NIKKI SIXX's 'The Heroin Diaries': Book, Album Release Dates Announced

MÖTLEY CRÜE bassist Nikki Sixx will release a new album, "The Heroin Diaries", on August 21, as a precursor to his autobiography of the same name, which arrives September 25. The album's 12 tracks each match up with one chapter in the book; first single "Life Is Beautiful" can be downloaded from the book's MySpace.com page.

"The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star" offers an unflinching and utterly gripping look at Sixx's descent into drug addiction with a soundtrack, featuring James Michael and DJ Ashba (ex-BEAUTIFUL CREATURES),to match.

Few bands were as influential as MÖTLEY CRÜE in making the 1980s the heavy metal decade. Theirs is a cyclonic story of runaway success and its price, blending outrageous record sales and arena headline tours with smashed up cars, jail sentences, models, drugs, breakups, reunions and more breakups.

In this candid memoir, Nikki Sixx — MÖTLEY CRÜE's bassist and main songwriter — recounts the band's heyday. "The Heroin Diaries" takes readers along on one of the most breathless and harrowing roller coaster rides in the history of pop music. At its heart lies the author's nightmare come true: a punishing heroin addiction that brought him and the band to the edge of losing much more than just their spot on the charts. Serving up snapshots of rock culture at its most manic, this insider's look at triumph and tragedy is every bit as explosive as the musical odyssey it chronicles.

Nikki Sixx was born Frank Feranna in San Jose, California, in 1958 and grew up in Seattle with his grandmother. At the age of seventeen, he sold his guitars and took a bus to Los Angeles, where he began hanging out in local clubs and playing in bands. He founded MÖTLEY CRÜE in 1981 with friend Tommy Lee. Today he's a family man with numerous projects in the works, including songwriting for other artists, a movie, a new band, a clothing line, and ongoing work with the CRÜE.

"The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star" will come out through MTV Books/Simon & Schuster. The accompanying original concept soundtrack will be released by Eleven Seven Music and distributed by ADA, with a portion of proceeds donated to Nikki's Running Wild in the Night, a fundraising initiative for Covenant House. The book is a tell-all covering 12 months in Sixx's battle against addiction, drawn from Nikki's 1986 and '87 journals, and reportedly makes CRÜE's celebrated "Dirt", now being made into a motion picture, sound like Mary Poppins.