On The "Headfuck" Of Switching Between Motley Crue & SIXX: AM

"When Motley took its final bow, for me it's like my feet had already hit the ground and [were] running years ago," Motley Crue and SIXX: AM bassist, Nikki Sixx, tells. "And it was really — I could look at Motley and go, 'I love you so much.' It was such a beautiful experience and it'll always be tattooed on my arm, but now I'm off on a new adventure and I know Tommy [Lee]'s off on a new adventure, and Mick [Mars] and Vince [Neil], and I'm fans of theirs. I can't wait to see what they do; like, we weren't successful because we sucked, so I have a feeling that they're gonna do something really great."

Motley Crue's last ever show took place last New Year's Eve at Staples Center in LA and, by the time that show came around, Sixx observes, "I think I'd done most of my reflecting already." On New Year's Day Sixx flew out to Mexico to ponder "what [he] was looking to do musically in the second chapter of [his] life". "I think everybody should be entitled to a new adventure, you know, life is about that," he continues, "and so many times I find that when artists do something of some kind of significance, a lot of times people are like, 'Well they've had their grandest time, their best day,' you know? And I always kind of laugh, 'cause I'm like, 'Well why can't you have two good days?' [laughs]. 

"We need to kind of just go in and fucking hit everybody over the head and get out."

"The art of music is about you being open to whatever's happening in your life. So for a guy like me, when I wrote [Motley Crue's] On With The Show, that was right after I changed my name — within a few years — from Frank to Nikki, you know, a few years before I started Motley Crue. And the opening line says, 'Frankie died just the other night/Some say it was suicide,' and it was my way of basically giving my middle finger to my mom and my dad and sayin', 'I'm gonna reinvent myself in life as my own vision of what I wanna be, not in your eyes.' And, through the years, if you look at my lyrics, all the words came true."

There was a period last year when Sixx toured with SIXX:AM during a break in Motley Crue's The Final Tour. Sixx says it was "difficult to be playing in two bands at the same time" because "they're completely different bass styles". "I was doing Motley Crue and then jumping into rehearsals with SIXX: AM and I almost had to, like, reconfigure my brain and then go do that and then jump back on stage literally two days later with Motley Crue. And it was kind of a headfuck but it was also a nice challenge as a musician."

Sixx is now free to focus solely on SIXX: AM. "SIXX: AM and Motley Crue were sort of in the air, like two airplanes, at the same time; there was about a five-year or six-year period from when Life Is Beautiful [SIXX: AM's debut single] came out. And Motley Crue is the Mothership — she's like the 747 Boeing — and, you know, SIXX: AM's not that big, but it was still important for me to be creating. And as SIXX: AM started getting more steam up, the music started really flowing because I was working with different musicians. So the music that I would write with Tommy and Mick and Vince was completely different than with James [Michael, frontman] and DJ [Ashba, guitarist]. And you have to imagine, as an artist, what a gift that is to be creating."

A musical adaptation of Sixx's first book The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star (which inspired SIXX: AM's first record, The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack) is in the pipeline. "That's all in the works and, you know, all the Sixx: AM music will be in that," he confirms. "That's exciting. I'm sure we'll write more music for that as well. We're actually going in the studio this week to write more music for an undisclosed project in the future so, you know, [Prayers For The Damned] Volume 1 and Volume 2 are done and we were like, 'Well, it's such a luxury to be home' — DJ's home, I'm home, James is home — like, why don't we just go into the studio again? So we're probably gonna go in and record, you know, another three or four songs this week."

"There's money and there's hope, and what money gives musicians is the opportunity to have stability."

When asked when Prayers For The Damned: Volume 2 will drop, Sixx shares, "Probably September/October so we can give everybody a nice opportunity to absorb Prayers For The Damned." Both of these records were written "in parallel". "We have a song Better Man and we have another song called Maybe It's Time and you could say they're brother and sister," Sixx clarifies, "and in the normal sense of making a record you would actually pick one of them, because you wouldn't want it to weigh down too much on an album — too ballad-y, um, in our case anyway. But for us they were both, like, some of our favourite songs so we were able to put Maybe It's Time on the second record and put Better Man on the first record. And that happened all along the way as we were writing; we were, like, shuffling them back and forth. And so the records really are two records from top to bottom that we think are fantastic, it's not 17 songs on a double album and the last five are just kinda leftovers."

In a previous interview, Sixx admitted that he doesn't like SIXX: AM as a band name, but he must've noticed how great it looks on festival bills. He laughs, "I mean, for us it's such a joy, because we're like, 'Look at that!'" Sixx says these festival slots came about after festival promoters approached the band, adding, "Listen, I could pull a few favours but the bottom line is I can't pull that many favours." He's excited about SIXX: AM's positioning at these festivals as well. "There's bigger bands than us that are on those bills that've been doin' it longer than SIXX: AM's been doin' it," he notes, "and we need to kind of just go in and fucking hit everybody over the head and get out." There have also been offers flooding in for "a bunch of arena tours". "We'll get out in a good support position and play arenas," Sixx reveals. When told we'd love to see SIXX: AM supporting Muse, Sixx enthuses, "Oh, we would be great with Muse! It'd be a really good fit." So how do we make that happen? "I'm just gonna tweet Matt," Sixx suggests, referring to the English band's frontman, Matt Bellamy.      

Our discussion then turns to music-streaming services, which Sixx rates. "It's not the enemy," he posits. "And the thing that frustrates me is the old guys, and I call 'em the old guards; now what a nasty position to be in to be thought of as a gatekeeper. Because you're a rockstar, you've been around 20, 30 years — some of 'em 40 years — and you say, 'Bah humbug to streaming!' You say, 'Bah humbug to rock. Rock is dead. There's no hope for the future. Put your guitars down and go get a job in a bank.' It's, like, that's not the message that young musicians and fans need to hear. They need to hear, 'Streaming is your friend. The listening experience is more exciting. Pick up your guitars, there's a career for you out there. The next Elton John's out there. The next Metallica's out there. The next Beatles is out there. The next Muse is out there — they're out there.' They're young, they need to be pushed to be the best they can be; they don't need to be told there's no future. There's money and there's hope, and what money gives musicians is the opportunity to have stability. And with stability you can continue to create music and, when an artist is creating music, we get to do interviews and talk about it. And that's fuckin' amazing!"