Bankrate: So when you decided to do this project, was it for the personal catharsis, or as a warning to others?
Nikki Sixx: It has a lot of layers to it. When it started out, I was like, wow, this is a lot of people's story. Whether they use drugs or something else, a lot of people come from messed-up situations. Most people do.
But I really want people to buy the book for whatever reason, because I'm giving money from it to a charity that helps runaways and at-risk children, which is where I was. I ended up running away from home. I was homeless for a very short amount of time, but enough for me to have the empathy and a connection to these kids at Covenant House to go, you know, I've been given so many great gifts, I've made a great living, I've been able to achieve all those dreams that I read about early on. When is enough enough? Let's give something back. Let's raise some money. So we're helping music programs inside Covenant House. It's sort of full circle. Bankrate: How did you find the process of writing the book? Did you have the discipline?
Nikki Sixx: I definitely had the discipline for it. I'm actually taking a stab at a novel, because I was so invigorated by being able to write the overview of it. I'm a pretty stubborn guy when it comes to saying, "I'm putting my head to this, I'm gonna do it."
I love writing maybe more than anything else. Now I'm trying to train myself for a new talent, which is learning to develop characters, and have people talk to each other in novel form. It's a different process than this book, because the diaries are the diaries. They were there. Ian Gittens, who did the book with me, did the heavy lifting. He went in there and spent hours and hours with these people who were in my life, and disarmed them to be honest, because what I didn't need was a fluff piece, like, me going, "day four of kicking heroin," and then them going, "Nikki's a great guy." I needed them to go, "he was a dictator, an a**hole," and for me to look back on it and go, "I was doing the best I could, because I was scared I was gonna die and lose my band. I thought I was gonna get thrown out of my own band." And then, them going, "we never thought about that." Me writing in my journals, "it's been four days since I did drugs," and then a few days later going, "Dear Diary -- I've been lying to myself," and my being able to look at that as a clear-headed human being and go, that's the insanity, right there. Because my relationship with a pen and paper � that was my only friend. |