This week sees the release of sometime Motley Crue bassist and all round fuck up Nikki Sixx's book 'The Heroin Diaries' which details the years he spent smacked out of his eyeballs on Afghanistan's finest. It promises to be the gripping tale of one man's desperate descent into the neon-lit netherworld of addiction, pulling no punches about the wide-eyed horrors he went through before finally seeing the light, cleaning up his act and kicking the drugs for good.
Anyone who has read the frankly excellent Neil Strauss aided story of Motley Crue's brief reign atop glam rock's stack-heeled throne; 'The Dirt' will know, Sixx and his cohorts in the Crue were one of the biggest bands of the 80's, winning over America's mulleted masses with intellectual ditties such as 'Girls, Girls, Girls' and 'Shout At The Devil'. They sold millions of albums and toured with the creme de la creme of heavy metal including the ubiquitous Ozzy Osbourne in 1984 while in his pissing-on-the-alamo-and-getting-banned-from-Texas-for-life phase.
However, in a world where far too often style replaces substance as the dominant theme, Motley Crue became well known not for Mick Mars' sleaze drenched riffs and Vince Neil's helium-tinged yelp, but rather for the tales of wild backstage excess and gargantuan drug intake. During the 80's every one of the band were in advanced states of intoxication, culminating in the death of Hanoi Rocks drummer Razzle after a midnight spin in the bladdered Neil's brand new Porsche went horribly wrong.
Still, the band's albums sold by the truckload and the Crue survived overdoses, deaths, the loss and return of Neil, illnesses, lawsuits, fights and much more. This is starting to sound like an advert for Strauss' tome so I'll get to the point. Why, oh why does Sixx feel it necessary to waste thousands of trees by releasing what is quite literally the ramblings of someone who used to get so high they used to spend days inside a cupboard hiding from imaginary SWAT helicopters circling their million dollar mansion? He has admitted himself in recent interviews that most of the entries are mundane in the extreme, as he had no idea where he was or what was going on. So who, apart from those who still think heroin has some kind of decadent glamour (see preening ponce Russell Brand or the skanky Amy Winehouse) will be interested?
I hold my hands up, I am yet to read the book. And I will, so I can claim to myself that I'm not a hypocrite. It might be brilliant. It might make me laugh till the tears stream down my face. I might bawl my eyes out and rush to the nearest computer to write a heartfelt apology to little Nikki. May'be I'll go and score some skag, jack up and live out my ultimate rock star fantasy of dying in a squalid flat before having my heart kick-started in an operating theatre thus spawning my imaginary band's biggest hit to date (Kick Start My Heart on Dr Feelgood). However I somehow doubt it.
I saw Motley Crue two years ago in whatever comeback stage it was, and they were brilliant. The band all looked lean, mean and keen apart from poor old Mick Mars, the hits were dealt out with an energy missing from most bands half their age, and the show itself truly was a sight to behold. It was big dumb fun and I left with a big shit eating grin plastered over my face. Because that's what a band of the Crue's ilk should do. Entertain. Not try and make even more money banging on about how they were a slave to drugs before conquering it. Something hundreds of not-famous, poor, very ordinary people do every year. But I doubt many people considered this. The same kind of people who were happy to let Motley release a greatest hits compilation bearing the oh-so sensitive title 'Music To Crash Your Car To.' Duh! Dude, not cool!
