Nikki Sixx & Allen Kovac Speak On Netflix's "The Dirt"

[Music] thanks everybody welcome to build I'm your host Ricky Camilleri our next guest is a living legend Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue he's joined by his longtime manager Alan Kovac and they're here to talk about the screen adaptation of the infamous Motley Crue memoir the dirt where we see the band at their absolute best and absolute worst let's take a look it could have happened at anybody but it didn't it happened us [Applause] a new band is gonna be something nobody's ever seen before oh my god those are my pants but they look so much better on me let's just play it what do you think [Music] holy [ __ ] we want to knock people on their asses and we've gotta give him the show I'm talking like a stadium show in the club's the fans that die for some mannequin so let's give it to [Applause] I work for Elektra Records you guys like a record you [Applause] I had managed the scorpions Bon Jovi skid-row kiss but I have never been through what motley crew put me I am sick and tired of not having any fun everything's upside-down and oddly crew no strangers to controversy its Neal was charged with vehicular manslaughter Tommy Lee and Heather Locklear have separated it's a degenerative bone disease nikki sixx has overdosed I know it's amazing [Applause] [Music] all right everybody put your hands together for Nikki Sixx and Alan Kovac guys thanks so much for being here boom let's just all air I'll give you an air one if you'd like oh there it is so even just backstage she got you brought up on that you the the dirt came out how long ago eighteen years ago eighteen years ago and it was very quickly purchased to become a movie right now it not that long after Tom Freston who was head of MTV which is part of Viacom and Paramount flipped out over the book we had put the book on every artists bus there wasn't a facebook or internet back then and they would tell people about the book when they toured as an audience that's where the social happened and he got the book from one of those artists called me up and said I gotta have this I got to make this our first movie and you guys basically exerted a fair amount of creative control right and you wanted it to be done the right way what were you fighting for the last 16 years well I mean we didn't believe that you could tell the story of the band and sort of you know sanitize it what we liked about the movie is that you show these four individual characters that all come from unique and different backgrounds and then we form this almost like a game and that becomes a family especially in my case of coming from a family of divorce etc etc so I feel that when you see the band become like this family unit and then you see a start to fall apart because of our own bad decision making you need to show that so that when we do get our lives together and we get back to that gang mentality you know the four of us and we go on to have a very successful life if you left out stuff that happened to each of us individually it would just be be another be a vh1 movie you know what you guys already did the behind the music at one point yeah but I'm talking about some of the movies at vh1 did which it did one with Def Leppard and meatloaf and and that was fine it just wasn't our vision our vision was always to be transparent to be transparent about all of your transgressions right which and this movie has a very much like a Goodfellas or wolf of wallstreet failed to me where you're sort of seduced by the world and by the XS and by everything these guys are getting away with and then when you come to reach a point or a head where you realize that this stuff hasn't been very good for them or the people around them and it's actually ruining lives I think that stuff is even more pertinent in the time that we live in yes what is it like - I mean it's a completely different time than even when the dirt came out in the way that we talked about that period of time what is it like to watch this movie now and to think about how you lived at that period of time given the context of how we think about this stuff now well I mean it's it's a full picture so you get to see how we got to these bad decisions and then how we got out of them the band has lots of regrets we wouldn't do a movie like this if we were just only celebrating there there's a lot to celebrate about the movie the music's very important the music that we made is still important and we're still making new music we got four new songs coming with this on on a soundtrack so we got 18 songs and I just think that we you have to be honest about decisions that we made and then how we got to where we're at today and I think that this also this is not about 2019 it's about the 80s and so we wanted to make a very specific important potent movie about a period it was very different than it is now and as a producer I'm gonna give a lot of credit to Julian Ricky Warren and Erik Olson who are Co producers they came on after paramount and paramount was years and years of trying to get us to make a sanitized movie the band wanted to send a message saying look what can happen to you your family your friends and they didn't feel that was box office and that's not the movie we wanted to make and Julie and Rick had done Boardwalk Empire which was an era piece and you saw the excess in that film of what was going on as people were smuggling alcohol and the underbelly and we have to give them a lot of credit I know you've seen the film and getting those messages out with filmmakers finding the actors that can help magnify the message and it's a thin line that the film has to walk at times between now I wouldn't say necessarily celebrating the excess but finding humor in the excess and being entertaining and then at the same time showing that it's fairly dangerous and is leading to the destruction world and fairly dangerous but he died for to me yes yeah it's also not just destructive to the people who are hurting themselves but to those around them even just sort of the random people that have to clean a hotel at the end of the day or the women who are working and who are who are separate points you know we always said that this movie if you removed the band and made it about a sports team or any other group of men or it could be men and women the decisions said they made it's the same story it's the story of survival and when the band came out no one would sign us to a record deal no one believed in us and we followed the punk bands which was create our own record label find a distribution company and so right from the get-go we were very independent but we also didn't have a lot of strong people around us and we're very strong-willed people you know the band is very potent and we didn't have anybody around us even someone like Alan today who will work with us and get us over obstacles back then every time we did something wrong we sold more records and we got another pat on the back so like we're like being trained to be dysfunctional but you guys who are also this is important and I think people forget it these guys were nineteen to twenty something that they weren't like in their 30s or 40s they had instant success and the eras of the 60s and 70s certainly celebrated what they took to access and which we loved that that was you know we're we're like kids from the 70s so we are emulating as well as just being vacuums and sucking at all because the 80s were excessive without Motley Crue yeah you know what I mean I've told people this that we would like check into a hotel in Atlanta and there would be people doing lines of blow drinking girls grabbing guys taking him in the band we hadn't even checked in yet so don't blame us you know it was and and we was this a party waiting for you guys everywhere in the world during a certain time during the time this movie is representing whether it was Russia or South America or anywhere in America it was excessive there was a lot of money happening and people really celebrating and I don't know why I've never actually tried to figure out why it was that way Alan might know more than me well I went to lunch just yesterday with a very successful realtor in Manhattan and she said that she would go to the rainbow and the whiskey and the Roxy and that that excess was her access to that she and society were all in the wrong place whether it was how she treated herself as a woman how men treated her and that she said wow you know a movie like this is really gonna help people see that if you learn from your mistakes you can do great things there's a reckoning that happens within within the movie as well sure and there's no judgment on my part if I was 20 in 1982 and you gave me a million dollars and a lot of cocaine I would have a lot of fun too I'm not gonna deny that you know I'm curious you said that you followed around the punk bands or not followed them around but tried to follow their those of DIY but you even hear it mentioned in the movie that you guys specifically didn't want to be Punk you didn't want to sound Punk what did the punk bands of LA think of Motley Crue and it's early days in its infancy that's a great question even some of those early songs as a punk fan I think some of those early Motley Crue songs are very not similar but they're closely aligned and you get very low yield that energy there as well well we loved punk rock and cheap trick now if you listen good punks love cheap trick that's right and if you listen to some of the early songs on the on the first record and even a little bit throughout our career you'll hear the simplicity and the aggression but you heard the melody and so for us we would we would like when we had this apartment that's in the in the movie you Tommy had a record player thank God we would had nothing we'd have a TV so we hit his record player on cinder blocks sitting on it and you keep all the vinyl underneath it and move it on you know first ac/dc album then we would hit on the pistols and then we would put on cheap trick then we put on Elton John then we'd put on the Ramones and this is the environment that musically that we lived in and that we were writing music like and to because I believe all great songwriters are emulating other great songwriters until they find their own path and then people are like wow that I mean unless you're talking about paul mccartney and john lin and the guys like that but a lot of bands are saying that's what like really turns me on and they're trying to copy it and then eventually it turns into their own sound but even McCartney and Lennon were doing that as well early on they're copying some of Motown songs and soul sister and then they're copying Bob Dylan as well in the stones obviously way yeah but yeah exactly yeah you know one of the things that we hear I think it's your character saying is that there's just something about when these four guys get together there is something that you can't articulate there is an energy and a magic do you guys still feel that when you get together to record four songs for for the movie I I didn't know if we would talk again and I never thought I never thought we would ever record again the the end of the final tour we just were not in sync with each other we were on stage was really interesting we'd be out of sync off stage and then step on that stage and that thing that you're talking about would happen and when I went to New Orleans with Tommy to you know beyond this beyond the set and you know go over stuff and we were fine-tuning stuff and weari bond it because we were really close me and Tommy were like best friends for for a long time and we just started to see life differently and it happens and we've known each other almost 40 years like men and women are going to change and we had different belief systems and you know I had gone through things that he couldn't understand like my drug addiction and then recovery and when we were together we started like having those feelings like what it was like when this band first started and I had some song ideas I told him I go I don't know why but they're kind of sounding like early Motley and he was like what are you gonna do with them I go I actually don't know what I'm gonna do with them I've just been you know writers right that's what I always say and Tommy City had some ideas and we reached out to Vince and Mick and Mick had some ideas and so we got together and it was like it was magic man I mean if you have you heard the new stuff no I haven't no it's just it's real it's not super quantized to death we got Bob Rock in there cuz Bob knows how to push us he pushed Tommy as a drummer pushed me as a bass player and we cut the bass and drums live off the floor and Bob had produced dr. feelgood's record and stuff on her greatest hits you had a chemistry with them and speaking of chemistry I think what brought Tommy and Nicky together was watching the actors because Motley's very unique and they own their own music they own all the videos the actors were able to look at b-roll hundreds of hours of b-roll they weren't on camera and who they really were and I thought it was a great call on Jeff Jermaine the directors part to have them stay in character the whole three months so when I would watch them walk off beside they'd argue about how they were interacting and it sounded like these guys Nicki you had said that you wanted young actors who were not they're not necessarily unknowns Machine Gun Kelly playing Tommy Lee's like I wouldn't say he's a massive star just on him or anything but relatively unknown he's not Ryan Gosling or something trying to play the park right but it was important for you as a producer to have guys who were somewhat on somewhat unknowns right yeah I mean from the very get go we believe that if we attached young hungry well trained a little bit experienced not like decades long of experience that they would be able to throw themselves into this and not be worried about the repercussions not be worried about what people might think of them and that's what Alan was saying is they really throw themselves into the characters and it was really interesting one night I went out to dinner with all the guys and the actors they yeah with the actors and me and Tommy were there and three of the guys were going out and if I go out and do whatever well what we used to do and the actor that plays Mick I always say his name wrong it's Owen Owen he stayed back to the hotel and he just liked the band he's the bad guy in Game of Thrones and the manager at the time Doc McGhee is David Constable from billions the sea oh so there really are actors here but they're not the prefabbed stage theatre actors they're actors that were learning with the film they were watching of motley and Jeff as a director I gotta tell the director story because David Fincher who is a just very successful director originally was the person that was going to direct this film I'm kind of fascinated to see what that would look like well he had done videos for many of my artists at that era and as we talk to him more and more we found that making a 90 or 100 million dollar movie wouldn't have the edge of Boogie Nights or what you see in this movie and Jeff was introduced to us by Julian and he had been famous for Jackass and that's the last thing we wanted to do is a jackass type movie but he sold us on the fact that he was part of the Sunset Strip experience that he was a fan knew every song and that he needed to make a real movie and this was more important to him than anyone else will meet and he sold us we always root for the underdog this band always roots for the underdog we've always been about supporting new music supporting new artists and I think there's a part of us that we still feel like underdogs I love the fact that the Queen movie came out and did so great and now Motley Crue's coming out and then people are like comparing it it's almost like we're the underdog again in the film business and I love the Queen movie and I'm really happy that we did end up at Netflix I'm really proud of Netflix for having the courage to make an honest film and I'm glad that we didn't go with Paramount even though they're an amazing company and they had the foresight to believe that rock music was so important that you could make a movie about in this movies almost generated a billion dollars so that tells us a lot about Society you know if prefab music is you know disposable you know a lot of pop music is really great but it's very tuned to hit this audience and then move on it's almost like the a DD audience and and rock music gets under your skin and lives with you forever I read an article recently where it's like rock music is the only music that stays with you for your whole life even though you might start listening to country or you might like hip-hop too but rock music is you know they see a rock and roll is dead it's kind of we all laugh about it because it's not dead it always comes back everything it actually never goes away that's true so we know what I mean it just it kind of it lives underneath the skin and I see things like the Grammys they don't have rock music on I see other artists get upset about that now that's not really the point of being in a rock band Rock being a rock bands not to be popular it's to be real and that's what this film is the pop song has like 9.1 riders on it so it's manufactured by definition and how many of them have careers for 40 years you know how many of them can keep selling like Led Zeppelin if you look at streaming 80% of streaming is catalogue so what happens is people that are younger stream more they have more time as they get older they need a credit card and they get a job and they have families and they start getting into different kinds of music whether it's blues or R&B or it's rock or whatever it is you know I've managed the Bee Gees and Duran Duran and meatloaf and The Cranberries I've never managed a band like this does that a compliment yeah I'm not sure well I was six eight and had hair when I first met him now five seven and don't but what I'm getting at is a band that has the courage to say we were wrong but we have done in the past is not what we are today I mean nikki has not said one word about his book and the things he's done for opiate awareness and he's doing a musical right now that you're doing a musical yes it should be out probably the beginning of next year spring yes spring and you know it's been for me my addiction was maybe one of the greatest things that ever happened to me because I recovered and then I had to become self-aware and then I had to go back and look at my past and figure out how I got there what made me make those decisions and I can look at what's going on today in society with the opiate crisis and I think that I can make a difference and if we can do for the opiate crisis with this musical what Brent did for HIV then it's that will be the greatest feeling in the world to look at people and go that we made a difference we gave you the keys to freedom because opiate addiction is usually ends in death and that's something that we would like to turn around opiate addiction is oftentimes obviously there's lots of factors that come into play that can cause someone that can lead someone down the path toward toward addiction especially opiate addiction but oftentimes the opiates are a mask for a lot of pain that people are in and a question has been asked a lot I don't know I don't think you'll have the answer to this necessarily but I'll pose it to you is that what is it about being an American that drives us so close or should it drives such a need to mask pain when it comes with opiates when it comes to other drugs I mean no other country in the world has the same kind of problem when it comes to drugs and it can't just be supply and demand it's a global issue 100% I think that it's pain medication is very important it's one of the greatest things that was invented I've had to have a lot of surgeries because I really messed myself up on stage and I don't take that back diving off the top of amps breaking guitars I had to have my shoulder basically reconstructed last year and the bicep was torn off this side I had to have really crazy surgery coming up after we're done with the movie and I'm gonna need to use pain medication for a short amount of time to get my bought so I can heal so it's when it keeps being prescribed over prescribed and it comes from a kid who plays football in junior high high school and he hurts his back and he's prescribed something to get him through that pain and next thing you know he's can't get the medication anymore but he's become addicted so then he goes to the street and now we have fentanyl which we have to deal with fentanyl is so potent and drug dealers are lacing street heroin of fentanyl to give it a little more kick because they want their product to be you know consumed and be that the hottest dealer on the block basically and people are dying we lost more in people more people died of opiate abuse last year than traffic accidents and this guy for 11 years has been trying to explain to the world whether it was speaking in Washington DC with Patrick Kennedy to bipartisan groups whether it's this musical op-eds going on television he's too modest you know the bottom line is he knows what it can do kids grandparents who get prescribed it or OD'ing in Canada the guy that's going to do projection for the musical didn't really know what we were talking about and we told him we wanted to lower everyone's fees so we could go to a hundred cities not 20 and then Broadway or Broadway in 20 cities and he lowered his fee in half trucks busing companies everyone's doing it participating which is so nice to see the ball rolling in that direction I sometimes get really frustrated that we're now calling an epidemic it has been an epidemic since the 60s it's been in the mainstream for decades upon decades but now it's it's it peeking and it's a perfect time to strike and hopefully make a difference we have a lot of partners including the Surgeon General is going to be involved and it does tie into the movie in the fact that you know my part of the story is in the movie is there's shows my addiction I'm trying to take things that happened in my life and turn them into positives can I ask you know we don't necessarily see it in the movie when it happens in the film it seems as though your character has already found it and has and is already in the throes of addiction how was it something that was just around eventually as you guys were partying or was it something that you sought out I remember telling Alan this and I had these heroes growing up and whether it was William Burroughs the writer Bukowski known as a extreme alcoholic another writer I was influenced by Beat Generation writers yeah more than actual lyricist from bands there's some that really influenced me but I love Beat Generation and I loved a lot of the bands and so I loved the New York Dolls with Johnny Thunders is well-documented heroin addict and he died from it and guys like Keith Richards the stones the list goes on and on and on not to paint them as the bad guys but I was young and impressionable and when the first opportunity came to try heroin we were all partying our asses off and this one one person said to me do you want to try this and and I didn't even blink I was like well if all these guys do of course I do this is what this is Who I am I am embody this lifestyle I embody those writers and we see what happened from that I would like to be part of the message that when somebody else hears hey do you want to take this do you want to snort this you want to shoot this do you want to smoke it they're gonna go no I wish I would have had somebody out there that I looked up to saying those words and that's what the musical is gonna be a driver for yeah absolutely we have a question coming in from Twitter it is how many scripts how many script versions did it take to get the version that finally made the movie 3 and then a Polish bad not bad right that's pretty good because there's so many techniques that are used in the film as well that I would imagine a lot more versions going into it just in terms of the fact that you have several different voiceovers you have fourth wall breaking with multiple characters some of which are bigger characters than other character or smaller characters and other characters it's not a that is not an easy thing to do so it shows that Jeff is a terrific director and he deserves a lot of props from the get-go there was two movies that we kept referencing it was Goodfellas with the narration and you got we got that Jeff supported that and it was the grime and the grit and the saturation of Boogie Nights and those were the two movies there wasn't a rock movie where who said we need to make a movie like this rock movie we wanted to make something had that feeling cuz we felt that would forward the message Goodfellas is arguably a rock movie though it is a rock question sorry I had to write my notes down I hope I see the two of you on stage getting an Oscar next year for this although you're not into a word you're gonna deserve it I know it and I did get Netflix because you told me to on Twitter so Nikki my idol you've been in two successful bands you've written books you're amazing at photography you've done so many things in your life you've had the radio show you have your fifth child on the way congratulations Congrats thank you you do your own social media which is amazing you can tell cuz I misspell a lot we don't care you're 60 years old they look at you I mean beautiful you're just amazing the things you've been through you've died and come back to life can I just carry you around in my pocket yes beetus because when I'm having a down day cuz everybody has a [ __ ] day yeah I I love what you're saying makes me feel good with you so my question to you is what else do you have left besides becoming president I mean like you've done everything what is next for you do you have anything else that we don't really know about in the works do you ever think you might tour again I yeah that's a part of house good he's an addict but an addict in a good way now he can't stop being creative he's working on a new book he's working on a new podcast he's working on many many other things and it's an addict in a good way and I'm really proud of him I did look Thank You Alan I appreciate that I opened my closet about three months ago the closet that you have or the part of the closet where you put stuff you just you don't know what to do with it and I opened it and my stage boots fell out and I just was like oh there you are and I called Alan I was like I kind of itching to put those boots on again and he's like you don't have to do that like we're doing all these other projects one thing I love about Alan is he hears me as an artist he helps guide me as an artist and he also tells me sometimes when to pull back and wait for the moment to strike I will to her again and Alan knows that because Alan told me and he said yeah we're gonna find a time to do that and you know we have new music I've just done four new songs with 6:00 a.m. really magical I think we're gonna go and record another song as well we have a greatest hits that's gonna tie into the musical and if there's a time maybe for 6 a.m. we might go out and do I don't know a couple weeks three weeks worth of shows maybe do festivals next year or something so I'm kind of starting to get that itch again because so much going on and I it's very important to me to be in the moment focused on my wife and this baby that's coming because I I missed a lot being on the road and that's that's one of my regrets and it's hard you're a successful band and people just keep going just one more week one more month and next thing you know you've missed a birthday you've missed Easter you've missed stuff so I really have been home for the last few years really focusing on my kids and my family and that means so much to me because if you know me you know I didn't have a good family and I'm trying to I it's it's it's important to me but I might slip my ass in those leather pants soon okay guys we got to wrap things up congratulations on the movie I imagine it feels incredible to finally have the story out there in the images out on screen it comes to Netflix March 22nd give a huge round of applause for Nikki and Alan let's hear [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: BUILD Series

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Keywords: AOL Advertising, BUILDseriesNYC, AOL Inc, AOL, AOLBUILD, #Aolbuild, build speaker series, build, aol build, content, aolbuildlive, BUILDSeries, Ricky Camilleri, Motley Crue, Nikki Sixx, Netflix, the dirt, machine gun kelly, netflix film, tommy lee, vince neil, Allen Kovac, mick mars, The Dirt film

Id: tnk7vTEfZ4c

Length: 34min 53sec (2093 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 05 2019