NIKKI SIXX Praises 'Inspirational' Amputee Who Appears In His 'This Is Gonna Hurt' Book

In a new interview with First Coast News, MÖTLEY CRÜE bassist Nikki Sixx was asked about the amputee with spike prosthetic legs who was featured as the centerfold in his second book "This Is Gonna Hurt: Music, Photography, And Life Through The Distorted Lens Of Nikki Sixx". He said: "I took out an ad for an adult amputee and met Amy. I wanted to build spiked legs for somebody. The idea was to put her in a fantasy situation. When I met Amy, it was unbelievable. I mean, she's such an inspirational person, losing both her legs to viral meningitis when she was 19 years old, and what she's done with her life since. I wasn't just looking for someone to shoot who had no legs. I had the idea for these spiked prosthetics. They were really sharp, impossible to stand on. We made her a wig, too.

"We had a guy who worked on 'Iron Man II' make the spikes," he explained. "They screwed into her existing prosthetics. Then we harnessed her and hung her in the studio, so that she could basically be standing. As we were shooting, she got to play around. She wasn't putting all of her weight on her legs because she was suspended from the ceiling.

"It was hard for her to balance in the different positions," Nikki added. "There was a moment when we lowered her onto the ground and she sat back in almost a sitting position, looking off stoically and majestically, and she was really beautiful and calming. It was one shot."

While Sixx's 2008 bestseller "The Heroin Diaries" compiled a year of journals from the most gruesome point of his addiction to the opiate, "This Is Gonna Hurt" picked the story up 20 years later and included Sixx's photographs of amputees, prostitutes, addicts, the homeless, and CRÜE drummer Tommy Lee.

Back in 2011, Sixx told The Village Voice about how "This Is Gonna Hurt" came about: "The concept was to do a coffee table book, mostly photography, a little bit of an introduction. I started writing about it and figuring it out. I started diving into where I came from and why I saw life differently and why a lot of the subject matter that I have chosen, what it means to me, why I see the beauty in it. Even though it's not only a book of photography, you do get huge chunks of my work in there and you get to follow along where I came from and where I'm at now and what I see, especially socially. My interpretation is that we're in a very dangerous place right now, especially for young people."

MÖTLEY CRÜE's "The Stadium Tour" kicked off on June 16 in Atlanta, Georgia and will conclude on September 9 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

CRÜE's long-delayed North American trek with DEF LEPPARD, POISON and JOAN JETT & THE BLACKHEARTS was originally planned for 2020 and later moved to 2021 and then to 2022.

"The Stadium Tour" marks the CRÜE's first live dates since wrapping its 2014/2015 farewell tour.

CRÜE fans who shelled out for the band's 2014/2015 "farewell" trek were led to believe that the group would never return after playing its final show on December 2015 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The band touted the signing of a pre-tour "cessation of touring" agreement as cementing the fact it truly was the end of CRÜE's life on the road.

Photo courtesy of Jason Shaltz / SiriusXM