Anyone in Motley Crue will tell you that hard rocking comes with a side order of hard partying,
and Nikki Sixx was probably one of the hardest members in any Motley Crue party.
His life wasn't all roses, though.
Here's the tragic story of Nikki Sixx.
Before he became Nikki Sixx, young Frank Feranna Jr. had quite a childhood, and it turned him
into a hellraiser of an adult.
Sixx was raised jointly by his grandparents and his mother, and had to move a lot - in
a span of 11 years, he attended seven schools.
This turbulence did not mold him into a particularly law-abiding young man, and when he was living
with his grandparents in Jerome, Idaho, his school expelled him for selling drugs.
This was the last straw for grandpa and grandma Sixx, who sent the young man to his mother
in Seattle.
"What am I gonna do in Seattle?"
According to Blabbermouth, living with his mother was no picnic for Sixx, as it came
with a side order of violent men.
By the time he was 17, the budding musician finally had enough, so he left his past behind
and took his bass, his new name, and his big dreams to Los Angeles.
Still, his experiences as a young man may have influenced Motley Crue's music.
Sixx has said that the song "Live Wire" in particular is about domestic violence and
specifically mentions the assorted stepdads he had to deal with.
Nikki Sixx and his mother have always had a strained relationship, and by "strained"
we mean "utterly dysfunctional."
According to the Guardian, their troubles started when Sixx was just 6 years old and
his mother called her parents to come and take the young boy away, allegedly telling
her son:
"I'm going to lock the door and I'll just leave you in the porch."
Then she cruised away with a strange man.
Sixx says the moment broke him, and he could never truly reconnect with her again.
This isn't one of those tales where time heals the wounds and the mother and son eventually
reconcile, either.
The relationship remained so sour that reconciliation was impossible, and when she died in 2013,
Sixx only acknowledged the event with a simple, dispassionate tweet.
He had been fully aware of her condition but felt that even at the brink of death she didn't
deserve any attention from him.
Nikki Sixx was a particularly enthusiastic drug user during the band's glory days, so
he's had more than his share of close calls.
Still, none of them can hold a candle to December 23, 1987 - the day he died.
Ultimate Classic Rock says that after a night of hard partying with some hard-rocking friends,
including members of Guns N' Roses and Ratt, the festivities were slowly winding down.
However, Sixx decided to treat himself to one last hit before bedtime.
This proved to be a fatal mistake - because he passed out and started turning blue.
Paramedics arrived, but it looked like they couldn't do anything to save the bassist.
Sixx was loaded in an ambulance and given shots of adrenaline, but he was already dead
- or so it seemed.
Hours later, he unexpectedly awoke at a hospital, cursed at a cop trying to ask him questions
and wandered out, wearing nothing but leather pants.
He got a ride home, and a lecture about drugs, from two fans, who had just heard on the radio
that he had died.
Sixx has described dying as a fairly typical out-of-body experience, and he's also said
that death just "hurts."
Unfortunately, even death wasn't enough for him to break the drug habit.
"I stopped for about three hours."
To illustrate how out of it Nikki Sixx was during the late 1980s, look no further than
the train incident during Motley Crue's tour in Japan.
Ultimate Classic Rock reports they took a bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka for a concert,
but as it turned out, it was not a good idea to put the world's most dangerous rock band
on the same train as mere mortals.
During the return trip, Sixx was out of his mind, while Mick Mars was busy swimming in
a bottle of Jack Daniels.
The two started to get on each others' nerves, and Sixx started throwing donuts at Mars.
After a bit of that, the bassist decided to graduate to throwing bottles, but misjudged
a toss and hit a random man in the head.
"And it goes to the front and smashes the window and comes crashing down on these nice
little Japanese people."
When the train arrived in Tokyo, "a couple of hundred" cops were waiting in riot gear.
They arrested Sixx and the band's manager, who both spent hours in jail, while a local
promoter tried to resolve the issue.
Somehow, he managed to persuade the police to release them… on the condition that Sixx
write a letter of apology.
During his worst heroin abuse years, Nikki Sixx had near-death experiences and went through
pretty much all imaginable terrors that come with drug addiction.
Still, he doesn't consider any of his assorted dramatic drug-using incidents as his rock
bottom.
For Sixx, his absolute lowest point was a fairly uneventful and intimate moment that
only registered as an absolute darkest hour because he finally realized the hopelessness
of his situation.
According to the Fix, the realization came when his dealer was temporarily out of stock,
and he had no access to heroin.
The bassist spent a day and a half without heroin, in terrible, painful withdrawal that
he likens to hell, before his dealer was able to come over and resupply his addiction.
This incident made Sixx realize he couldn't get out, and that information hit him so hard
that he describes the sensation as an almost physical feeling of being stuck.
It's easy to assume that Nikki Sixx is always going to be the most debauched person in any
given relationship, but he once met his match in a pop star known as Vanity.
She was a model, actress, and singer who was originally discovered, mentored, and dated
by none other than Prince.
By the time she met Sixx, her career was already dwindling.
The two shared a mutual love of drugs, and got engaged in 1987.
This was not a good move, as both of them were extremely fond of rock star excesses
and enabled each other's bad behavior.
They would stay up all night, and in the morning, Sixx would throw Vanity out because she started
acting too crazy for him.
Vanity eventually moved on from her famous fiance.
She continued her hard-partying ways until 1994, when a massive overdose caused a renal
failure that nearly killed her.
After that, she abandoned her stage name and became a Christian evangelist under her real
name, Denise Matthews.
Unfortunately, her years of abuse had wrecked her health beyond repair, and she died at
age 57 in 2016.
A marriage to a young, restless Motley Crue member doesn't come with much stability and
security, and Nikki Sixx has the divorces to prove it.
Although he's a dedicated family man these days, the bass man had to trudge through two
failed marriages to get there.
According to heavy metal site Blabbermouth, his second marriage, to Donna D'Errico, ended
in 2007.
The divorce proceedings turned nasty when Sixx testified that he had discovered that
she had previously been a stripper and even done some "high-end call girl work."
This sordid past thoroughly freaked out noted saint Nikki Sixx, according to … Nikki Sixx.
D'Errico's lawyers, on the other hand, dismissed his claims as little more than an amusing
attempt at character assassination.
"I have a strict policy against mixing business with pleasure.
Are we clear on that?"
The fate of Brandi Brandt, the musician's first wife and the mother of three of his
children, was less amusing.
Biography says her seven-year marriage to Sixx ended in 1996, and perhaps not coincidentally,
Sixx married D'Errico just one month later.
Brandt's life then took a very dark and strange turn.
The Sydney Morning Herald says the former Playboy cover girl became involved in a large
cocaine smuggling conspiracy, and she was sentenced to several years in prison in 2014.
Nikki Sixx has tons of opinions and a history of substance abuse issues, and he has carved
out a career in a field full of people with similar temperaments and preferences.
As such, Sixx seems to attract and cultivate feuds like a gardener might nurture fine flowers.
According to rock music site Loudwire, the Motley Crue bassist has varying levels of
beef with Michael Sweet of Stryper, the band KISS, and Gene Simmons in particular.
According to Ultimate Classic Rock, Sebastian Bach of Skid Row fame says he can't even keep
up with all the feuds Sixx has going.
The Crue bassist's most long-term target is none other than Metallica.
According to Loaded Radio, the two bands have been at odds since they rose to dominate their
respective metal scenes at the same time in the same general area.
And Sixx has been known to take potshots at the band's drummer, Lars Ulrich, for his appearance,
attitudes, and drumming ability.
Of course, this could just be because Sixx likes to annoy drummers.
After all, even his own percussionist isn't safe from his inflammatory antics.
According to Metal Injection, Tommy Lee says Sixx unfollowed him on Twitter immediately
after Motley Crue's final show.
The Star describes how at the height of Motley Crue's fame, Nikki Sixx spent many a long
night in a way you'd never expect a rock star to.
Instead of drowning his worries in a mountain of groupies and fast cars, the bass player
curled up in a cold, damp closet with drugs and a shotgun.
According to the AV Club, the reason for his behavior was paranoia.
Sixx was certain the cops were coming to get him, and the fact that he reacted to the imminent
presence of law enforcement by getting as wasted as humanly possible and arming himself
shows just how out of it he was at the time.
During his worst moments of heroin addiction, this was actually closer to his status quo
than all the happy-go-lucky partying and gleeful depravity described in The Dirt.
His own memoir, The Heroin Diaries, functions largely as a document of this awful dark side
of the rock star lifestyle.
1988 was perhaps the most infamous year for Motley Crue and Nikki Sixx.
The peak of both their popularity and the bassist's heroin addiction, that year was
full of rowdiness, health scares, canceled concerts, and trouble with the law.
On top of all this chaos, a man named Matthew Trippe emerged with a strange story.
Music site Louder says Trippe was a relatively unknown musician who claimed he had a secret
history as the bass player for Crue.
Not a new member, mind you - he said he literally spent a year as Nikki Sixx.
According to Trippe, Sixx was sidelined due to a nasty car accident in 1982.
He says guitarist Mick Mars recruited the similar-looking Trippe to take over the bass
responsibilities in 1983, starting a gig as Nikki Sixx 2.0 that ended in 1984 when Trippe
was involved in an armed robbery.
As he was waiting for his trial, the "real" Sixx rejoined the band, and they went on to
record songs that Trippe claims he wrote, such as "Save Our Souls."
Of course, Trippe's tales turned out to be pretty tall, although he does seem to have
believed the whole thing himself.
He still managed to keep a lawsuit against the band's manager going for a few years,
and the bogus story received some significant publicity.
Nikki Sixx has been open about the fact that he struggled with depression in his youth,
and he says taking drugs was partially an attempt to self-medicate the condition.
He takes depression very seriously, to the point that he even included its medical definition
in the glossary of The Heroin Diaries.
Still, his most public foray at addressing the subject was actually prompted by Gene
Simmons.
In 2014, the KISS ringleader made some controversial comments about depression, dismissing its
validity as a mental disorder and saying that people who claim they're depressed should
just take their lives.
This was a colossally stupid comment, and Sixx immediately jumped in the fray.
According to Rolling Stone, the Motley Crue man labeled Simmons' comments moronic and
pointed out that some kid might actually hear his words and believe that ending one's life
is the only way out.
Sixx then went on to carefully explain that there are many, many ways out of depression,
and the last thing any depressed person should have to do is hear some rock star claiming
that there is only one, final way to deal with the situation.
It's probably not a coincidence that Simmons released a swift and uncharacteristically
humble apology.
If you or anyone you know is having thoughts of self-inflicted harm, please call the National
Help Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).