This Is Gonna Hurt: Music, Photography and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx (22 page)

PRAGUE HOMELESS, NIGHT
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I thought our show was going to suck; I thought my relationship with Katherine was solid—I thought it was perfect; a long time ago I thought drugs worked for me. I think a lot of shit sometimes, and I guess a lot of the time I am wrong. I think all of us humans are wrong a lot. Just look at the newspapers or, better yet, the Internet. Most of our actions and reactions are based on bullshit. Being wrong and admitting it deflates the balloon of ego and allows the path to be cleared.

In my case a clear path is perfect so I can create and love but also, in my mind’s eye (the same one that damn finger poked), I know I am going to cause destruction and damage. Basically, I will make mistakes by thinking the wrong thing at the wrong time in the wrong situation. This is the course of human growth. I don’t know if I would like the concept of perfection. I don’t know if I would be OK at this time in my life without the need for growth.

Maybe when I become a monk (Zen Master Sixx)…but something tells me I am a long way from that moniker.

I must go to sleep. 4
A
.
M
., and the luggage call for our flight to Spain comes early…

I am grateful. Are you?

SWEDEN
JUNE 25, 2009

This is the time in the tour where I lose all my Zen. This is the time where I try to remain composed, even if perched upon a branch like a vulture waiting for something to die. That something is my soul. I am reading as much as I can to keep away from the resentments of having to be away from home. I hate this. The only thing that makes it worthwhile are the fans.

Tonight’s show starts at 1
A
.
M
. We get off stage at 2:30
A
.
M
. We then have a two-and-a-half-hour drive back to the hotel. This is fucking inhumane.

I will never do this again.

American Disorder
JESUS SAVES IN CLEVELAND
JULY 21, 2009

Three days into the Mötley Crüe tour and everything that can go wrong does. Faulty song endings, lighting cues outta time, pyro not going off or, if they do, all going off on the wrong song at the wrong time. You name it, it will, and has, happened.

Today was an early call from Cleveland to Chicago and, as usual, I was an airport security nightmare. I always have everything and anything that is guaranteed to set off security alarms tied to, stuck on, or sewn to my clothes and sometimes even my body. God save you if you’re in the line behind me because, of course, God (or somebody even funnier) always has a cruel joke in store…

As I stripped off my belts, chains, wristbands, knife, rings, bracelets, boots, coins, phones,
etc.
and go through the (heavy) metal detector, I hear a woman’s voice softly say to me, “That’s a real nice cross on your bag.” She was looking down at my custom Chrome Hearts brown leather shoulder bag and the oversized cross on it. I mutter “Thanks” and, of course, she says it again but now looking right into my tired and somewhat perturbed red eyes. This time I clearly say, “THANK YOU” but in a way that really means, “Please don’t talk to me right now.” Then it comes, the part of my day that I always laugh about later but never at the time. She looks at my bag and then at me and with cold, brutal aim says what’s really been on her mind the whole time:

“Have you recognized Jesus as your savior?”

I sigh that sigh I do right before I do something I shouldn’t, and I say, “Uh-huh,” hoping she would just get the hint, but no. She had to repeat it. Then, “Have you met with Jesus?” Or something along the lines of that, and I just plain cut her off cold with, “Yeah, I met Jesus Christ a few times.” “Really?” she asks and I reply, “Yeah, when I was overdosing on drugs.”

She looked at me in shock as I asked her if she still liked my bag and she nodded, thinking maybe she was making some headway on saving my soul. So I turned my bag around and showed her the back. “How do you like that?” Her eyes opened wide as she read it. Inscribed in red leather, it plainly said what I wished I had said from the beginning: “FUCK OFF.”

FATHER
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PRAGUE HOMELESS, DAY
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I looked at her and said, “God bless you,” as I headed off to the gate.

Once I was sitting on the plane and looked up, there she was again. She looked down at me and kindly said, “God bless you, son.”

I replied, “Thank you, Mom,” and that was that…

Some days, I really need my Midol.

JUVENILE DELINQUENT FROM SEATTLE
JULY 27, 2009

I am really still just a juvenile delinquent from Seattle. Once a drug dealer and high school dropout. A loser without a hope. Oh, sure, I had a dream but what the hell is that worth in Juvenile Hall? Maybe a ticket for a Greyhound bus outta Seattle and straight for Idaho, pulling the ultimate coward’s move, running from my past and yet too stubborn to realize it had been stamped on my forehead like a brand for the whole damn world to see…Life ain’t pretty when you’re hand in hand with the devil, even for the pretty pretties. No hope and no way out yet I sit here thirty thousand feet high heading back to the city I ran from, maybe even emotionally crawled from, or, if you can imagine, crawled out of…

I’m headed back to meet up with my grandfather and my two amazing sons. Sold-out festival that we started a couple years ago. Ten bands in all. Sometimes I ask myself where home really is, Seattle or Los Angeles? Sometimes I ask how the hell any of this happened. How did I turn fifty? (How did I turn thirty, for that matter?) Life is an interesting journey once you open your eyes. Once you can clearly see past your own ego and self-serving self…Not to sound all new age Zen fucking Buddha, but I am really loving my life as it comes, inch by inch, step-by-step, moment by moment…

(As usual, my tour journals are random and chaotic, and I haven’t written in a while. I would tell you why, but I have no excuse except sometimes I just forget to put pen to paper. I can’t believe a whole month has passed. But it has.)

ALBUQUERQUE TO HOUSTON (MAGIC)
AUGUST 5, 2009

Woke up and rolled over, my face and hair plastered to the pillow that I had fought with all night. And then it began. The phone rings and when I answer, I hear an automated voice say, “Good morning, Mr. Black, it’s your wake-up call.”…I knock the phone and a bottle of water off the table while trying to hang up fast so I can maybe pretend it never happened.

BROKEN
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“Mr. Black” is the fake name I use to check into hotels on this tour, to keep a shred of privacy. I am on tour with Mötley Crüe, but James and Dj are out here with me, so we can write Sixx:A.M. music. I’m not working hard enough, right? Nothing like a wake-up call to start the day.

Thirty years, thirty fucking years, I’ve been doing this on one level or another and that damn wake-up call still annoys the shit outta me. Not for any other reason than I know it knows what’s best for me. And I guess I knew last night, too, or I wouldn’t have ordered for the damn thing. It seems that we always know what’s best for us, even if it means we have to ask someone to jolt us from a comfortable spot.

May I repeat, I DON’T WANNA FUCKING GET UP.

So, I ask myself, what’s new about this? I DID NOT want to quit drugs for the longest time but I finally had to GET UP. Wake up from that stupid journey. And, of course, there are other examples, but let’s not get bogged down in the murky past this morning. Some days you just have to GET UP and smell the roses, the coffee, or whatever gets you UP. Some days when you get out of your own way, and just put one foot in front of the other, amazing things happen. Like in the past, in my life, and the future in yours. MAGIC.

Let me tell you about yesterday…

It started not unlike today. With a FUCKING wake-up call. Me, groaning, dragging my naked ass to the door to be greeted by James and Dj…Both foggy, both groaning, none of us having really slept the night before on the bus. But you know what? Within fifty-five minutes, our self-deprecation filled the air, the kind that spurs laughter from the deepest part of your stomach, the kind that hurts so good and inspires three friends masquerading as songwriters with five song ideas for Sixx:A.M.

We sat there drinking coffee, listening to the playback of a writing session we had done in Atlanta months before, mostly laughing at ourselves, but at the same time somewhat amazed at the amount of music that came outta that day…Between James, Dj, and myself, we probably have twenty songs…Amazing…So today, I wake up, groan, drag, and complain my way to the airport, where we three friends again will sit in a hotel and be amazed. I’m sure of it…because if I just get out of bed, it always happens…The magic…

About now, if I wasn’t still in love with Katherine, I’d kiss the wake-up call girl. Not that she’s a call girl. But, then again, you never know…There is a price tag on everything…

Except magic…magic is free.

BACK ON THE ROAD: SONGWRITING IN SYRACUSE
SEPTEMBER 2, 2009

Some things ain’t as simple as just pulling the trigger. You can’t always expect the bullet to just do the job. A clean shot is an exception. Songwriting in Syracuse is like pulling teeth in Des Moines, Iowa, or, worse, living through a shattered heart on tour with Mötley Crüe in Europe. God bless James for putting up with my lunacy this trip. I think he is secretly trying to have me committed. He kept leaving my room today, either to make secret calls to the local authorities or because he’s just fed up with my constant laughing at nothing. (The first sign of men in white suits and I’m jumping out the window.)

James has been out on the road with me for a week now. I have to tell you, it’s been so funny that sometimes I don’t even know how to survive the laughter. We’re writing lyrics, and Dj is back in Los Angeles. The three of us have written so many great songs that today James said this may have to be a double album. For some reason even that seemed funny to me. Again, the uncontrollable ramblings of a lunatic…