NIKKI SIXX Says VINCE NEIL Was 'Really Lucky' When He Fell Off Stage: 'The Guitar Broke His Fall'

MÖTLEY CRÜE bassist Nikki Sixx says that Vince Neil is "on the mend" after breaking his ribs during a concert earlier in the month.

Fan-filmed video showed the 60-year-old CRÜE singer walking to the front of the stage while performing with his solo band on October 15 at the Monsters On The Mountain festival at LeConte Center in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. With his guitar strapped around him, Neil was encouraging the crowd to clap along while playing the 1989 MÖTLEY CRÜE hit "Don't Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)" when he suddenly fell and dropped out of the camera's view almost instantly.

TMZ later reported that there was a small gap between the speaker and the stage that Neil didn't notice. His roadie and a security guy helped him get to his feet, and Vince "limped away."

Now, in a new interview with Billboard, Sixx said the festival crew didn't put down reflective tape to mark the edge of the stage, which led to the fall.

"Without that, it's all completely black, so you can walk forward thinking there's still stage there and fall off," Sixx explained. "I've done that myself. Vince and I were laughing about one time we both fell off the stage at the same show. But he was really lucky. He said if it wasn't a song that he was playing rhythm guitar on it could've been his head, which would've been a worse injury. The guitar broke his fall. But he'll heal up and we'll be ready to go on tour [with MÖTLEY CRÜE] in June."

According to Nikki, he and his CRÜE bandmates are looking foreard to "The Stadium Tour" with DEF LEPPARD, POISON and JOAN JETT & THE BLACKHEARTS, which was originally scheduled to take place last summer but ended up being pushed back to 2021, and then to 2022, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

"This tour's been (postponed) twice," he said. "We just didn't have enough information at the time, with protocols and all, to go and do a stadium tour. We're all feeling good about it now, and we can't wait, man."

This past May, Neil apologized to fans at his first pandemic-era performance when he began losing his voice several songs into his set.

Last month, Vince revealed that he was trying out a new toning machine in an apparent effort to get in shape for "The Stadium Tour". The singer said he was using Emsculpt Neo, a revolutionary new treatment which supposedly builds muscle and reduces fat using both radio frequency and high-intensity electromagnetic energies.

It's not clear how long Neil will need to recover from his injuries, but Mayo Clinic claims broken ribs usually heal on their own in one or two months.