For starters….Here are some excerpts from an official press release about Nikki Sixx’s latest project called “Heroin Diaries”:
One of the most creative forces in the artist community, Motley Crue founding member and songwriter Nikki Sixx takes a different stroke with the pen with his first book Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of a Shattered Rock Star (VH1/Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster), releasing in the US and Canada on September 18. Accompanying the book will be the sonic diary, Heroin Diaries (Eleven Seven Music) in stores August 21 introducing Nikki's new side-project, Sixx:A.M. as well as his clothing line, Royal Underground.
The Heroin Diaries, Nikki shares his personal diary entries and with a little help from his friends, he adds a commentary that gives you the whole story of what was going on inside his head. Co-written with Ian Gittins (The Guardian, Q Magazine), Heroin Diaries is based on Sixx's journal entries beginning Christmas 1986 where he documented the tumultuous relationship he had with heroin and his mega-selling band, Mötley Crüe. Chronicling the highs and lows of being in one of the world's biggest rock bands while being one of the most notorious junkies to survive the excess of the 80s, Heroin Diaries includes commentary from those closest to Sixx then and now who had an all-access pass to his struggle and recovery from his addictions. A portion of the proceeds from the book will go to Sixx's charity - Running Wild In The Night, a fundraising initiative for Covenant House California, which helps get youth off the streets.
The soundtrack Heroin Diaries is the dark audio companion to Sixx's diary, written and produced by Sixx, James Michael and DJ Ashba under the moniker SIXX:A.M., retracing the path from destruction to salvation. The first single from the Heroin Diaries soundtrack is "Life Is Beautiful," the accompanying video was directed by Paul Brown, who also did the graphic design for the book. Fans are already flocking to the Heroin Diaries MySpace page for an early listen to the track with more than 252,000 plays in the two weeks since it was made available. The page also features links to the haunting performance video.
In addition to being an author, Sixx is currently engaged in a wide range of artistic endeavors including photography and fashion design for his clothing line Royal Underground he founded in 2006 with Kelly Gray, former president and creative director of St. John Clothing.
For more information on Nikki Sixx, Heroin Diaries, Sixx:A.M., Royal Underground and Running Wild In The Night visit www.nikkisixx.net . You can view the video for “Life is Beautiful” here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJDDxHIaaVk ..
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 and drummer, Tommy Lee. As the cofounder, songwriter and bassist of one of Rock's most notorious bad boys, Mötley Crüe, Sixx has achieved international success having sold more than 40 million albums worldwide, documented the band's quintessentially decadent lifestyle in the best-selling 2001 autobiography and soon-to-be feature film, The Dirt, and had one of the top-grossing tours of 2005, with all four original members reuniting to play before an estimated one million people in the U.S. Sixx is an avid photographer, clothing designer with his Royal Underground line, author and primarily a songwriter who has written songs with Meat Loaf, Drowning Pool, and Saliva.
In Store Interview:
While being one of the few members of press invited to the meet and greet to hang with Nikki for a few minutes and take pictures with him for our coverage, we were also supposed to do an interview with him prior to the book signing. Unfortunately due to time and the 300 plus fans waiting for him we had to put it off for a phoner another time hopefully sooner than later. We did speak with him for about ten minutes as he graciously spoke to us while wolfing down a quick lunch.
This is what he had to say….
With this project through the writing and the music it has really served to be both a therapeutic and creative experience allowing me to do something outside of metal music, you know. I think maybe the old school Crue fans, who are just amazing with their endless support, are not that accepting of me doing music that is different than Motley. I think the younger fans have more of an open mind and have become more accepting of the music, at least so far. As you said (Rich commented on hearing Queen, Trans Siberian Orchestra, and Savatage in some of the arrangements) the music is a little more progressive and I really liked doing that. I didn’t want this to be predictable. You have a couple contemporary rock songs on the album, which I like to do, but I wanted to experiment with some other sounds as well. All the money is going to charity which is makes all the hard work very worth it and I hope people just maybe can learn something from my experiences. I’m not here to preach but maybe through reading the “Heroin Diaries” or listening to the cd, someone will either prevent or break their own personal chain of abuse or addiction. That’s what I really this project does for people. Will there be another Motley Crue record…..yes there will. I don’t have time to work on that now because this project is the priority right now. But next year I will start working on the next album. I don’t know what its going to sound like and have no idea when we will start recording it.
We want to thank Chris for setting all this up with the Asylum and Nikki for allowing us to join him for a few minutes while he had lunch. It was such a busy time it was literally minutes before he went out to do the signing and everyone wanted a piece of him. So to take a few minutes to speak with us while he ate lunch was very cool. We are looking forward to doing the full interview so readers keep checking back. |
