Nikki Sixx explains dysfunction within Mötley Crüe that led band to call it quits
Nikki Sixx explains dysfunction within Mötley Crüe that led band to call it quits
Mötley Crüe and Sixx:A.M. bassist Nikki Sixx was recently interviewed by the Let There Be Talk podcast and he spoke about the dysfunction that led the band to call it quits.
The following are excerpts from the interview as transcribed by Blabbermouth.
“When these four guys got together, we agreed on a common idea, and everybody put their skin in the game… I don’t think Mick Mars was a punk rock fan. I’m a punk rocker at heart — always have been. My attitude is, I love heavy metal, but I was never a super-musician, muso fan. I’d be, like, ‘I love what Eddie Van Halen‘s doing right there,’ but I didn’t think about it technically. There’s other guys in the band that are technical. So they put their skin in the game, I put my anarchy in the game. I’m a huge lyricist fan; that’s, like, my driver for everything. And nobody in the band wrote lyrics; I wrote all the lyrics for the band. That was all the messaging. And Vince had this voice; no one else sounded like that. He had a spitfire, Gatling-gun lead-vocal style. He put his skin in the game. No one played like Tommy. Tommy was seventeen, eighteen years old when I met him. He was a monster, and he was hyper — he’s a hyper human being. He played hyper and I played simple, and that worked. If I played super busy and he played super busy, it wouldn’t have sounded right. So I feel like Tommy‘s energy was a big driver of the band.”
“As the years went, Tommy wanted to be a different guy… He fell in love with hip-hop. I have no problem with it, but it was weird for us. We were, like, ‘Whoa! Where’s Tommy?’ And then he went through kind of a… I don’t know what that other phase was… [He became] an EDM guy. Anyway, he [was] young and he [was] exploring. But Tommy‘s thing was, ‘Well, wouldn’t it be great if Mötley Crüe did this?’ And my thing was, ‘I want Mötley Crüe to be Mötley Crüe.’ So if I’m Angus Young and I’m, like, ‘Here’s a song called ‘Highway To Hell’,’ and then Tommy is Malcolm Young and comes in and goes, ‘Hey, man, wouldn’t it be cool if we sound like these other bands?’ Angus is gonna say, ‘What are you, crazy?’ And then there became resentment. And he felt like, ‘Oh, Nikki‘s holding the band back.’ I wanted the band to be Mötley Crüe. And Mick is passive. We did some albums with this producer named Scott Humphrey who made Mick feel horrible about his guitar playing; it was about all sampling and all this and all that. So Mick started to kind of pull out, Vince is in and out of the band. At times, it would be really wonderful with us.”
“It became four men with different ideas… Sometimes you have a band and you go, ‘There’s four guys with the same idea: Metallica.’ They were, like, ‘This is what we are. We are metal. It’s even in our name.’ Even though they had some crazy albums here and there, they figured it out. And towards the end, I think our version of figuring it out was, ‘Let’s just leave our legacy for what it was.'”
You can hear the interview by the Let There Be Talk podcast below and read excerpts from the interview at Blabbermouth.
Let There Be Talk podcast interview with Nikki Sixx:
#369:Nikki Sixx/Mötley Crüe by Let There Be Talk
On today’s episode of LET THERE BE TALK my dream guest Nikki Sixx stops by and talks about all things Nikki Sixx. Do yourself a favor and throw some Mötley Crüe on the turntable right after listening 2 this episode and remind yourself just how fucking good they are.