are doing anything in your life please invest in yourself if you're a man and you're the head of a household and you are getting married and you want to have a child and you're 30 you're gonna live to be 80 you got 50 years in front of you but more importantly your child's got like longer and their children have longer so you know make make wise decisions if people in our economy made wiser decisions we put less strain on our society you know and everyone doesn't get that opportunity listen when we were coming i was on food stamps with my mom right i ended up sleeping in parks because i was probably crazy i said i got an idea and i'm gonna go for it i couldn't get much lower than where i was so i had nowhere to go but up it's it's the drive and the passion but at some point if you get an opportunity try to try to think about the future you've been forthcoming about so much of your life and one thing that you've written about uh is surviving two serious heroin overdoses um i wanna ask you uh if you feel like there's something about you that allowed you to survive that or if you were just one of the lucky ones what do you think well i mean when you're an addict you have more than just a couple you know bad experiences um that lifestyle the people in that lifestyle are let's say don't have your best interest at heart i um experience multiple seizures from cocaine uh smoking cocaine shooting cocaine um heroin overdoses you know all kinds of crazy experiences guns being held in my head remember i'm one of the biggest bands in the world at this time hello wow but dixon's a [ __ ] demons man they are just waiting to get you and you know mine got out of the box and i lost control and ego's part of that you know so you know for me my final overdose ended me up um dead for two minutes and um thank god even though i don't think it was god it was a paramedic for the uh adrenaline shots into my chest i i came back from that my doctors say when they do my blood work and check my livers they're like you're like a 26 year old and i'm like yeah yeah i don't need cialis i'm solid but the i don't know and i take care of myself and i eat good and i try to take care of my body um and i don't know i don't know but i feel that i let go the last time that i ever shot heroin overdose i feel like i let go i just said i'm not gonna fight anymore and it's something about in life when you let go of the rope like it's the other guy falls on his ass you spend so much time in this tug of war and i just said okay you guys win and all the demons fell on their ass wow yeah i'm trying to imagine that like what do you mean by let go like you i just i was like you know i can't fix my relationship with my father he's dead i can't fix my relationship with my mom those were her decisions um i had to put the baggage down you know it's like imagine a guy carrying around like you know 18 suitcases strapped to his back i'm like a donkey like on the middle of the freeway pulling all this stuff and everyone's like dude let go of the baggage was it people telling you that you need to do this or did it just click in your head like i can't do this anymore well people were telling me before but of course i was smarter than them it's only through that moment of clarity whatever it was that i said i give up how has that shaped your view now i have a stubborn streak and sometimes i get on it and i i lose my patience and i start to become what i call a tank you have two options you can be a tank you can be a foot soldier you can be helicopter a helicopter has great opportunity to have strategy and strategy in life is important whether it's making music or having relationships and you can look up and go okay let me let me survey the next few months and how i'm going to do it and how much time am i putting into my relationship and then hey i need to put time into something i'm passionate about and it goes on and on and on but sometimes i find myself down in the weeds and i get frustrated you know and my wife says if you bring up that tank and helicopter one more time i'm as i think it's a good metaphor to slap those words out of your mouth that's a good metaphor i think i go that's abuse i want to ask you uh now about this this new project again is to bookend this thing um what's special about this mix of guys 6am creatively musically is as much as it sounds like a bumper sticker we're best friends i never had that before you know i was in a band i was in a gang these guys are so talented and we're so close and yes is always the answer so if i'm working with you and your dj ashman my guitar player and i say uh hey dj i got th he says yes michael you don't even know what i'm gonna say he goes i don't care what it is it's yes and that's how we work we work in a circle every idea is a good idea and we flush them out and then people start doing layers and jamming and creating it's like a think tank and then some guy plays something on guitar and a piano comes out and all this stuff and i'll be honest with you if you take your ego out of the creative process the creative process will reveal itself and it will say this is not good you don't have to tell anybody everybody will go hmm this one's not really it's not really sparking right yeah and uh you know the ego you know i would say your ego's not your amigo and i had this song called madrid in flames it's been around for a long time it's a very cool thing i think i actually wrote it in madrid you know looking out of a hotel and i think there was some flames as simple as that right okay we've been floating around for years and we're writing this this double album and so i got this idea and start playing it for the guys and dj that's really cool he starts playing starts sounding like kind of like a metallic a black album like wow that's really cool so we kind of mapped it out james and dj uh went up to hit dj's house to cut some guitars and they were gonna flush the id out james came back down i said oh man i can't wait to hear a madrid in flames he goes well you know it kind of stunk the place up they go oh he goes yeah it didn't uh it just didn't flush out and so i could have said i don't understand why my idea is not working or i could have said okay well i trust you guys my partner james was playing the chords still on guitar while we were doing something and he started singing this melody line and this song ended up going from that to having a few different chords and being the the like the the beginning of a song that ended up sounding kind of like blackbird by the beatles and it's on the second record who knew if he is let go it will reveal itself and that's easier to do with friends yeah it's really easy to do with friends so i can depend upon them they can depend upon me a lot of our songs are conversations might be a frustration observation um lives the beautiful people which is the number one hit for us started with uh dj had a riff and james had this idea for a melody and i was on my way to the studio and i grabbed something out of the grocery store in people magazine was there and i saw it it's the 100 most beautiful people i said okay well that pisses me off so i grabbed it went to the studio and i put it on the table and i kind of slapped it on the table you know and they looked at me like what's up with you and i go does that piss you off and the dj goes who are they to say who's beautiful and it's like the lies the beautiful people and that song was born and people still to this day come up to me and go you know what makes me feel really good that i'm not part of that list now i have to say there's nothing wrong with that list george clooney is a good looking man he's a sophisticated man he's smart he's talented man but it's okay to not just look like george i don't look like george so it's got to be like the like people magazines like one billion most beautiful people and like you can be black and asian and tattooed and bald and fat and like that's my idea of beauty uh okay finally before we wrap up i've kept you way too long um you're one of the lead songwriters in this project as you were with motley crue what's inspiring your songwriting this man it's interesting um i'm not i'm is everything's the third well the way it works is me james and dj write the music and then me and james write the lyrics it's exciting for me to have a partner james a very talented lyricist but i've been uh handling the lyric writing for over 30 years alone and in motley crue so it's exciting that's kind of how it works and dj's guitar might influence a melody line which might spark me to say a word that then james writes a lyric for and then i flesh out a bridge and it's just so nobody has like separate responsibilities sometimes james james is the producer um and james will say okay i need you to do this or dj i need you to do this and sometimes i'll say hey can you throw a quick rough vocal down on that so maybe i can spark an idea for a lyric so it's it's always like jamming and because we trust each other no one's like ego gets involved it's pretty magical i gotta tell you uh 6am music is exciting to make and exciting to play and making a double album was a challenge of a lifetime before i let you go we've been going through your whole life and your whole story uh you gave some financial advice what's another piece of advice you would give most important piece of advice you would give to somebody starting out in music right now in music in music well i would say if you want to be in a band you want to be an original band right because that's really the only way to to get into the game you need to write original music and what do i mean by that i mean original not looking at the format and going well this is what's happening right now because by the time you get there they already changed their they already changed our game plan follow and and find and listen and copy very important copy great songwriters now you're going to tell yourself who's a great songwriter i think freddie mercury is a great songwriter i think um you know ian hunter from other hoople great lyricist i could do my list and then i sit there on cheap trick for example like i love cheap trick i need to kind of write something like this and i love ian hunter i ended up writing this song called on with the show at the time i you know was really struggling with this identity of being born with the name frank and my dad's name was frank and he abandoned me so i changed my name so the opening line says frankie died just the other night some say it was suicide so what i did was i copied my heroes i made it original and then i in injected something personal into it and i always say to young songwriters and i've had them you know say ah i want to do that put your life in the song and other people will relate put your life put your experiences but your heartbreak your love your passion and the song and you know harry nielsen was a friend of mine and he had this song um it was called me and my arrow and one day i said to to harriet says hey man i love that song what's that about he goes i i had a dog named arrow so i he was so passionate about it that it became this huge thing for him and i'm just saying if you're a songwriter put yourself on the line put yourself on the line thank you nikki cool man

Channel: Q with Tom Power

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Keywords: nikki sixx interview, nikki sixx interview 2016, nikki sixx interview on drugs, nikki sixx 2016, nikki sixx, Nikki Six, motley crue nikki sixx, nikki, rock, waving flag, vince, sixx, motley crue

Id: aAQ8fDvMrtY

Length: 32min 37sec (1957 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 08 2016