Bassist Nikki Sixx talked to Kerrang! Radio’s Loz Guest, where he talked about the secret of being in Motley Crue for 40 years, along his bandmates.

Here’s what he said:

“I don’t think any of us ever really looked… I don’t think anybody looks that far into the future. But then you start seeing some of the bands that you grew up with hitting their 30th birthday, and you’re, like, ‘Woah. These guys have been around 30 years. That’s amazing.’ And now [they hit] 40 years. And now bands that meant so much to me growing up, like Aerosmith, I think they just hit 50 years. In my head, I’m, like, ‘Are they even 50 years old?’ ‘Cause I still see the album cover to ‘Toys In The Attic’. So it’s cool. It used to be a young man’s game, and now it’s a quality game.

“Yeah, 40 years. Woah. I’m not gonna make 50.” […]

“I think the camaraderie is a big part of it. And also you’ve gotta realize that anybody you knew 40 years ago, you go from being kids to young adults to [being] married, [having] kids, buy houses. I mean, we were all kind of pretty much living together, and then, at some point, we were going to each other’s houses to visit each other and hang out. And you just realize we’re all experiencing the same really super-cool things.

”But no matter what happened in the band or didn’t happen in the band, it all boils down to rehearsal. You’re in rehearsal, there’s a bunch of open pizza boxes, there’s sh*t scattered everywhere, Tommy‘s [Lee, drums] over there [pounding the drums]. ‘Dude, shut up. I’m trying to tune my bass.’ Mick‘s [Mars, guitar] over there [playing his guitar] — just all this noise and energy. And then, all of a sudden, it’s, like, ‘Hey, you guys, you wanna run one?’ And then you run it, and it’s, like, bam. Magic. It’s there again. So whatever happens, not even the stage, it goes back to rehearsal — that moment. ‘Cause that’s when there’s nobody there. There’s no press. There’s no photographers. There’s no management. There’s nothing. It’s just the same four guys.”