In a new interview with Kerrang, Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx shared some details about his personal lifestyle when he was a teenager.
Here is what he said:
“I’m actually a happy person. I really struggled with shyness when I was young because we moved so much, and I also struggled with feelings of abandonment. My parents both abandoned me –my father left when I was three, and my mom left when I was six – so when I hit my teenage years, all those hormones and all that heavy metal that had been bouncing around in my head led me to become unruly, but I was still a nice guy, I believe. My friends meant a lot to me and still do. Then again, I’ve also been very destructive in my life.
I have to say that I don’t think that Nirvana and Pearl Jam killed the bands you mention, I think that they killed themselves. They were making copycat music. We, on the other hand, simply imploded. Forget about the lifestyle for a minute – the thing that ultimately allowed us to pull ourselves through was the music that we made, and how good we can be when we really put it together.
Every great band has hills and valleys; they start at the bottom and if they’re lucky they make it to the top of the mountain. But eventually, you have to go down. Very few bands are lucky enough to become popular and stay popular forever. That’s just the way music is – it changes, technology changes, fashion changes, and social outlooks change. But again, today a lot of bands are just so f*c*ing safe.”
Nikki further revealed a moment when he was arrested by cops for selling drugs at The Rolling Stones gig.
“I was very lucky. I was busted at a Rolling Stones concert in Seattle for selling dr*gs – it was chocolate mescaline – so I fled the city. I worked on a farm while I tried to raise money, but my uncle worked for Capitol Records and he said that I could live with him, which for me was everything.
He would give me records by all these bands – obviously, The Beatles were one of them – and he really fed my hunger for music. So that’s how I ended up in Los Angeles. He got me a job at a record store, and that’s when I started putting bands together in LA. That was probably in 1974.”