by Nikki Sixx
Listen up
Listen up
There’s a devil in the church
Got a bullet in the chamber
This is gonna hurt
—“This Is Gonna Hurt,” Sixx:A.M.
I started to hammer my mother with more questions. Do you talk to the family that cares for her? Is Lisa OK now? How old is she?
My mother just sat there, looking down at the table.
Then came my final bullet.
“Mom, I want their phone number.”
Silence.
Lisa, I don’t remember what you look like anymore,
the years have decayed my memory
But if I could imagine you as anything,
LISA 1 fig.37c
LISA 2 fig.37c
I'd imagine you like this…Love your brother.
HEAVEN fig.37c
“Tell me the number. I want to go see her. Please…I don’t understand any of this and I need to…”
She had the phone number memorized. Amazing.
Trust me when I say that, as a father, I understood for the first time the pain my mother must have felt putting my sister in that home. I saw it on her face, and my heart softened.
I wrote down the number and took a deep breath. I had no idea what I was going to do next, but somehow I felt prepared.
You say it’s all a crisis
You say it’s all a blur
There comes a time you’ve gotta face it face it
—“This Is Gonna Hurt,” Sixx:A.M.
I left the room and headed for my library. I sat in the overstuffed leather chair behind the desk and reached for the phone. Finally ready for some answers, yet I still didn’t know if I had the balls to spit out my questions. I punched in the seven digits.
A simple “Hello.” There was no “San Jose Medical Hospital,” or even an official-sounding answering machine saying, “We’re out of the office and bla bla bla…” Just a simple “Hello.”
I felt numb and cold. I am sure I sounded shaky, but I began my explanation, zombielike.
“My name is Frank Feranna…” I said to the phone. I had barely begun when the man’s voice on the other end said, “We were wondering when you were gonna come back.”
He told me that his father ran the facility and he grew up with my sister Lisa. They took care of about four people, but Lisa had been there the longest. He remembered when I used to visit Lisa, and he and I would play together since we were around the same age. They didn’t understand why I stopped coming.
I was in shock. I had no idea what he was talking about, no memory of any of the things he was describing to me. Even today I can’t remember him, or the visits, or even Lisa. Sometimes it feels like they’re all ghosts. Other times I think I’m the ghost.
Hanging up, I looked out the window. I didn’t know what I felt.
Lisa Marie Feranna, born November 12, 1960,
in San Jose, California
Father, Serafino Feranna
Mother, Deanna Feranna
Brother, Frank Carlton Feranna (now Nikki Sixx)
Born with Down’s syndrome
90% deaf and 100% blind
Crippled and paraplegic
Confined to a wheelchair or bed
She never weighed more than sixty pounds, so she spent her entire life dressed in children’s clothes, and her Sunday shoes never had a scuff because she never took a step.
Her greatest pleasure, he told me, was to sit in her wheelchair and listen to the local rock radio station. She loved music and since she was almost completely deaf, she really needed it loud. That made me smile.
With Mötley Crüe, I played shows right down the street from where Lisa lived. She may even have heard the rumble of my bass while thousands of people sang along to the music that was inspired by the tear in my heart. What the fuck has happened to me? The coffin had cracked open and the skeletons were about to come to life.
When I got off the phone, my mom was still sitting at the kitchen table, and as I sat down I knew nothing between us was ever going to be the same.
One night, years later, I got a call from Vince Neil, who was weeping into the phone. He said someone had called him to say that my sister was dead. My heart stopped as I thought of my half sister, Ceci, and wondered what the hell had happened. Vince said the call had come from San Jose and then it hit me. Not Ceci. Lisa.
The problem with procrastinating is that sometimes it bites you in the ass. At that moment, as Vince hung up the phone, it hit me.
After all the conversations with my mother, after the phone calls with the family that was taking care of my poor sister, after all the anguish…I got busy. I went on tour, I went through a divorce, and I fucking lost connection to that feeling that I had to make Lisa’s life right. And now she was dead.
MOTHER fig.01101
I have had to forgive myself for a lot of things in my life, but this was the hardest.
The next day I flew to San Jose. I met my mother and Ceci there. I got Lisa the most beautiful casket I could find, and I said hello and good-bye all in the same hour. I asked for a moment alone with her. I locked the door behind me and walked over to the gold-leaf child’s casket where she lay so peacefully. I reached down and held her hand, our faces not so different. I told her I was sorry and I am, still, to this day. Now she haunts me. Maybe she always has.
Lisa was cremated and my mother has the ashes. I kept some of her clothes for a while and eventually sent them to my mom too. When my life felt hard, when I was stressed or overwhelmed, I would take out her little white church shoes, hold them in my hands, and remember that my life is blessed.
The Voices in My Head
I am not sure how old I was, but I was really young, maybe five or six. I was living with my mother at the time somewhere in Los Angeles, bouncing from house to house. These things don’t really affect you so much as a kid. You think of them as little adventures. But today I look back and wonder what the hell we were doing. I do know that we were living with another family, I remember that much. I mostly have a blurry vision of my childhood, and some things I can’t remember at all, but this, this I can tell you is clear.
I had one of those little record players that spun 45s. (They were also known as singles, for those of you too young to remember what I am rambling about. Go google it.) This was somewhere in the mid-1960s. (Maybe 1964, if I do the math, but that’s beside the point.) The needle was in the lid of the player, so when you closed it, the music started, voilà, magic. I’d play the same three or four singles (A side and B side) over and over and, well, you get the picture.
One evening as I was playing one of my records (I believe it was Alvin and the Chipmunks), I overheard a voice in the distance. It sounded hollow yet distinct. Something about it pulled me from what I was doing. (A great relief to my mother, I am sure.) I wandered out of my room and up the hall to where the sound was coming from.
The other kid who lived in the house was maybe nine, maybe ten. He had this strange-looking box open before him, wires exposed, glass tubes of some kind glowing in the darkness. He was turning a knob back and forth. Somewhere in the static coming from the speaker were voices and songs shifting in and out of focus. I was mesmerized at first. I can still feel the excitement in the pit of my stomach. This box, this sound—it wasn’t anything like my little record player. There was something instantaneous and living in its touch.
I asked what it was and the kid said, “It’s a radio.” I asked, “Why are there voices coming out of it?” And he said a man somewhere is talking into a microphone and we hear it.
I stood there, like I have other times when I have fallen in love, eyes wide open and heart pounding.
Some years later, when I was watching The Wizard of Oz on TV, I wondered if that’s what radio was like: a man in a room, speaking from behind a curtain, microphone in hand. Important.
I sit here right now, in my Los Angeles home, listening to the radio. It seems both peculiar and familiar. I now know h
ow radio works, I know it’s not magic, not the Wizard of Oz, and yet it doesn’t change a thing. I still love it.
I have just embarked on my own radio show, called Sixx Sense. We did a handful of shows for practice but to be honest, I didn’t need much. This thing fits me like a glove. I hope that the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, and the Scarecrow are listening. And Dorothy, maybe someday you can be my cohost.
Running Wild in the Night (1)
Being a teenager in Seattle in the 1970s was an amazing time. I discovered music there. Sitting in my friend Rick Van Zandt’s living room listening to T. Rex for the first time or going to Cellophane Records down by the University of Washington were life-altering experiences. Sifting through the bootleg vinyl section of the store not only inspired me, it made me feel part of something bigger.
Moving to Seattle was great, but it was just another attempted escape for me. I went there from Idaho, to live with my mom and give my poor grandparents a break. Seattle was my first experience of a real city, of other kids doing worldly things. It really was a mindfuck for me coming from Jerome, Idaho, a city of four thousand people. The combination of Seattle and me was like putting gasoline on a fire. The flames quickly burned out of control. LSD, pot, speed, drinking, selling mescaline and pills by the truckload. Nothing I can look back on proudly, but our lives are our lives, and we hope not just to learn from them but maybe to pass along some wisdom, too. (For me, that means many thoughts of what not to do.)
But once damage is done, can it be undone? Once the phantoms exist, do they ever go away?
I don’t know. I hope so, not only for me but for the millions of people who also are destined to feel like outsiders, loners, ghosts.
In Seattle, I was always one step away from living on the street. When I was fourteen, I ran away from my mother’s home. I slept in a closet I rented in an apartment belonging to two prostitutes I knew. A friend who worked in a restaurant got me a job as a dishwasher. I figured it was better than no job at all, which is what I had at the time. I sold drugs to supplement my income. Life seemed fine to me. I was happy to have my music and a warm place to sleep. I had a few friends, mostly drug addicts.
After the prostitutes kicked me out, I moved into a two-bedroom apartment…with ten other teenagers, which was the only way we could make the rent. I have no idea where these kids came from or where they are today. Isn’t life weird? Once we were as close as brothers and sisters, then they vanished into thin air. More ghosts.
I remember one night watching the Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert program on an old black-and-white TV one of the kids had stolen. While we watched the New York Dolls perform, that kid leaned over and told me he had stolen a gun, too, and he had an idea. It involved me, the gun, and a liquor store. The idea was that I would stand outside the store and watch for police while he went in and robbed it.
Always one for adventure, I agreed, and we split a tab of four-way windowpane LSD and snorted a line of elephant tranquilizer. By the time he walked into the store, I was so high I almost followed him inside.
Soon he ran out screaming, “Let’s go!” We headed into the damp Seattle night laughing until we finally ran out of road and breath. I remember at last feeling connected to something bigger than myself. I felt grounded, like I had found a purpose in life.
But then I remember climbing on top of a fire hydrant, balancing there as the rain came pouring down, and the bad acid trip kicked in. I was alone in the middle of an ocean, standing atop a buoy, swaying back and forth, scared I would fall in and drown. I called out to my friend, who had already wandered off into the night with the money. Here I was again, alone.
Running Wild in the Night (2)
More ghosts that haunt me…
I came to Hollywood in 1979 on a Greyhound bus.
I don’t remember the month, but I do remember my aunt Sharon picking me up at the station. I don’t think she or my uncle Don or their kids, my cousins, knew what they were getting into. I sure as hell didn’t.
She was all housewife smiles and proper middle-class hellos as I stumbled off the bus with a T. Rex cassette in my back pocket and a guitar case in my hand. Driving through Hollywood on our way to my new home, all I thought about was Sunset Boulevard and Hollywood and Vine. My new stalking grounds. Where the wild things could roam and the unforgiven would birth the next generation’s rock n roll extravaganza. For now, though, I would need to settle into suburbia and maybe take a shower. I remember my aunt saying something about me looking like I needed one.
Next we’re driving down the street toward a cul-de-sac not unlike the homes in the neighborhood scene from ET. Basically the same house, street after street, mile after mile, only changing slightly in color. I was about to become the canker sore on the face of Perfect Little Family Boulevard.
Having left Seattle with a warrant for my arrest (for selling drugs at a Rolling Stones concert) and then exiled to Idaho to work on farms (to save money to buy guitars and bus tickets), I can safely say that I was fueled with toxic teenage waste, dripping in cheap sunglasses and jaws locked down on my dream…That dream, it seemed, was to destroy everything in my path. Including this family.
My poor uncle, Don Zimmerman, president of Capital Records at the time; his perfect wife, Sharon; and two wonderfully normal, balanced kids, Rick and Michelle. Beautiful home, nice cars, weekends at the beach, BBQs by the pool, friends, and family for holiday dinners, and then there was me, Frank Carlton Feranna. Even today I cannot say I am sorry enough to that family. I feel like I was a tornado that ran right through their serenity. Sigh…
But at the time I thought I had arrived in hell and to be honest, I may have. Looking back I remember thinking the darkest secrets are always born in these perfect little communities.
Today I sit in my house in Southern California in a neighborhood not unlike my uncle’s almost thirty-five years ago. We have a beautiful home. Nice cars. Weekends at the beach. BBQs by the pool. Friends and family over for holiday dinners.
THE END fig.92e
Unbelievably, I am alive to see all this come true.
While living with my uncle Don’s family, I was offered great opportunities. I defiantly looked the gift horse in the mouth. In fact, I punched him square in the kisser. So, to make a long story short…
I was given the family pickup truck to drive. I wrecked it.
I was given my own room. I wrecked it.
I was given a job at a Music Plus record store. I punched the manager and got fired for stealing, so I guess you could say I wrecked it.
Before long I was asked to leave the family home. I did, but with a huge middle finger as my parting gift. I wrecked that, too.
I am even sorry for their neighbors, almost. I don’t know if it was the Marshall stacks and Les Pauls or the way I crawled into the house in the middle of the night (middle of the day, sometimes), but I wasn’t exactly a calling card that read, “Come on over and meet our nephew, he’s a really nice kid who also plays a little guitar…”
They tried to help me, but I couldn’t help myself.
Probably didn’t hurt that I was drinking my dinner in that sweet suburban bedroom and popping pretty little white pills for breakfast.
I didn’t know that I didn’t know how to fit in.
So, as the story goes, I left. Abruptly.
Moved in with some kids I met at Music Plus, started playing in bands. Ended up in Hollywood living on Sunset Boulevard, exactly what I had wanted.
I got a job at Warehouse Records on Sunset and sometimes would stop at the blood bank and sell blood or at the pawnshop to pawn my 1976 Thunderbird bass for food, rent, or drugs.
One day coming home late from work I saw half a dozen fire trucks surrounding the house where I lived. Exiting the bus, I saw nothing but smoldering ruins. I had left a candle lit in my room and burned the house down to the ground. I remember saying, “Thank God my bass wasn’t in there.” I don’t remember saying anything about my roommates.
One last ghos
t…
As I’ve said, my father split when I was really young, but my family doesn’t have a timeline that they all agree on. I’ve always gone with the “I was three when he left” story. Weird, when your own family can’t tell you your history.
My father’s legacy is somewhat vague. I’ve heard everything from he died of an overdose on Christmas morning to he was shot to death in a woman’s arms by her jealous husband. I have no idea what’s true. But two facts I know for sure: he’s dead, and I am alive. As cold as that sounds, at least I know it’s true.
I never knew my father, or more important, I like to say, he never knew me.
Looking down for the first time on his grave was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Not because he was dead. It was the fact that he should have loved me no matter what, but never did. He wasn’t even alive to me. He was just a dream, something invisible I had railed against for so long that it had worn me out. There I stood, face-to-face with the reality that I had wasted a lot of time, energy, and alcohol on this guy. It didn’t take long for me to forgive him. It was finally over. I left him, or the idea of him, there in the ground that day. As I walked away, my only thought was how small and unkempt his grave was. No flowers, no notes, probably few visitors ever. The worn-out nameplate was cracked across the top…like our relationship. But that story is his now, not mine.
I never looked back.
In life, when the baggage gets too heavy, you have to put it down.
HYDE PARK CEMETERY fig.27cm
