Nikki Sixx turns 66 this year. Which is amazing when you consider how many times he nearly died of drug overdoses in his twenties. Almost as amazing as the fact that this year it will be 43 years since his band Mötley Crüe released their classic debut album, Too Fast For Love. In fact, Nikki and the Crüe almost died so many times over the years it’s a miracle they are not only still going, but bigger and stronger than ever. Currently touring the US, they recently released the three-track EP Cancelled.
Cancelled is the first new Mötley Crüe music for five years.
Yeah, time just ticks by when you’re not on the old-school grind of you tour for two years, come home burnt out, start working on another album, that takes a year, and then you go back on the road for 18 to 24 months. It’s so nice to be where we’re at now, because we just follow the creativity and then figure out ways to plug it into the band.
I told the band about this song I wrote the other day, so maybe in November we’ll demo it and then if [producer] Bob Rock and the band likes the way it turned out, then maybe go in the studio and record it... Could be a year from now though [before it’s released].
It’s a different world to the one you started in, where you needed a new album to tour.
To write thirteen to twenty-five songs and get it down to ten, it’s a lot of melody lines, a lot of chord progressions – a lot of zeroing in on what makes that song special. And it’s a lot of lyrics. If you just do ‘Hey-baby-baby’ it’s a little easier, but as the lyricist for the band I try and try to give us something more. I’m a reactionary artist. Somebody says something and I hear it and it inspires a line.
We were on tour in Brazil, and I read this article on cancel culture, and I wrote these words out. I don’t know if I’d call them lyrics, just kind of a rhyming scheme, beat generation-style. It was a day off, and I looked out my window, and the Mötley guys and the Def Leppard guys were hanging out and jumping in the pool. I went down and said: “Tommy [Lee], what do you think about a big kind of cool groove to this?”
Then next day at soundcheck, we’re just kind of messing around with it and John [5] started adding his parts. And we came up with this song Cancelled. We were like: “Maybe we go demo it.” The idea behind demos is anything goes, and if it sucks, you throw it in the trash. Or if it needs work, you can look at it. It’s not such a big commitment.
Kids consume music in such a different way now.
My kids are, let me see… thirty-three, thirty, twenty-eight and twenty-two. As well I have a five-year-old daughter. So I’m listening to everything from turning my oldest son on to the Sex Pistols and him being turned on to stuff like Prince and Led Zeppelin and all kinds of new wave stuff, all the way down to my [youngest] who I’m listening to Dua Lipa and Dance The Night Away with every day. And I’m seeing the same reaction from a five-year-old to when my [eldest] son was young. It’s just a different way of consuming it. My daughter doesn’t know anything about Dua Lipa other than she likes the song.
I don’t know what it’s like to be a brand-new band and feel somewhat one-dimensional. Okay, I make music, but fans don’t know everything about the lead singer or how the band got together. They’re not as in love with the artist.
The days of basing the show around a new album are over. People just want the hits and to have some fun.
You’ve got to follow the creativity, and the creativity has to follow inspiration. If you’re trying to do something you’re not inspired by, the audience can smell it and feel it. Following the creativity is also a way of throwing yourself into your addiction, whether it’s songwriting or creating stage shows or artwork, merchandise, it’s all part of it. But we just go at our own pace.
Has having guitarist John 5 join the band been a catalyst? Wanting to get him in on the action as well?
I don’t think it’s quite that simple. We’re a band and we write music. I’m constantly writing and creative. It’s a very creative world in Mötley, and comes at us in different ways. It was becoming harder and harder and harder to get anything done with Mick [Mars] because of his memory problems and just his physical ailments. And we have a lot of empathy for that. When Mick left the band, we had to make a choice. And we made the right choice with John. We wish Mick nothing but the best.
I run this business like an iron fist and nobody can get in and fuck with our band, legally, marketing-wise… We’ve become very self-sufficient. And we had to make a self-sufficient decision, which was to do the right thing. But doing the right thing isn’t always fucking fun; fans believing we did something we didn’t do.
Tell us about the Dogs Of War video with its crazy CGI. We did it with Nick DenBoer. Fantastic director. So inspirational. He’s a crazy person, which is a positive thing. He would reach out to me and Tommy and say blah, blah, blah. We were like: “Go for it! What’s the worst thing that’s going to happen?” And there’s all the Easter eggs in it and we were like: “Let’s have some clips of it live when we play the song because it’s such a cool video.”
It’s so great to find the band still firing on all cylinders. The fact that you’re making great music, when very few bands of your generation are still able to do that.
I think for us it’s about the length of time we’ve been around – 43 years or something now. It’s about balance. I was never the best at balance in my life. And figuring out that, at this time, it’s how much touring versus how much family, how much songwriting versus how much personal life. We don’t work to just work more.
We used to work, to work, to work, and it was chasing that magic high. Now it’s about let’s write a couple songs, let’s go out and do some shows. We’ve learned when to say no and when to say yes. And I think that’s going to give us what we need for the next few years and decide what we want to do.
Cancelled is out now via Big Machine.
