Nikki Sixx Won't Talk To Gene Simmons

11/01/07 5:00pm

by Caitlin Hotchkiss (CHARTattack)

"The last thing I want to be is the guy saying, 'Say no to drugs!' No. Not interested in being that guy."

It's a good thing, too, because it's doubtful that anybody would ever believe it. The speaker in question, after all, is Nikki Sixx, best known as the bassist for Motley Crue. Even music fans far removed from '80s hair metal know of the Crue's reputation as kings of excess. And in his heyday, Sixx was legendary — an alcoholic workaholic who ingested, snorted and injected every illegal substance in sight, to the eventual point of certifiable death.

Jump forward 20 years, though, and you'll find a much happier, healthier and completely clean Sixx, albeit one reluctant to be sobriety's poster boy. Only the fine lines and slight circles around his eyes ("Sleep is overrated," he quips with a half-grin) give away the fact that he's pushing 50 years old.

Fortunately, time has been as kind to his creativity as it's been to his good looks. Sixx is touring again, but this time it's in support of the Heroin Diaries, his dual project of print biography and accompanying rock opera soundtrack.

"I'm having people come up all the time to me and saying, 'Thank you for writing this book. It's my story,'" Sixx comments.

"In the beginning, I was thinking that they were abandoned, that they were heroin addicts, that they had gone through recovery. But for a lot of them, it wasn't that at all. They were abused, they were victims of pills, they had eating disorders, they hadn't gone into recovery - so many different scenarios. To have my story out there and have it touch so many people is really fulfilling."

With few conventional vices left aside from cigarettes, Sixx has turned the majority of his restless energy to new projects, including a new band called Sixx: A.M. that he formed with longtime collaborators DJ Ashba and James Michael, a clothing line and a charity called Running Wild In The Night that provides help for teenage runaways.

"It's invigorating," says Sixx. "In the past, I could do two things: I could make a record or I could do a tour.

"Now, I've got a new band, a soundtrack album, a book, a clothing line, photography, I'm a single father, I'm a producer and a songwriter, I'm still in Motley Crue, and it's like, 'Fuck yeah!' All cylinders are firing and it feels great.

"I mean, I get tired. I get burnt out. I have to take time and shut it down just like anybody else. But it's my excitement in life to watch somebody walk down the street wearing one of our jackets, or to see somebody carrying the book. That's what gets me off."

The Heroin Diaries is obviously the work closest to his heart. It's an intense and often horrifying documentation of a train wreck "love affair" with heroin and other hard drugs. Augmented with pictures, dark artwork and commentary from friends and family, the book isn't so much a companion piece to Motley Crue's previously published The Dirt biography as it is a deeply personal retelling of a supposed rock god's very human struggles.

"I'm interested in sharing my very private experience in a year of my life, showing that I was able to answer my own questions from inside my diaries — questions that were painful to me — and being able to find myself through recovery," muses Sixx. "And I guess what I see is that I've recovered something I lost, which was to be an artist, always.

"I think I'll be 70 years old and doing paintings and photography and music. I'm not really so interested in being in a rock band for the rest of my life. I'm interested in anything that could enable me to be an artist. So if that means being in a rock band, that's pretty cool. But if it means doing photography in a third world country where nobody knows who I am - I mean, some of my best times have been in Cambodia and India, wearing a long-sleeved shirt and a baseball hat with all my long hair tucked up under it and just taking these moving, affecting pictures. I'm like a pig in friggin' mud. Being in front of the camera is cool, but being behind the camera is even better. So with the Heroin Diaries' pictures and music together, this whole thing's kind of like an art project."

Or a movie, perhaps? Sixx grins mischievously and says, "The phone's already started to ring."

Have any of those callers been Gene Simmons, the Kiss bassist and reality television star who's previously expressed interest in bringing The Dirt to the big screen?

"Gene Simmons has not called yet," answers Sixx with a snicker, "probably because he knows I wouldn't return his call."