NIKKI SIXX's Advice To New Artists: 'Learn The Legal System'

Mike Ragogna of The Huffington Post recently conducted an interview with MTLEY CRE/SIXX: A.M. bassist Nikki Sixx. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

The Huffington Post: Let's get right into your new book, "This Is Gonna Hurt". Can you tell us about it?

Sixx: Well, basically, writers write, photographers shoot photos, musicians write music that's what we do. So, I'm always writing, and a lot of people don't know how aggressive of a writer I am. I actually journal every single day, I write short stories, I write poetry, and I've always been that kind of writer. I'm always collecting information just by walking the planet, and then I kind of grab stuff and download it through my pen and paper that's kind of how "The Heroin Diaries" happened. So, I decided I wanted to do a book of photography a lot of people don't know that I've got quite a large body of photography work, and studio photography too, not just backstage stuff. A lot of the photography is so off the norm that I decided I wanted to kind of explain where I'm coming from without explaining too much because I didn't want to take the mystery away from it. When I got done, I had five-hundred pages, and it had kind of gone all over the place. I didn't know what to do because I had two-hundred photos that I wanted to publish in an eight by ten book, and I had five hundred pages. So, I found an editor that helped me to find the places where I was repeating myself, and found the stories that really grabbed him, and the ones that weren't really well explained. It was nice to have another person help with that, and when we got done, we had two-hundred fifty pages with both the text and photography, and we felt really good about it. We designed the book ourselves, and we even designed all the paper ourselves. I worked with Paul Brown, who is an amazing photographer who rents space from me. I have two warehouses, one with just equipment, and one that is just a photography studio. This is a big passion for me writing, writing music, photography, and it all came together in this book.

The Huffington Post: In the book, you talk about family, addiction, and creativity, but you also discuss your relationship with your sister.

Sixx: First of all, for those that don't know, my sister was born with Down Syndrome, and she was institutionalized in the very early Sixties. Me, being just a small boy and being shuffled around between my mother and grandparents, I never knew her. A lot of the messages that were sent to me and I was told that we couldn't ever see her and she wasn't healthy enough to have visitors, so believe it or not, you kind of forget that you have a sibling. I was like three or four years old when she was taken away, and I don't ever even remember her. But I tell you what, that stuff is impacted in your DNA, and on a cellular level, it comes out eventually. I know that I tried to find out where she was and I talk about that in the book. It was really a moment in my photography studio, where I was sitting there, writing this description of my photography, and I almost went into slow motion, where I looked around and realized that everything in that room, all of my photos, were in one way or another a way of me connecting to her.

The Huffington Post: Nikki, what advice do you have for new artists?

Sixx: My advice for new artists is learn the legal system. If you know the legal system, it's sort of like knowing who you're getting into bed with. If you want to get in bed with sharks, at least understand what you're getting into bed with. I think that if you know the legal system, and you know how to protect yourself, the big concept for me in making music, is not one or two hits, it's twenty, thirty, forty hits, and seventy or one-hundred songs. The only way to do that is to be financially secure enough that you don't have to do things. Desperate people do desperate things. You don't want to be a desperate artist, it doesn't look good, and fans deserve more. So, understand your legal position, and know that side of the business as you're learning how to be a better songwriter and artist, and in the end, we'll have better quality art if we're not relying on the bank. If you have your own money, you're protected, and you're safe, then you make music like you did when you were a teenager, and that's just to do it because you love it.

Read the entire interview at The Huffington Post.