Nikki Sixx 'The Heroin Diaries' album

Set against the frenzied world of heavy metal superstardom, the cofounder of the most legendary rock band of the eighties—Mötley Crüe—offers an unflinching and utterly gripping look at his own descent into drug addiction. 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.” Ian Gittins has written about music and pop culture for The New York Times, The Guardian, Time Out, and The Daily Telegraph, among other publications.

Biography
NIKKI SIXX was born December 11, 1958 at 7:11 a.m. (just like the White Trash Convenient Store, he says) in San Jose, California. In Mötley Crüe’s The Dirt, Nikki described his mom Deanna Haight as “an Idaho farm girl with stars in her eyes… witty, strong-willed, motivated and extremely gorgeous… with an untamable wild streak.” Like mother, like son.

While in high school, Nikki was taunted for his eclectic clothing style, a mix of glam and punk rock, which he reacted to with violent retaliation. His troubled upbringing came to a head, with Nikki eventually running away from home and getting kicked out of school. Looking back on that troubled upbringing has led to his compassion for other abandoned youngsters and his recent establishment of the “Running Wild in the Night” fund-raising initiative for Covenant House.

“Having experienced life as a runaway myself, I wanted to do something to help kids put in this position through no fault of their own,” said Nikki, who admitted that music was perhaps the single most important factor in saving him from an inevitable tragic death on the streets.

Cutting his teeth on L.A.’s late-’70s punk-rock movement with one foot firmly on the heart of ’70s English glam and the other in heavy metal, Nikki looked for the perfect partners to take on the world.

Mötley Crüe played their first show together January 17, 1981. That same year saw them record a debut album, Too Fast for Love, on their own Leathür Records label. Twenty-five years and some 40 million albums sold later, it all culminated in 2005's “Red White and Crüe” and “Carnival of Sins” worldwide jaunt, named Pollstar’s ..6 grossing concert tour of the year. At this point, it looks like no end in sight for the Crüe’s wild and colorful career.

Sixx has also participated in a pair of solo projects, in 58 and Brides of Destruction, releasing albums that showed different sides of his songwriting ability. He supplied several songs to The Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde Rock ‘n Roll Musical and recently co-wrote hit songs for Meat Loaf, Saliva and Marion Raven, among others. Sixx helped co-write the N.Y. Times best-seller Dirt, the history of the Crüe, which has become a sacred text and “bible” for rockers all over the world and will soon become a major motion picture through MTV and Paramount Films. In addition, Sixx’s autobiographical The Heroin Diaries, compiled from his 1986-’87 writings during the height of his drug addiction, will be published by Simon and Schuster next year. Sixx plans on taking the concept of a book to a different level, and with Nikki, these words should not be taken lightly. As with all things Sixx, all we can do is wait and see.

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Nikki Sixx - The Heroin Diaries

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