Nikki Sixx : The Heroin Diaries - Book

I reckon its worth talking about a book I read this year that has somewhat unexpectedly started an influx of musical history in to my mental inbox. Now, I’m a reader and it’s usually novels and stories for me, so when someone I knew told me to read a diary written by a man from a band I don’t remember even liking, I found it unlikely that I would even pick the book up. Turns out I didn’t have to. My pal mailed to me when he got home to Japan two weeks later, so I felt that I ought to give it a go ay the very least.

Man, how wrong can you be about a subject title. I mean, I really had no interest in Motley Crue at all back when they were big, I imagine it was my self imposed musical snobbery circuit kicking in and deleting any reference to bands I ‘shouldn’t’ like. Either way when I picked the book up I had no real Idea who Nikki Sixx was apart from him being the Bass player in a spandex clad, girly, hair metal band.

I’m talkin’ about a book called ‘The Heroin Diaries’ by a man called Nikki Sixx. This is a man who should by rights be dead, and has been…twice. It’s a year in the life of Nikki Sixx back when Motley Crue were just getting big and signing their first deals etc.

People…its grim, and no messin’. A year in the life of a Heroin addicted rock star, is a savage rollercoaster ride of nausea and incredulous surprise…and that’s just for the reader – I can’t even come close to imagining what sort of state he must he must have spent those years in. With my heightened sense of morbid curiosity, I was sucked as soon as I had finished the first page. Its graphic, and it is a true portrayal of a man coming apart at the seams…literally.

It’s easy to read this and figure it’s a work of fiction, but this is different. The book was actually pieced together from Nikki Sixx’s diary, long buried in storage for over 20 years. The nice thing about this is that throughout the diaries, when there are mentions people, there are paragraphs written by those people about the events he describes in his diaries. It’s cool to read the different view points put forward by the very people he talks about, but 20 – 25 years later.

It provides and interesting insight into the LA music scene in the mid 80’s – a lot of bands came from the same scene, Guns ‘N’ Roses, Ratt, Skid Row, it was never my thing really, but nevertheless I have enjoyed the resurgence of 80’s rock that has permeated the office in the last few months, and reading this book has helped immensely.

It made me want to read The Dirt, which is a collection of accounts of events written by each of the band members of Motley Crue. For pure rock ’n’ roll – you can beat this book, its every teenager’s wildest dream in documentary format. For me reading these books has let me understand the music a little better, enabling me to further cast off the chains of musical snobbery that once ruled my little world.

Errrmm…read ‘em.