by Nikki Sixx
HELLFEST, FRANCE
JUNE 19, 2009
Sitting on the second plane on the way to Nantes, France. We left early this morning from Prague. Tommy is asleep one seat over, and Vince is watching a movie on his computer behind me. If you have ever seen the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles, you know today’s story. We are going on tonight at 1 A.M. I think Heaven n’ Hell (which is Ronnie James-Dio-era Black Sabbath, and some of the best Sabbath in my opinion) play first, as well as a few others. All I can say is, “What the fuck? Why are we going on at 1 A.M.?” We’ll get offstage at around 2:45 A.M., then another hour’s drive back to the hotel and up at 9 to catch two planes to make it to Spain for another festival, just to do this again…Hellfest is the name of this show and all I can say is that it’s fitting.
Some days I don’t care how hard I try to hold it together, it’s hard to keep positive.
Let me try the old Gratitude list trick and see if this helps…
1. I AM STILL SOBER, EIGHT YEARS, JULY 2.
2. MY FAMILY IS ON THEIR WAY TO SPAIN TO MEET ME. (I COULD RANT FOR HOURS ABOUT THEM, BUT I CHOOSE TO KEEP IT LIMITED FOR THEIR PRIVACY. I CAN SAY I AM SOOOO EXCITED TO SEE THEM.)
3. I ICHATTED WITH KATHERINE LAST NIGHT AND IT WAS AMAZING. I FEEL I HAVE GROWN SO MUCH SINCE I LEFT LOS ANGELES. SOMETIMES A MAN HAS TO BURY THE KNIFE UP TO THE HANDLE, HITTING BONE TO FULLY FEEL THE PAIN OF HOW WONDERFUL HIS LIFE IS. I AM SUCH A MAN. HISTORY PROVES THAT.
NANTES, FRANCE 3:30 A.M.
I think me and Vince wound ourselves up so much about going onstage at 1 A.M. that we finally just got giddy. Of course, just when you think it’s gonna be lame, stupid, or worse, and nobody will wait to see us, it turned out to be one of the best of the tour, if not the best. When this band is one, we’re a monster…Tonight (or this morning) was one of those magical moments.
So again, I learn from my own outlook daily. In an AA meeting once I heard this old-timer say, “If I am thinking it, I am probably stinking it.” It has taken me a long time to figure out what the hell that meant, or at least what I think he meant. When I was putting together The Heroin Diaries, there was a lot of looking back and using it as a way to move forward, however ungracefully at times. This man, a small-framed black man with abnormally huge fingers, announced this message to me after I shared some gibberish in a meeting about being stressed. He made his point by punctuating it with his chubby pointer finger thrust in between my eyes. I can still feel his presence (and the emotional bruise on my forehead). And again I repeat his words, “If you’re thinking it, you’re stinking it.”
PRAGUE HOMELESS, NIGHT fig.pr62
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 fig.fa35
PRAGUE HOMELESS, DAY fig.pr67
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 o
nce 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 fig.br666
“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…
Two days ago, in some town I can’t remember, we wrote a song called “Smile.” The hotel was somewhat eerie in a Shining (the movie) type of way. All I remember besides the chorus to the song is that the hotel smelled like dead people and James and I got lost in the woods and thought for some reason that was funny, too. We both decided that our iPhone cameras were better than our Nikons and even further into lunacy came the comparison to my Hasselblad.
Clearly, it’s time for me to go home. Insanity is contagious and now James has it bad too.
Friendship is like music, and sometimes it’s like songwriting in Syracuse, New York. Nothing really gets accomplished except laughter. I smile at this ’cause, to be honest, we probably wrote more music talking than we even know. Music comes out in a lot of ways…Like our pictures taken with shitty cell-phone cameras when we were lost in the woods, or even the grueling drudgery of my high-concept photo shoots at Funny Farm. It’s all about the feeling. In other words…inspiration. It doesn’t matter where you get it. It could be on the six o’clock news or from the morning paper but you usually have to process things in your mind like film before it develops…It will come out if you give it time…Like life, right? If you live through all the pain, it will develop into inspiration and come out in all kinds of ways. Sometimes I see it in a smile. Other times I feel it in a song or when I have to hold back the tears when I watch a film…it all comes from somewhere deep inside somebody else. They are giving it to us to feel with them. These are life’s gifts…
Like songwriting in Syracuse.
* * *
Smile
Sixx:A.M.
As the light washes over the morning rise
You’re still asleep and that’s alright
I can be still, because you look so sweet
And beautiful next to me
And all my life I’ve been waiting for someone like you
To make me smile
You make me feel alive
And you’re giving me everything I’ve ever wanted in life
You make me smile
And I forget to breathe
What’s an angel like you ever do with a devil like me
You make me smile
Still in bed
Sun is beating down
In a hotel room on the edge of town
Wake up baby
There’s three hundred miles to drive
And the truckstop preacher
He says “God is on our side”
And all my life I’ve been waiting for someone like you
To make me smile
You make me feel alive
And you’re giving me everything I’ve ever wanted in life
You make me smile
And I forget to breathe
What’s an angel like you ever do with a devil like me
You make me smile
* * *
OFF THE ROAD AGAIN: HARD TO DESCRIBE, HARDER TO SWALLOW
It’s hard to describe the end of a tour. But as I sit here in my home in Los Angeles, I will try. It has been described by some as a sort of “post-tour depression” disorder, not unlike what soldiers experience after coming home from war. I can honestly say I’ve had it.
It’s the feeling a fish probably has when it’s out of water. There isn’t enough sleep to rest your soul (if you even have one left after all the soul sucking on the road) or enough holy water to wash off the grime, slime, and disease that has somehow become your second skin. Like a lot of things, the end can be brutal. Like running a mile around the football field when you were a kid. (It took four laps.) The last quarter mile was hell. You w
anna quit every step. You fight, not quitting as your legs grow heavier and heavier and your breath grows shallow and your sides split open from cramps. Everybody is watching—the coach, the high school girlfriends, and all your friends (and a few foes)—so you persevere and cross that finish line. Amazingly, you’re still alive with not a drop of blood in sight. Shit, you did it. You made it and you didn’t think you could or would.
This isn’t unlike the end of a tour (or relationship). When you finally throw your hands to the sky and fall to your knees and look up at God (or is that a 747?), you know you’ve pushed yourself to the limit and you’ve won another personal battle. OK, OK, let’s get to the point here…
The point is, I wanted to die the last month on tour with Mötley Crüe. I am gonna keep saying it so you understand that I am being honest and telling you what nobody wants to admit. Like I said, this is hard to describe and probably hard for some of you to swallow but it has to be said—sometimes rock stars are fucking phonies. Liars. We have bad days, asshole days, and sometimes we whine like little bitches, and nobody wants to admit it to their fans. Begrudgingly, some days we put on the clown suit and go out there and make the kids laugh, but we’re not gods. We’re not always happy to be here, there, or anywhere. Some days we’re just going through the motions…
