The Heroin Diaries

by Nikki Sixx

  I don’t know why I’m here but I can’t stay The more things change The more they stay the strange

  Sitting here on this plane Watchin’ the empty faces crawl past me You know they all seem to have ingested The same melancholy pill Instead of warm, fuzzy and safe They seem cold and judgmental Little conversations come in and out of audio focus It’s all slow motion but somehow moving at the Speed of fear I feel such the animal, I’m always the animal My body’s the cage–I’m locked in this cage My home is worn, it’s torn, it’s been abused And I like it

  I don’t know why I’m here but I can’t stay The more things change The more they stay the strange

  Here I sit in another hotel and it smells like someone else I lay in bed and I can taste the smell They smell of smoke, the drink, the stink And the stain on the floor I wonder was he with his wife Or another man’s whore? Scratches upon the glass Tell of the drugs, and the radio Is still on to the music that made them dance I bet it was sweet But me? Fuck man, I gotta get some sleep

  * * *

  JUNE 24TH, 1987 DAY OFF

  Hotel, Austin, Texas, 2 p.m.

  Mars is acting like a school kid around Emi. I mean it’s cute and all but she’s an employee. Onstage last night they were looking at each other all lovey-dovey…it made me wanna puke.

  Chicks = trouble.

  Tommy fucked this chick Robbin Crosby used to go out with (Tawny Kitaen). Now she’s with the singer from Whitesnake and they wanna open up for us. Like I said…

  Chicks = trouble.

  Tawny used to shoot up with Robbin and after I met her she kept asking me to get her some dope. Like I said…

  Chicks = trouble.

  P.S. Speaking of trouble there’s a club here that the bartender can hook me up. Think I’ll get a bindle of china white.

  DOUG THALER: I can understand why the other guys weren’t happy when Mick started dating Emi Canyon. She was an employee, and when she got together with Mick, we suddenly had a situation where the guitar player in the band was being led around by the nose by an employee. Mick is a lovely guy, but he’s one of those guys who gets totally dominated by every single female partner that he has. It’s always the same story. All that ever changes is the girl’s name.

  JUNE 25TH, 1987 FRANK ERWIN CENTER AUSTIN, TX

  Hotel, Austin, Texas, 5:15 a.m.

  I just got back from Beale Street. Went to a few different clubs. Tommy, Vince and myself with Fred found an amazing strip club. The girls took us in the back and gave us lines and blow jobs free. Only in America. God bless Texas!

  This lil girl named Ashlee gave me a number of a guy who sells packages of rigs for $5 a pop. He’s dropping off a 12-pack…just nice to have around, never know if you’re gonna need them (vitamin B? ha ha). The show is sold out and there’s no sound check so I’m gonna have a little party in my room alone but I promise I’ll be in bed by 7 a.m.

  10:30 a.m.

  Fuck, I did it again. I’m still up and I ended up in the hotel closet, freaking out. I took two Halcions about 30 minutes ago so I’m pretty mellow right now…but I was sure hotel security was coming to get me. I hate cocaine.

  * * *

  DANGEROUS IS MY ANTICIPATION

  * * *

  6:45 p.m.

  Just woke up. Rich said everyone was freaking out ’cause I wouldn’t answer my door…fucking hell, I was just sleeping…damn, I wish everyone would just relax (I’m not gonna die). Got to go to the show right now then off to…somewhere. I need to look in the book…I have no idea.

  Ross Halfin is here with some innocent-looking kid who has never left England before. I guess he might need some fucking-over Crüe-style.

  JASON BRYCE: I was sixteen in 1987 when I flew out from London with my dad’s friend Ross Halfin to meet Mötley Crüe on the Girls Girls Girls tour. Ross was photographing them for an English magazine and invited me along as his unpaid assistant. My dad didn’t want me to go because he thought Mötley Crüe would corrupt me, but Ross promised to look after me.

  It was the first time I’d been anywhere, really, but I could tell this was a proper rock ’n’ roll tour. Nikki was a full-on Jack-drinking, coke-snorting rocker, and as soon as he saw me, he started, “Dude, have some Jack! Have some krell!” Vince was quiet, but the rest of them were great.

  On the third or fourth night I was there, we all went out for a Mexican meal. I was too young to legally drink but Nikki was pouring strawberry margaritas down my throat. There was this groupie with us, six feet tall in blonde hair and stockings, and Nikki told her, “If you want to hang out with the Crüe, you’ve got to sort my young mate out.” So she came back to my room with me. She was…very talented.

  Tim Luzzi

  Nikki was very moody. Before the shows he’d be really down and very solitary, just sitting on his own watching something depressing like Sid and Nancy. But after the show, if he wanted to party, he wouldn’t leave you alone until you partied with him.

  He seemed to be around at weird hours, like in the early hours when everybody else was asleep. One night he came to my room with Ross and a couple of girls. It was about four in the morning and they wouldn’t give us any more alcohol on room service. So Nikki phoned down to reception and said, “Look, I’m Nikki Sixx, I need a bottle of JD now and I will give you a thousand bucks for it.” They still wanted nothing to do with him. They just told him, “Sir, go to bed. You’ve had enough.”

  JUNE 26TH, 1987 CONVENTION CENTER ARENA SANANTONIO, TX

  On Mötley jet to Houston, 1 a.m.

  Tonight’s show was killer but I really freaked out. Some fucking fans in the front had this big banner that said VANITY on it. That insane bitch has been talking to magazines, telling them we are getting married…she has NO RIGHT to do that. I have got to get rid of her!

  * * *

  MUSIC TO GET ON CD

  1 Sweet–Give Us a Wink

  2 Deep Purple–Come Taste the Band

  3 Mott the Hoople–Greatest Hits

  4 Bowie–Diamond Dogs

  5 Queen–I, II and Sheer Heart Attack

  6 Alice Cooper–Billion Dollar Babies

  7 Sex Pistols–Never Mind the Bollocks

  8 Iggy and the Stooges–Raw Power

  9 AC/DC–Dirty Deeds

  10 Lou Reed–Transformer

  * * *

  JUNE 27TH, 1987 THE SUNNIT HOUSTON, TX

  Hotel, Houston, 3 p.m.

  Checked my messages at home. David Crosby called–he said he would break my arms if I was getting high. I guess I won’t be calling him back. My machine was completely full, so I just erased the rest of them without listening…there really isn’t anyone I wanna talk to anyway.

  The band is tight as hell, everything is on autopilot musically, the crowds have been insane, all the shows have been sold out. You’d think I would be happy all the time.

  I’m reading Diary of a Rock Star by Ian Hunter. Maybe I’ll release my diary as a book one day…yeah, right, can you imagine?

  P.S. Doug called today and said everyone liked the idea for Wild Side to be the next vid. Radio is digging the track too. I think a live video is in order. Off to the venue now…

  P.P.S. I told Slash when we were back in LA I’d try and get his band (Guns N’ Roses) a support slot on the tour.

  It looks like it’s gonna work out. I played the music to the guys and they liked it…there’s no interest in them right now, but maybe this will help them (anything is better than Whitesnake). Slash is a good guy when he doesn’t piss the bed…ha ha…

  P.P.P.S. Maybe having these dealers follow us is a bad idea.

  JUNE 28TH, 1987 DAY OFF

  Hotel, Houston, 5 p.m.

  Speaking of Houston…Doc was telling me how when the album was Number 2 we should have gone to Number 1. We had the Number 1 album in the country but for mysterious reasons (payola, anyone?) Whitney Houston was Number 1. That sucks. Girls should have been our first Number 1 album.

  Fucked over by a black chick–it seems like a
pattern is developing in my life.

  Going down to T-Bone’s room. The dealers have 2 oz of blow…they’re giving it to us. Why not, it’s a day off, right?

  FRED SAUNDERS: On the Girls tour, every band member had their own very different approach to our days off. Vince would always be after pussy. Mick would be with Emi. Tommy would just be up for whatever was going on, and Nikki was kind of…shifty. He’d slide in and out of the picture periodically, but he was tough to deal with because of the mood swings brought on by the drugs.

  Nikki could be very sensitive and emotional–he and I would sometimes have these big late-night talks where we’d both end up crying. On the other hand, he could also be a complete asshole–I couldn’t possibly begin to remember how many times on the tour he punched me or told me to fuck off. And I always punched him back.

  NIKKI: I guess that’s why they call it liquid courage. Why else would you punch an ex–Hells Angel who is a fourth-degree black belt? But Fred had a huge heart to go with all his bravado. I used to have great talks with him late into the night and we both agreed…

  Chicks = trouble.

  Our next album, Dr. Feelgood, went to Number 1 but I still say it was our second Number 1 album.

  JUNE 30TH, 1987 MYRIAD COLISEUM KLAHOMA

  Backstage, 7:30 p.m.

  Backstage is the most boring place on Earth when you’re trying to be good. In fact it’s the most boring place on earth even when you’re bad. I haven’t written in a while. I seem to have nothing to write about (to you, anyway). I can never keep these diaries up on the road because everything just seems to become a massive blur. It’s really the same thing day in and day out except the shows. To see the faces of those kids…I swear it’s the only reason I’m alive…

  Well, I better get ready for the show. Everybody is getting along really good…no drama yet. We’re leaving after the show to Shreveport. In Houston I just played guitar in my room the whole time and wrote some cool riffs and ideas.

  I’m glad we’re out of Texas, it was a cocaine blizzard there. I was heading down a street I’ve seen before and know what was next for me. I’ve been taking a lot of Halcions that Rich Fisher turned me on to. Between these little pills and all the blow, it’s like doing speedballs with the band’s stamp of approval on it.

  My newest trick is crushing up the Halcions and mixing them with blow in a vial–we call this concoction zombie dust.

  TOMMY LEE: Halcion was like the ’80s Xanax. You’d only need to take one and immediately it would be night-night–you would be fast out until late the next morning. Well, we would take four or five of them, then start drinking Jack–and then we’d leave the hotel and go out for the night. The next morning we would be exchanging stories–“Dude, do you remember what happened last night?” “I have no idea, but I pissed my bed!” “Hey, dude, so did I!” We would wake up and not have the first idea where we were. Those pills were bizarre–they were full-on blackout, and on that tour we were taking a fucking lot of them.

  ROSS HALFIN: On the Girls tour, Nikki turned me on to doing coke all night. We’d still be wired at ten the next morning, so he taught me to drink Nyquil to knock me out. Normally people would take a spoonful if they had the flu. We would drink a bottle in one go then pass out.

  INTERMISSION

  A HEAD-ON COLLISION WAS ABOUT TO HAPPEN YET I WAS TOO STUBBORN TO TAKE A HINT

  INTERMISSION

  Well, I don’t know about you, but I need to take a deep breath for a minute. Maybe even a cold shower.

  As Mick Mars says, “That scared me, and I’m fearless.”

  Maybe it’s a good time to veer from the darkness and lighten up just for a second. So let me take a minute and make a couple points here before we move on.

  When I first placed my hands on these dusty old diaries, scraps of paper and other assorted notes and scribbles, all kinds of feelings came bubbling up–mostly ones of complete shock and amazement that I was able to make any music at all during this insane time. I mean, music drives me (sometimes crazy) and songwriting is still the one place I can get lost in and not wanna be found…it’s my one and only drug and I’m surely addicted to it. But we’re not talking about OD’ing on a double verse and a chorus.

  I had totally lost perspective and music had mostly taken a backseat to the voices in my head and the demons in my closet. I was like a guy who throws the anchor off the side of the ship but forgot to attach it to anything. You’re left floating aimlessly on the Sea of Stupidity. Your only hope is to be rescued, but unfortunately for you, you’re in the middle of the ocean, and the search and rescue patrol is on vacation. At some point you have to ask yourself, Who is really to blame–yourself for being stupid or the rescuers for being unavailable? All I know is music was the sails I needed to reach land, but they had tears in them the size of the Himalayas.

  So another question came up for me, probably the same one you’ve been asking yourself the whole time you’ve been reading this:

  How is this fucker still alive?

  JUST BECAUSE YOU’VE LIVED LONG DOESN’T MEAN YOU’VE LONG TO LIVE.

  True, but…

  Simply said, I believe I’m still here because I still got stuff to do, people to love and music to write. Of course, my life has a twisted way of turning the knife back on me…trust me when I say it usually has a twist. And, to further my karma, it’s usually one of humor.

  I mean, I’ll probably face my maker doing something so uncool like golfing or gardening. It would be too much for me to deal with to be sitting up there next to God, Bon Scott, Sid Vicious and Jimi Hendrix, and hear someone read my obituary from below:

  NIKKI SIXX DIED TODAY…FUCKING GOLFING…

  OK, enuff humor (you tend to make fun of death a lot after you’ve died and come back a few times…but more on that later). Let’s not stray too far from the graveyard of my mind just yet.

  What I can see clearly now is I was so busy running from my past that I didn’t even see the headlights hinting that something disastrous was heading my way. A head-on collision was about to happen, yet I was too stubborn to take a hint, stubborn like a man who won’t step back from a fight, only to find out his feet have been stuck firmly in concrete boots. Sometimes your choice is no choice at all…or so we think…

  So back to the story at hand, one told by contradictions from loved ones, friends and foes who never knew they were signing the Rx on my prescription of the ultimate painkillers…the ones that numb the tornado in your head.

  JULY 1987

  THIS HAS BECOME THE AIRPORT BLOWOOB TOUR

  JULY 1ST, 1987 HIRSCH MEMORIAL COLISEUM SHREVEPORT, LA

  Backstage, 8 p.m.

  This has become the airport blow job tour. After the gig when we get to the airport there’s always a line of girls waiting…we’ve started taking them in the bathrooms of the private airports.

  Oklahoma kicked ass. The show had that old school heavy metal energy. We almost had a riot before the doors opened but besides that all is normal.

  Showtime. See ya…

  JULY 2ND, 1987 MISSISSIPPI COAST COLISEUM BILOKI, MS

  On the jet, 1:30 a.m.

  We’re sitting on the plane getting ready to take off for Biloxi. There is something about the fans in the South…they’re insane. They’re wilder and louder than the East and the West. That was a great show…what did I tell you about airports? As I sit here with a big smile on my face, the stewardess just brought mea bottle of white wine and a silver plate with one Halcion and four lines on it. I’m on my private jet and reading a review of how much we suck. It looks like everything is right on track…

  TOMMY LEE: The Girls Girls Girls tour was absolute debauchery. It was fucking bananas. We started collecting bras, panties, shoes, dresses, skirts, naked Polaroids…everything. I remember walking on to one of our crew buses and it looked like it was fucking raining panties–there were literally thousands of pairs. It looked like a fucking bordello on wheels. They still exist somewhere: we put them all into road c
ases. Maybe we should open a museum?

  NIKKI: The owner of the plane wouldn’t let us hang them in the jet so we made the crew buses keep our “awards.” It smelled like a fucking fish market in there. I hear they’re at the Mötley warehouse…God help the poor bastard who opens that sealed road case.

  Hotel, Biloxi, 5:30 p.m.

  Just woke up. We stay here tonight. We all need a day off. Vince’s voice is trashed, Tommy’s hands are covered in cuts and scabs, my body is a wreck from throwing myself all over…and off…the stage, and Mars’ back is killing him. He gets worse every year. I worry about him. I need to wash my leathers or even have a shower–it’s been six days.

  Off to the show…

  NIKKI: The wear and tear of the road is something not usually seen by the fans firsthand. It comes up in photos–a line on your face here and there, or bags under your bloodshot eyes–but is easily hidden and always ignored. Showering was a luxury that myself, Mick and Tommy normally regarded as a nuisance, not a perk.

  Reading back on this diary entry, I now realize the pain Mick Mars was in, but who would guess it would rear its head so violently in later years that he would suffer from a chronic degenerative bone disease called ankylosing spondylitis and would need a hip replacement operation? To put it lightly, he is a man of steel…all praise Mick Mars, the strongest man on earth.