NIKKI SIXX Says Touring With MÖTLEY CRÜE Now Is 'Fantastic': 'It's Not As Grueling As You'd Think'

In a new interview with Tony Toscano of The Screen Chatter Interview Page, MÖTLEY CRÜE bassist Nikki Sixx spoke about the band's upcoming "The Return Of Carnival Of Sins" tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of CRÜE's groundbreaking 2005-2006 "Carnival Of Sins" tour and the 45th anniversary of the band. The 33-city Live Nation-produced trek will kick off on July 17, 2026 in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania at the Pavilion at Star Lake and will feature support acts EXTREME and TESLA. Asked how he and his bandmates prepare for such "an exhausting tour", Nikki said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Obviously, just like your musicianship, you pay attention to your health and your stamina. I do that anyway, so I wanna feel good anyway. So you just up it a little bit for the show.

"It's not as grueling as you'd think," Nikki explained. "We're doing two weeks of shows, and then we're off for, like, Almost two weeks, and then another two weeks, and then off for two weeks, and then the final two weeks. So it's spread out, which is kind of nice. You can head home, spend some time doing other stuff and then get back out on the road.

"We did some festivals, and it was amazing, 'cause I would be [at home] in Jackson [Wyoming], so I'd fly out of Jackson," Sixx added. "Of course you can't get anywhere from Jackson without a connection flight… and then you fly out and you do a couple of these big festivals. And then I would fly home and I would literally be up on Jackson Lake fishing or taking my daughter to do something. And then a week later I get on a plane and I go play to a bunch of maniacal fans and have a great time and then come back. So there's elements of that that keep your head balanced when you're out.

"I think one of the hardest things for most of my friends that are musicians and for me that we're not in our twenties or even thirties is when you just start a tour and you tour for, like, five months straight," Nikki said. "And I think that's really hard on you — on your body, but it's also just hard to maintain the energy, 'cause you're starting to get ground down after a while. So we've learned, 'cause listen, at one point we toured for two years without coming home. I had Christmas in a Holiday Inn and then the next year I had Christmas in — I don't know — maybe a nicer hotel. 'cause we were getting a little bigger. But that's the way it is. You get out there. So we really make sure that we take care of ourselves, build a great show, have great support, build in the off time so that people are not getting burnt out. And it's fantastic. It's fantastic."

Last month, Nikki told Mike Hsu of the 100 FM The Pike radio station about "The Return Of Carnival Of Sins": "Listen, two of our biggest and most successful tours was the 'Dr. Feelgood' tour. And that's not to negate 'Girls, Girls, Girls' or any of that stuff, but that was a big peaking time for us and that album connected with people. And then the 'Carnival Of Sins' tour 20 years ago. That was unbelievable. It was such a fun experience. And we were just, like, 'It's an anniversary of that and that DVD and people still talk to us about that show.' We were, like, 'Well, what can you do now with technology that you couldn't do back then?' They didn't have video screens back then, and anything that you could do that would encompass and take over the imagination of all the people there. And that we had an opportunity to do that in [Las] Vegas on a couple things. 'In The Beginning', [which] starts off the 'Shout At The Devil' album, we had an amazing visual presentation of 'In The Beginning'. Mid-show, everything went dark and there's this, basically, devil talking to you, narrating that, which then led into 'Shout At The Devil'. And these are the kind of things, when you think about the 'Carnival' environment, how far we can take it — it's super exciting for us."

Regarding MÖTLEY CRÜE's choice of support acts for the tour, Nikki said: "We're really stoked with TESLA and EXTREME, because the idea of TESLA and EXTREME and MÖTLEY CRÜE is it's all about songs, however you interpret them. You can play 'em RAMMSTEIN style or you can play 'em George Thorogood style or you can play 'em whatever. A good song is a good song, and that's what I'm really excited about. We've had the best time when we look out at the fans. We did 'The Stadium Tour' [in 2022]. They were singing every Joan Jett song, all the POISON songs, all the DEF LEPPARD songs, all the MÖTLEY CRÜE songs. So this has a little feel of that. They're in sheds and stuff — they're not stadiums — which is a cool place to play in the summer outside."

Asked if the upcoming extensive tour is MÖTLEY CRÜE "putting a cap on it", considering his recent comment that leaving his family behind to go on the road was becoming increasingly difficult for him, Sixx said: "No. It's summertime. It's great to be able to go out and be with the band and the fans and not leave my family behind 'cause they're in school and all this kind of stuff. So, summers are a great time for bands that have been around for a while and have families because we can go out and play and still be able to be with our families. That's always kind of been the hardest part for me, is being separated from that. I'm a dad and a husband and a sobriety advocate and a musician before I am a rock star. Though that doesn't equate to me, but I understand that. But I'm just saying, I don't put all my eggs just in that basket 'cause it would feel very one-dimensional to me. I have a lot of dimension that I like to enjoy in my life. I have an animation company. That brings me amazing amount of creative joy, and great partners. And there's so many other things that I do as well as MÖTLEY CRÜE. So I'm really grateful, dude — really grateful."

He added: "And no, this isn't a cap on anything. And then plugging it into summertime, it just works for everybody. It's just a blast."

MÖTLEY CRÜE's Las Vegas residency launched on September 12 and at Dolby Live at Park MGM and ran through October 3. The shows had initially been set for spring but were rescheduled after frontman Vince Neil revealed he had suffered a stroke last Christmas.

In September, Vince revealed that he had actually had a series of strokes before he suffered the "big one" in his sleep last Christmas night, rendering him unable to get out of bed when he woke up the next day.

When MÖTLEY CRÜE originally postponed the Las Vegas residency, the band said it was because Neil needed a "medical procedure," but offered no further details.