This Is Gonna Hurt: Music, Photography and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx (8 page)

HYDE PARK CEMETERY
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HYDE PARK CEMETERY
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Interlude

B
eing in an industry littered with liars, thieves, and criminals, honesty would be considered a liability. Mötley Crüe going after a major label was described to me as a suicide mission by a certain music industry lawyer. Of course, he was on the take, so thinking his advice would be sound would be like jumping into a shark tank wearing sixty pounds of bloody chum and thinking it was shark repellent. Evel Knievel wouldn’t take that dare. I always say Electra Records made us sign a nondisclosure agreement so Metallica couldn’t figure out how to get their masters back, too. (Since then I hear the guys have gotten them back…yeah.)

How do we all move on now that Mötley Crüe knocked you out, bloodied your nose, and busted your balls?

What if we say we’re sorry and keep our tactics to ourselves?

What if we go back to our corner, take the brass knuckles outta our sixteen-ounce boxing gloves, and come out and fight fair?

How about we just forget the whole thing ever happened?

How about if we just stop dancing around the land mine and just say it?

Go fuck yourself. Mötley Crüe beat your system.

Music belongs to the creator of the music, not to the labels.

Publishing belongs to the creator of the songs, not the labels.

“360” deals are criminal, in my opinion.

I won’t ever tell an artist to do one.

The label sharing in the publishing, album sales, merchandising, and touring?

What the hell is next, your firstborn?

Eight Basic Rules to Survive By

1. If you’re an artist, stand up for your rights.

2. If you’re a fan, support artists who don’t follow the old brick-and-mortar model.

3. Remember there is no music business without
music.

There seems to be a misunderstanding that we need them.

We don’t need them, they need us.

4. Learn the
legal
system.

5. Know and understand marketing and branding.

6. Do it yourself. Keep it yourself. Keep your leverage.

7. Manifest your future.

It’s yours for the making, not theirs for the taking.

8. Get out your baseball bats and straight razors. This is war.

I ain’t bitter, I am fucking better…

SELF-PORTRAIT
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ONE MAN, TWO BANDS

N
obody ever sounded like or will ever sound like Mötley Crüe. I can take that to my grave. I am not saying we don’t wear our influences on our tattered sleeves, because you can hear the Sex Pistols and AC/DC plain as day. You can smell the Ramones and Aerosmith stirred in together. We never denied any of that. But something about each guy in the band mixed with those influences makes us like nothing you’ve ever heard before.

To do that once is like a gift from the gods, but to have it happen twice, well, I am either one lucky motherfucker or just destined to have two bands take over the world during my lifetime. At this point I’m still counting my blessings, so I’ll await what happens and try not to predict the future. I am a firm believer in believing in yourself, and I have no doubt that what I am doing now means as much to me as what I have done in the past with Mötley and whatever I will do in the future.

Sixx:A.M., like Mötley Crüe, is a passion. Like music, photography is emotional, and when you breed music with imagery, you get honesty. That’s why people either hate it or love it. Please don’t ever tell me you “like” Mötley or Sixx:A.M., and for God’s sake either fucking hate my photography or love it but don’t sit on the fence. I have come too far to not evoke some kind of emotion from you. You deserve rage as much as you do love. I will continue to push your buttons until I take my place six feet under, one tattered sleeve saying Mötley Crüe, the other saying Sixx:A.M.

You ready to stand for something? Are you with me now?

DJ ASHBA
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JAMES MICHAEL
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JAMES MICHAEL, BACKSTAGE NYC
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It’s Sixx:A.M. Do You Know Where Your Soul Is?

Sixx:A.M. is the band that never wanted to be a band.

I met James Michael ten years ago in an office in Beverly Hills. He was a budding songwriter then, discovered by my manager Allen Kovac, with whom I had started a record company called Americoma.

James was walking down the hall one day, hair a mess, unshaven. I said hello not even knowing who this disheveled guy was. (Is that the pot calling the kettle black or what?)

One day when I was in the office, listening to some of the thousands of demo tapes from new bands looking for a label, Allen popped in. “There is someone I think you might like writing with,” he said. Now, in those days Allen knew well that I was not interested in collaborating with other songwriters. So for him to even mention this was kind of like stepping onto a minefield. Except that Allen has the savvy to pick his battles, and he also has my respect. So when he mentioned it, I was receptive.

“Let me meet the guy,” I said.

The next day, standing at my office door, was the same scruffy, unshaven Kurt-Cobain-meets-male-model dude I saw before. For some reason I was in a chipper mood and invited him to have a seat (ever seen a record company president with leopard print chairs?), and we hit it off like two bats outta hell.

There is something magical about James’s voice, and I heard it day one in his little apartment in Hollywood. We two with acoustic guitars and ideas for days on end. We were like pigs in shit, and there hasn’t been a bad creative day since with James Michael.

Years later, sitting at the piano in the front room of my Malibu ranch, overlooking the canyon at sunset, someone would think we were two childhood friends cracking up over an inside joke. We were writing songs for Meat Loaf’s album, and James tried to sing like him while I had the duty of topping Jim Steinman lyrically as we were pouncing back and forth on the keyboard. In hysterics, we weren’t laughing at Meat Loaf or the music but at ourselves and the amount of fun we were having.

On a totally different front, I saw an ad in a magazine somewhere with this really cool-looking guy in it. Oddly, it said he was Dj Ashba. I personally can’t stand the whole concept of DJs, so I shrugged him off as another fly-by-night tattooed poser playing hip-hop or electronica, and turned the page.

At the time, Mötley Crüe was in a holding pattern and I had just met with Slash for lunch in Hollywood. I told him I knew the singer from Buckcherry and we should put a band together. Slash seemed to like the idea but didn’t know if the singer was right. Time passed, Slash hung out with Duff McKagan, and they decided to form a band, which became Velvet Revolver. So I ended up writing music for a band that existed only in my head.

Then I got a call from the guitar player from L.A. Guns. Tracii Guns had heard I was thinking about doing a side project and he was calling to see if I was still interested. We had a history in the glammed-out ’80s in L.A. (though for the life of me I couldn’t remember exactly what we did together). I had known Slash for years as a friend and that was a big part of why I wanted to do a new band with him (besides, he is up there with Mick Mars among my favorite guitar players). Tracii pushed to get together and jam and so we did. He is a great player and quite the little networker. It was Tracii who found the singer London LeGrand for us. He discovered him working as a hairstylist on Melrose down in Hollywood. So we three started jamming in a funky little studio in Santa Monica. Before long we found a drummer, and I wanted to fill out the band with a second guitar player.