NIKKI SIXX: 'All Cylinders Are Firing And It Feels Great'

Caitlin Hotchkiss of ChartAttack.com recently conducted an interview with MÖTLEY CRÜE bassist Nikki Sixx. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

On his "The Heroin Diaries" book, which is taken from actual journals Sixx kept in the late '80s while in the grip of a near-fatal heroin addiction:

"I'm having people come up all the time to me and saying, 'Thank you for writing this book. It's my story.

"In the beginning, I was thinking that they were abandoned, that they were heroin addicts, that they had gone through recovery. But for a lot of them, it wasn't that at all. They were abused, they were victims of pills, they had eating disorders, they hadn't gone into recovery… so many different scenarios. To have my story out there and have it touch so many people is really fulfilling."

On his new projects, including a new band called SIXX: A.M. that he formed with longtime collaborators DJ Ashba and James Michael, a clothing line and a charity called Running Wild In The Night that provides help for teenage runaways:

"It's invigorating. In the past, I could do two things: I could make a record or I could do a tour.

"Now, I've got a new band, a soundtrack album, a book, a clothing line, photography, I'm a single father, I'm a producer and a songwriter, I'm still in MÖTLEY CRÜE, and it's like, 'Fuck yeah!' All cylinders are firing and it feels great.

"I mean, I get tired. I get burnt out. I have to take time and shut it down just like anybody else. But it's my excitement in life to watch somebody walk down the street wearing one of our jackets, or to see somebody carrying the book. That's what gets me off.

"I'm interested in sharing my very private experience in a year of my life, showing that I was able to answer my own questions from inside my diaries — questions that were painful to me — and being able to find myself through recovery. And I guess what I see is that I've recovered something I lost, which was to be an artist, always.

"I think I'll be 70 years old and doing paintings and photography and music. I'm not really so interested in being in a rock band for the rest of my life. I'm interested in anything that could enable me to be an artist. So if that means being in a rock band, that's pretty cool. But if it means doing photography in a third world country where nobody knows who I am… I mean, some of my best times have been in Cambodia and India, wearing a long-sleeved shirt and a baseball hat with all my long hair tucked up under it and just taking these moving, affecting pictures. I'm like a pig in friggin' mud. Being in front of the camera is cool, but being behind the camera is even better. So with 'The Heroin Diaries' pictures and music together, this whole thing's kind of like an art project."