I recently tweeted that I feel like I spent the summer with Nikki Sixx. It started back in June when I picked up a copy of Sixx AM’s latest CD This is Gonna Hurt. I loved it and it has been a bit of a fixture in my car and ipod ever since. I then got to see Motley Crue play live, read Sixx’s first book The Heroin Diaries and I’ve completed the latest, titled the same as the Sixx AM album, This is Gonna Hurt.
This book is a very different offering from the first book by Sixx and very different from any other book I have read by a rock star. First of all in addition to Sixx’s words this is also a collection of photography. Sixx is an avid photographer and throughout the book there are many pictures captured through his “distorted lens”, as he describes it. The pictures are usually of something or someone that the majority of people would care not to display in the dining room or above the couch in your living room. But that is just Sixx’s point. He sees beauty in things we normally don’t and challenges us all to do the same.
Reading this book will take you to several different places. It opens with a chapter on Sixx’s love of photography. He tells us how he came to discover the hobby and shares stories of some of his more interesting and stranger photo shoots. Throughout the rest of the book you will read some about his childhood and family life and how it affected him. The most compelling I found to be thoughts on his now passed on sister who was never a part of his life. He also gets a little into his three fellow bandmates, Vince Neil, Tommy Lee and Mick Mars. He doesn’t leave Sixx AM out either and talks about the formation of that band and the creative processes that has ensued. And he puts his own emotions on the pages when talking about finding love again and the heartbreak that followed after the relationship ended.
Apart from all of the above Sixx also shares his own views and philosophies on life. It’s nothing too Earth shattering but I will admit at times he can be compelling and thought provoking. And such is that when it comes to philosophizing life I think; it doesn’t have to be too deep to make sense. Everything Sixx says on such matters makes total sense and it doesn’t hurt to ponder these things at any given moment in your life. Wait a minute….this is suppose to hurt according to Sixx. Well, you know what I mean.
The book ends in similar fashion as the Heroin Diaries by Sixx offers some of his own diary entries from a 2009 tour with Motley Crue. Very interesting to compare the diary here with the diary he wrote in 1987 as provided to us in the Heroin Diaries. The later is full of references to excessive drug use, alcohol consumption and endless sex and the more recent reflects on life, work and seeking out strange places and people to photograph.
All in all it was another interesting read from an interesting man. I think Sixx tweeted earlier this summer that there will a third book in the works as well, but I’m not sure what this one will be about. I am impressed enough by the first two to be interested enough to give whatever he writes a chance next time too.
Have a great weekend everyone!!
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