by Nikki Sixx
For me, music was a huge part of avoiding homelessness. Having burned most of my bridges, with no real education (other than in rebellion), I was destined for a very unstable life. Music saved me. It gave me a reason to wake up, an outlet for my creativity, a shot at financial stability.
So it was an easy decision to help create Covenant House’s music/arts program.
I met with executive director George Lozano and we devised a program for kids living in the Covenant House Crisis Shelter. They love it. The program gives them a chance to explore their musical talents, have fun, feel good about themselves, and express themselves in ways that other therapeutic services couldn’t do. I helped them build a music studio and got them basic instruments, amplifiers, and software. We hired instructors to teach the kids to play their instruments, record, edit, and even entertain.
With added support from music companies and personal donations, we have been able to give hope through music to these kids. We’re just getting started—there are a lot of kids still on the streets and a lot of music to be made.
The program is called “Running Wild in the Night” after a lyric I wrote for a song of the same title. It ended up being used in another song, “Save our Souls”:
Black angels laughing in the city streets
Street toys scream in pain and clench their teeth
The moonlight spotlights all the city crime
Got no religion, Laugh while they fight.
Funny, growing up, I never thought I would.
The Resurrection of Nikki Sixx
Along my journey, I’ve seen so much: birth, death, those who cherish life and those who cherish death even more.
Point being, I create some version of reality that others see as fantasy. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe there’s a monkey on my back, or maybe there’s a dented halo floating somewhere above my disheveled head. Maybe I don’t even know, but I have to give everything I have in whatever I do, or there’s a torturous, gnawing fear that tears at me. I always ask myself this simple question: “Did I do my best?”
It all started, like so many things, in a book I read that pretty much changed my life. This particular one was titled The Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz. In photography, like life, there are four agreements. I try to use them as my daily mantras, my all-purpose rules (or some say nonrules).
Ruiz’s four principles to live by (as interpreted by me) are as follows.
1. Be impeccable with your word.
If you say you’re going to do something, for God’s sake do it, no matter what. It can be a threat or a promise, but do it. Your word is who you really are. Always keep it, and use your word to motivate yourself to higher levels.
So, if I promise to kick your ass, trust me, you’re gonna get your ass kicked. Just as I say this: I will leave my mark on the world of photography, and I will do it on my own terms just like I did with music, and I promise you it’s gonna kick ass. I knew it the day I did the “You Will Not Grow” photo sessions, and I still know it now.
2. Don’t take anything personally.
When I was in high school in Seattle in the 1970s (best time for music ever), the school districts had just started busing. For those of you who don’t remember, busing was a way to break down the racial barriers in big-city school districts. There still were predominantly white or black schools at the time, and to be honest I thought that making them more integrated was a wonderful idea. The only problem is kids are kids, and kids from different backgrounds don’t always understand anybody else’s reality. (Man, we haven’t really made much progress in that area, have we?)
Anyway, I would walk down the halls of Roosevelt High wearing these tall, clunky platform boots. At the time I was so into David Bowie that I would emulate my hero by wearing vintage men’s suits three sizes too small and usually smelling of dead people. I had this wild, shagged-out, overdyed, crazy hair. (Man, I haven’t really made much progress in that area, have I?) Of course, there was the makeup and the nail polish, and my new schoolmates did not get this at all.
So came the insults. “Hey, it’s Alice Bowie!” or “Is it a he or a she?” Or the usual one that started the downward spiral and eventual black eye: “What are you, some kind of faggot or something?” Then came the fistfights, bloody noses, and, of course, being thrown out of school.
What’s my point? Well, I didn’t take any of it personally, because I knew they were idiots. I might have been a drug dealer and a bit of a punk, but I wasn’t destined to spend my life in San Quentin. These guys were real tough motherfuckers with even more fucked-up childhoods than mine. I was just an eyesore with a dream who gave them an excuse to blurt out bullshit. I was just another reason for them to gang together and pick on the weirdo. It made them feel good and, to be honest, maybe I was doing them a service. (Even though the time I slammed a guy’s tooth through his lip he didn’t thank me.) They couldn’t help themselves, just like I couldn’t help myself. “You gotta do what ya gotta do to get ya through,” I always say. To this day I don’t take it personally, like a million things in life that crossed my path and pissed me off or maybe even bloodied my nose. I ain’t renting out space in my head to anybody. It’s too crowded in there already.
BEAUTIFUL fig.b24
SIDE SHOW fig.ss51
3. Don’t make assumptions.
You know the old saying—I still remember hearing it as a kid: don’t assume, because you make an ass out of you (or U) and me. It stopped me dead in my tracks.
I think that’s right. I have walked a rocky road at times because I assumed she was a bitch, or they didn’t like it, or, worse, that nobody loved me. The lessons don’t stop just because you get kicked out of school, so I sit here pondering old decisions…old assumptions.
When I was younger, I always assumed that not too many people would ever really get me. I spoke my mind even when I was told to hold my tongue (remind me to work on that), and I did what was right even when I was told it was wrong (remind me not to work on that). I guess I just assumed that because you didn’t get me, you were fucking with me. I assumed that I would exist in the dark underbelly instead of where the normal people live. I assumed I wouldn’t live to see thirty. I assumed a lot of stuff that never came true. That’s the embarrassing part about assuming: you’re almost always wrong, or at least I have been.
Of the four agreements, this has been the hardest to live up to. I have to work on this daily, even minute by minute sometimes. It must be a form of rebellion that lives in my DNA. For example, I assume for some reason that nobody will really get my photography, so I feel the punk-ass fucktard inside me start to flare up. It happens so fast I can barely catch it, and then it goes away in a flash. Some parts of us never change. But maybe we get just a little more of ourselves under control as we work on this stuff in our lives.
4. Always do your best.
Believe it or not, I don’t have too much to say about this one. I mean, if you’re not already doing your best, then you’re just flat-out stupid. (I’m now doing my best not to laugh at how ridiculous and rude I am sometimes, though I am doing my best here to make you think.) Life is like a huge opportunity to change the way we think and see things. I hope the way I see things (in photography and life) might make you think, and maybe you will pass it on and so on and so on. Consider this: I am doing my best to write my second book even though I was asked not to return to high school. If an illiterate rock musician can write a book, then you can do anything you want, too. Maybe just follow your heart. And these four simple principles.
DEATH TRIPfig. dt48
Skin
By Sixx:A.M.
Paint yourself a picture
Of what you wish you looked like
Maybe then they just might feel an ounce of your pain
Come into focus
Step out of the shadows
It’s a losing battle
There’s no need to be ashamed
They don’t even know you
All
they see is scars
They don’t see the angel living in your heart
Let them find the real you buried deep within
And let them know with all you’ve got
That you are not your skin
When they start to judge you
Show them your true colors
And do unto others as you’d have done to you
Just rise above this
Kill them with your kindness
Ignorance is blindness
They’re the ones that stand to lose
VAIN fig.v51
A Self-Help Mantra of My Own
Dead on arrival, overdosed on heroin, cocaine, pills, and alcohol. Dead to the world and a thousand other true stories and maybe a million clichés. Yes, I was that rock star with collapsed veins running up and down his arms, underweight and overinflated with ego, fear, and greed. They say I was flat on my back on a gurney, popping a wheelie headed straight to hell. I may have been damned, but I’d be damned if I was gonna die a millionaire junkie that night (or anytime soon after).
So after I crawled down from my own personal crucifixion came the awakening and finally the resurrection of Nikki Sixx. I climbed up that wooden cross years before, the weight of the world bearing down on my soul, nails and hammer in hand so I could crucify myself. I needed no help, yet I felt it was my duty to scream all the while that I was the victim. Self-inflicted nails drove deep into hands and feet as a thousand needles plunged into my arms. I would blame it on my mother, my father, my fame, and anybody or anything else in line of my adolescent fire. I had taught myself that disconnecting from society, friendship, and love was the best way to deal with my abandonment issues. I won, you lost, and I paraded the body bag of victory around for the whole world to see.
But it was me in that body bag, not anybody else.
Funny how long we can carry some of this stuff around. I mean, I don’t know how much stamina you have, but a dead body is heavy, especially when it’s your own.
I am without a doubt the luckiest man on earth, and I think anybody who read The Heroin Diaries might agree. I do not want to relive my final night too many times other than to remind myself that I am without a doubt a drug addict and an alcoholic. Yes, I am in recovery from my disease, but what I really get high on is my recovery from being an asshole.
At times I’ve wondered if that isn’t the core of my disease anyway. Once I didn’t drink or do drugs, I still needed to resurrect and eject the poison from my soul and my brain.
Recovery comes in many forms, but for me it mostly comes in gratitude and awareness. We use these to mirror our lives and hope it rubs off on the nearest passerby.
We live by example, and here are a few that have been negotiated in my brain since sobriety. Either that or I have stumbled upon them accidentally in the last few years. Whichever, these are my own personal principles to live by.
1. You can always renegotiate your life.
Nothing is written in stone until you die. You absolutely can renegotiate with yourself. You are allowed to change your mind. At any given time. Meaning:
You don’t need to live where you live.
You don’t have to be unhappy. (Nobody is holding a gun to your head.)
You don’t need to stay married if you want a divorce.
You don’t need to keep up with the Joneses and you don’t need to feel
bad about not liking where you have ended up in life.
Just renegotiate and change the facts.
Or, in other words, grow some balls.
Get on with it already. If you obey every time someone says you can’t
do this or you must do that, you will become the person you
NEVER WANTED to be.
Simply renegotiate.
2. Love the ones who hurt you.
Love those who hurt you the most, because they are probably the ones closest to you.
They, too, are on a path, and just like you they are learning to walk before they can fly. Imagine if everybody you hurt in life turned their backs on you? You would be playing a hell of a lot of solitaire.
Love them no matter what.
3. Be inspired by all walks of life.
I will open a book, any book, on any given day and turn to a random page. Blindly point and start to read. I will finish a paragraph and then stop. That will be my inspiration for the day. Dictionaries are wonderful for randomly finding new words. Use it and you will be inspired, and you will inspire others.
I wake up and the first thing that pops into my brain is “I can’t wait to see what happens today!” I am always amazed at the little adventures that happen next. I used to miss these moments because I was so up in my own head that I couldn’t see what was happening right before my eyes. Now, I’m always ready to be inspired. And when that happens, a lyric or an idea for a photo usually come to mind.
4. Pay attention to your instinct.
A killer instinct will save your life. Instinct will navigate you through life until the final bell rings.
Learn to trust it. It is your friend.
Shut out the noise in your head and you will hear what your gut is telling you. Instinct never lies. Though sometimes your head does. I know we all have the ability to tune into ourselves. Some of us use it to our advantage and some use it to other people’s disadvantage (yes, I’m back to the killer’s instinct analogy, but can’t that be positive, to know that monster inside of you?).
5. Don’t neglect your death.
Need I say more? OK, I will. Without living life to the hilt, death will be a huge waste of time. (That’s sorta funny, actually.)
Don’t waste your death on a half-assed life.
Go for it.
Be a rock star or a plumber.
Be an athlete or a TV repairman.
Live on an island and sell hot dogs, or live in New York City and run the biggest investment bank in the world.
Do what you want. Not what your mom, your wife, your dad, or your friends want.
If you truly are happy in what you do, you’re gonna kick the living shit outta life, and death will be a happy, well-earned sleep.
Every word I read, every breath I take, every moment of every day always somehow inspires me and eventually turns into a song or a photograph. Either the ones in these pages, the ones in my vault, or the ones in my head that I haven’t shot yet.
Are you feeling inspired by your life? It’s funny what can inspire you. The fateful night of my near-fatal drug overdose years ago, and my recovery, have shown me how fragile life really is. I love to pass on my passion for it whenever I can and show people how to squeeze every last drop outta life.
Again I ask, are you feeling inspired by your life?
LOVE fig.l92
LIFE fig.l91
SIAMESE fig.5pr
V
TALE OF THE SIAMESE TWINS AND THE BLACK ROSE TATTOO
My first tattoo was a black rose on my right arm. The year was 1981.
Years later, a friend named Pearl Aday (Meat Loaf’s daughter) asked if I wanted to meet a tattoo artist named Kat Von D. She said we were so much alike that even if it wasn’t a love match, we would be great friends. I said, “No thanks, love stinks,” but took her number anyway. Maybe someday I’d need another tattoo.
Katherine von Drachenberg was unattached at the time, not that this was the point. I never called her, nor she me. But I did text her here and there—friendly, nothing more. I found her witty and interesting, and we were in the buddy zone for sure.
Divorce completely eats up your time (and money) and I was knee-deep in it, as well as in Heroin Diaries, both book and album. Royal Underground, the clothing line I had started, was growing slowly and needed tons of love. Unlike me. Or, if I did need love, I didn’t notice. My family always comes first, then work, then me time. And there definitely wasn’t any extra time on the clock then, for me or anybody else.
So one day I was texting Katherine (as I call her). At this point she was happily
in love with a boy, but even though she and I still had not met, I sensed something was wrong. I asked if everything was OK and she did as she always does, saying, “Everything is fine.” I knew it wasn’t, and yet I also knew it wasn’t my place to probe.
A few weeks later I planned to finally visit her shop on La Brea in Hollywood. I had heard what an amazing tattooer she was, truly one of the world’s greats, and, being a lover of fine tattoos and artists, I asked her if we could collaborate on a design for me.
TILL DEATH DO US PART fig.ny291
KATHERINE fig.kvd36
Dj Ashba and I had spent the day at a music convention, signing autographs and looking at new recording software. The convention center hot dogs and Red Bulls were wearing off fast, and we were starving. A few quick text messages to Katherine while we were heading up the 405 and dinner was set. We would pick her up at her shop and head to The Lodge in Hollywood for steaks galore.
This was the first time I had met her face-to-face, and the first thing I noticed was how beautiful she was. Striking like a movie star from the ’40s coupled with a tall and imposing presence. We had become friends through technology, and I had no intention of it being anything else. I do not believe she did either. She had a boyfriend, and I had a huge mistrust of women. It seemed like a friendship forged in perfection. Dj will tell you sparks were flying but I didn’t see any. I am also blind as a bat when it’s convenient.
