Image from google.The book is a testimony of Nikki Sixx’s year from December 1986, Christmas day to December 1987 Christmas day, with commentary from friends, family, band members, and managers. For those of you who do not know, Nikki Sixx is the bassist of Motley Crue, the biggest band in rock n’ roll during the hair metal age. This band was probably one of the most hardcore bands in terms of absolute chaos and destruction to come out of metal. Their drug use and partying is perhaps one of the most notorious parts of their legacy. Out of all the members, Nikki Sixx seems to be the one member that pushed the limits, abusing obnoxious amounts of alcohol, drugs, and girls. Heroin becomes his main drug, as Nixxi himself says in the beginning of the book “It was love at first sight.”
Nikki talks about himself as if he were a head case, and for those who have never chased the dragon, he pretty much was a head case back then, as the drugs were running his life, and leading him into a downward spiral into hell. Nikki Sixx talks about how it is an internal conflict with his second identity that he calls “Sikki” after his fatal addiction that comes close to claiming his life.
The story is a pure, honest peek into the human soul, and is not without the raw detail that comes from an unauthorized view of oneself. This book is a worth a look over, and deserves the press it has been getting, not only because Nikki is a famous rock star, but it shows you that he is more human than ever before with his mistakes, lies, and fears.
Although the book focuses mainly on Nikki’s behavior during his addiction, other parts of his life open up widely during this novel, including: past relationships, goals, desires, lusts, fears, and is one of the most personally detailed novel I have read in years, it is so realistic in honesty, that it almost seems surreal to have this person’s life opening up so fluently in the pages.
Image of Nikki Sixx from GoogleNow this book has some drawbacks from making it a solid work, and that is that it will depress the hell out of you, I mean it will really make you wonder about things in their present state, and how a man can live through so much abuse. If anyone ever needed proof that there is a God, the life of Nikki Sixx will make you a believer.
Granted the diary is not suppose to make a person cheery, but I mean it just lays it on so thick you don’t really get the emotion that the diary is aiming for: you get sick. I literally was feeling myself quease up at the stomach over some parts of this novel, like how Nikki used toilet water from a public restroom in some club to fill up a cap to boil some heroin in to shoot up into his veins. This, and many, many other sickening, but true acts of degradation to his person lead one to believe that Nikki Sixx truly is a Saint of Los Angeles to be alive.
Nikki’s diary introduces some other elements that add to his addictive personality, as he never knew his father, and the only positive influences in his life were his grandfather and grandmother. His mother was a delusional person that did drugs, and once dated Richard Pryor. She shipped him off all throughout his childhood to live with her parents, and this added to much tension to an already strung-out tenn that began to vent through music, which can be said as his first addiction, and his last.
Nikki discusses his formation of Motley Crue, and that he was perhaps the most influential part of the band, which is not far off from the truth. Nikki, not only being the bassist for the bad asses of rock, also was the songwriter that really paved the golden road of fame for the band, eh was the meal-ticket for Motely, and this is why much of his addiction was overlooked.
Being around 432 pages long, this year-long diary is really something to behold, and to just think this was just ONE year of Nikki abusing, while he was an addict many years before, it is hard to imagine he did not join the legendary 27 club like many other addicts in the past. Being what it is, this novel is worth reading, and would make a lot of people who have wanted to try heroin think twice. As Nikki even said in the side note comment: There’s no heroine in heroin.
Who should read this book? Well, definitely addicts, maybe to get an idea at just how bad addiction can spiral a human being into tragedy, and this is not the sort of story that the Lifetime movie network runs for women in their 60s to cream their panties to, no this is really a story of every vital bodily fluid swapped into one. This story is going to take you places you frankly don’t want to go, and they’re going to leave you there to get your elbows dirty. Then maybe it’ll let you return to the real world, just as you get a grip on the absolute filth that comes out of serious, un-glamorized addiction, and the struggle to find the peace between “Nikki and Sikki”, to unleash the story of redemption and hope that few stories ever tell you. You’ll find yourself begging Nikki to stop using, pleading with him as he becomes more and more detached to reality and stuck in the plain of everlasting hell.
For the faint of heart, this book may not be the best thing to read, but if you want to see for yourself what reality as an addict is like, this book comes close to giving you the extremes of an almost unreal amount of drug use. This book is enough of a read to keep you questioning every single moment of this man’s life, and what leads to his inevitable demise, it is like the Lion to the Lamb, as the transformation from Sikki to Nikki set the stage for one of the most spectacular books that should be on everyone’s summer reading list, so check it out as soon as possible.
Just one more note for some of the naysayers out there, that think that Nikki doesn’t have a sense of humor, he does indeed give us all some very universally sound advice: “chicks = trouble”. If that right there is not enough to get you to read the book, well then you don’t have a single bit of humor in your whole body.
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