A founding member of hard rock hooligans Mötley Crüe, Nikki Sixx has also penned two top ten New York Times bestsellers: 2007’s The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star, which chronicled the nadir of his addiction, and last month’s This Is Gonna Hurt: Music, Photography and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx.

Today (May 3) is a big day for Sixx, as he and his other band Sixx:A.M. release the companion album to This Is Gonna Hurt. The author will also appear this evening at Borders Columbus Circle in New York City as part of his nationwide book tour, which wraps May 6 in Boston. I spoke with him about both projects in this exclusive interview.

Tell us what this book’s about.

I’ve been into photography for close to twenty years, just shooting and documenting the band, my family, life on the road. About ten years ago, I started taking it more seriously, learning about light, wanting to shoot things that are more set up. In the last six or seven years, I built my own studio, my own lighting, I spend a lot of time there. and I’m able to pull such matter that I want that’s real close and personal, and start to really build a body of work, but never really knowing what I was doing with that body of work—it’s just something that I was passionate about.

When I was working on the second Sixx:A.M. album, I decided I was going to do a coffee table book, just for the sake that I wanted to get my photography out there. And I know they’re very expensive and they don’t sell a lot, but for me, it was more about the art: what it’s about, and how it follows The Heroin Diaries; that sort of thing. And as I started writing the description of what the book you’re about to look at is about, I ended up with like 500 pages. And I ended up where I was at, at the moment, all the way back to being six years old, and how I had sort of used the world and why I was shooting what I was shooting, and also sort of the realization that a lot of it was me sort of trying to connect with my sister, who was institutionalized, and all the way through the end of the book, which was me being on tour, putting the book together….A guy named Paul Brown helped me clean it up, and we designed the book, and now we’ve got it.

How did writing the book and selecting the photos inspire the new Sixx:A.M. album?

While I was putting the book together and I was obviously in the middle of writing this record, a lot of stuff was happening. Emotionally, I was sort of dissecting—even though I didn’t know it was going to be in the book—I was sort of dissecting what I was seeing as going on in society every single day…I’m just putting my thoughts to paper; I don’t have a destined theme. Sometimes I journal three pages, sometimes I journal thirty pages, but I’m writing all the time, and whatever’s happening is happening in real time for me. So I’m sort of looking at the people that I’m photographing, and looking at what’s going on socially, and really starting to question what’s being downloaded into people’s heads.

[One of my photo subjects] is Amy Purdy. She lost her legs when she was nineteen years old, and she was always an athlete, a snowboarder; very outgoing person. You know, she wakes up one day, and she’s got bacterial meningitis; she sits in the hospital, and when she leaves the hospital, she has no legs. And she goes on to great stuff in her life; it’s all in her head. She’s completely the most driven, positive person I’ve ever met.

You know when People magazine has its 100 Most Beautiful People? After spending twelve hours with this woman at this photo shoot, and hearing her stories, I called [Sixx:A.M.’s] James [Michael] and DJ [Ashba], and said, “We’ve got to write a song…this a f**kin’ lie.” And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with anybody on that list, but I’m saying people, human beings, need to be told that there’s more than airbrushed beauty; that there are other versions of beauty. And so that [became the song] “Lies of the Beautiful People.”

Another one was after our documentary was filmed, with Farrah [Foxx]’s interview and how she turned out in her teens to be a prostitute and then got into pornography, and after I photographed her, she went on to enroll in college to be what she always wanted to be, which was an art student and to become an artist....You are not your skin. I think it created this amazing energy between the band members, the photography and music.

It’s just like what you achieved with The Heroin Diaries.

If you read the comments from people, it’s so inspiring. When I’m doing the book signings, you actually see people that are having shakeups in their lives, especially young people. You see kids that come up and—I’ll give you an example: There’s a kid who’s got this dyed black hair with white pieces, and sort of Goth with Doc Martens and tights; obviously making a statement. And he said, “Thank you so much—I’ve been told I’ve been ugly my whole life; I’m totally comfortable being in my own skin.” And you know, until The Heroin Diaries, [I realized] if just one person gets it, with that recovery comes a more kick-ass, adventurous life. Like, I don’t want to be the f**kin’ Dalai Lama, I don’t want to be Mother Teresa, and I don’t want to be John Lennon. I just want to tell my story, and if it touches someone, it’s just f**kin’ beautiful.

I’m a man. I’m a father of four, and I’m an artist. I’m going to tell you what I feel, and I happen to have a voice, whether it’s through a radio show or through writing books…all that creativity. And I think that for me, in the end, the book and the album, when I was talking to James and DJ and they were reading the book, we were all saying the same thing, which is, we were all told that we could never achieve anything, and we were all told that we weren’t good enough, and we were all told that we would not grow, and we were all told that it would never happen, but we all made it happen because we believed in ourselves, and it’s a really simple concept that’s a lot to bite off.

[If] you can just believe in yourself, you can just about achieve anything in life. I said to someone recently that very few people don’t get what they want. It’s just that they don’t know what they want, and they spend too long talking about what they don’t want. You tell me you don’t want something long enough, I guarantee you’re going to get it.

What’s your definition of beauty and ugliness?

Beauty, to me, is kind, generous, and people that are humble. I find beauty in a lot of the same places, for me, as a man, that a lot of people do. And I find beauty in a lot of things that a lot of other people don’t, too. Each to your own. The ugliest things, to me: Liars, cheaters, manipulators, you know? That’s the way it is. That’s the ugliest. We don’t have far to go to make progress; I’ve been all those things. I never want to say that I’m a f**kin’ angel and I’m a f**kin’ devil. I’ve been reincarnated; somehow resurrected into some version of a human being. I just think if I can go from being a homeless kid with a dream of being in the biggest band in the word and making that happen, I can do a lot of other cool stuff, too.

It’s just coming from a place of love, you know? In the end, if you love what you do, whether you’re a U.S. soldier and your f**kin’ dream is to take bin Laden out, or if you f**kin’ want to start a flower shop, you know, in f**kin’ Tennessee somewhere, just go for it. That’s really all this whole project is about—going for what you believe in. That should be yourself.

You’ve shown that people can change. What does it take to make those changes?

One is, let go of resistance and ego. And two is, put in the work. You know, ego is the great enemy. Ego will hold you back every single time. And you have to be able to let in humility and then do the work. It’s f**kin’ hard work, dude; if you want to make progress in anything, it’s hard work. I’ve had people say, “So you’re saying that I can have anything I want?” and I’m like, “Well, yeah, but you can’t sit on the f**kin’ couch.”

I’m saying, if you want to be a great writer, then write every single f**kin’ day of your life, until you die. Write just to get a book out. I don’t take photos just to put a book out; I will shoot photos until the day I die. I will write music; I will continue to do creative things for my life; that’s what I do in life. That’s all I’m saying: Let go of ego, let in humility, and put the work in. And then I pretty much guarantee at that point, you can have just about anything within reason.

This Is Gonna Hurt by Nikki Sixx and Sixx:A.M. is in stores now. For more information and tour dates, visit Nikki online at www.nikkisixx.net and www.motley.com.

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