NIKKI SIXX Says New SIXX: A.M. Album Is 'Pretty Magical'

ARTISTdirect.com editor Rick Florino recently conducted an interview with MÖTLEY CRÜE/SIXX: A.M. bassist. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

ARTISTdirect.com: Where are you at with the new SIXX: A.M. record?

Nikki: The record's just about finished. It's pretty magical! The thing about SIXX: A.M. is we've set ourselves up for failure by saying that we don't tour. We had never even intended to do videos. We've been pushed into things like touring out of demand, which is a nice feeling. It's not like, "We're going to write songs. We're going to form a band. We're going to get a logo. We're going to go on tour. We're going to release a record." I do that in MÖTLEY CRÜE, and I love that. I've done it in other bands. To do a project that's set up to not do any of that stuff is really exciting. We write some music, and we don't even know if we'll record it. We record it, but we don't know if we're going to release it. Now, we know we're going to release the music, but we don't know anything more than that. I know there's a band, an album and I don't know what'll come after that [Laughs]. It's kind of exciting! It seems like uncharted territory.

ARTISTdirect.com: The first album had a real cinematic side to it.

Nikki: There's a lot of that organically inside the band, so the new record has those elements as well.

ARTISTdirect.com: If you were to compare this new SIXX: A.M. record to a movie or combination of movies, what would you compare it to?

Nikki: It's very positive — but from a serial killer's point of view [Laughs]. That's really all I can say. That probably won't even make sense to anybody, and that's okay too [Laughs].

ARTISTdirect.com: What was it like to re-approach "Shout at the Devil" with HOLLYWOOD UNDEAD?

Nikki: It was cool! Danny Lohner was producing HOLLYWOOD UNDEAD, and he told me the guys were going to do a version of "Shout at the Devil". I said, "Cool, when do you want me to show up and play bass?" And, he said, "Really?" I was like, "Yeah!" It's funny because they didn't think that they could "afford" me, and I go, "Why would I charge someone to play bass?" He started laughing! I just said, "Listen, I'll be there at 4 p.m. and I'll be gone at 4:04 p.m. Just be sure the bass is tuned. That's how long the song is. I'm going to do one take and be in-and-out." I drove up the street, pulled into his driveway, walked in the house, the bass was plugged in, I played the song one time and left [Laughs]. He just said, "Do what you do!" I've never even heard it, but I loved that they were doing the song and I like the band so I just went for it.

ARTISTdirect.com: Is there any chance we'll see another book from you?

Nikki: I'm working on a book right now. It's 99 percent finished. "The Heroin Diaries" was really a year in my life, and it showed my addiction and recovery. If you to peel the onion and go deeper to the core, you've got to go back to when I was six- or seven-years-old. You have to go back to what happened to me as a child and how I got from that point to being a teenager, then from being a teen to starting MÖTLEY CRÜE and becoming an addict. Then recovery… we know that story, but what we don't know is what happened when I was so young and how that, going through my brain, was filtered out into all of these different artistic things I do. I'm a photographer. All of my photography is based around a lot of what happened when I was much younger. A lot of what I do in MÖTLEY CRÜE is based around that too, but people don't know what that is. By reading the book, you're going to start when I was a kid. It's exciting for me because the book has about 150 of my photographs in it as well, so you start to see the tie-in between who I was as a kid, who I am as an adult and then what happened in that journey and how this fucked-up brain of mine works. You see why it works the way it does, why I'm so positive in my life and why all of that positivity turns into successful things that I do. Everyone I'm around is successful because I don't lose at anything I do, and it all goes back to the beginning.

ARTISTdirect.com: Do you have a favorite memory of when you toured with Ozzy back in the day?

Nikki: I think it'd have to be Ozzy going on stage, pulling up his dress with just white underwear on, grabbing the mic, looking at the crowd and saying, "Stop, stop, stop…I'm not an animal." The audience lost their mind, and the band broke into some song. It wasn't an act. He'd been up for days, and he was losing his mind. Seeing that happen, I was like, "Fuck, this guy's taken it farther than I ever want to take it." Ozzy's done so much in his life, and he also comes from a place of being positive all the time. Everything he touches is also successful because of that. It's a journey to get to this place that's made us who we are. I'm excited we're going out with Ozzy. He's my neighbor; it's kind of bizarre! He lives a few doors down from me, and it's just a weird place we've ended up in our lives.

Read the entire interview from ARTISTdirect.com.