- 20 hours ago
Forty-five years after forming Mötley Crüe, Nikki Sixx says the band's longevity still amazes him. '30 years, 40, and now 45. I don't know, man. It's crazy. I never saw this coming,' Sixx told us on the most recent episode of Joann Butler In Studio With... The band is celebrating the milestone with The Return of the Carnival of Sins Tour , marking the 20th anniversary of Carnival of Sins with a 33-date North American summer tour. The shows feature a refreshed setlist, including songs the band hasn't performed live in decades, while continuing to deliver the hits that made Mötley Crüe a rock powerhouse. Sixx says some of those songs have taken on a meaning beyond what he originally wrote. Discussing 'Kickstart My Heart,' which was inspired by his heroin overdose and recovery, Sixx explains that the song's impact has grown beyond its original story. 'The songs have outgrown the lyrics,' he says, noting that fans often experience the song through its energy and emotion rather than just its lyrical meaning. That connection with fans remains at the center of Mötley Crüe's journey, whether through live performances or special releases like Crücial Crüe: The Studio Albums 1981-1989 , a box set celebrating the band's early catalog. After more than four decades in music, Sixx says creativity continues to drive him. For Mötley Crüe, the ability to evolve while staying connected to generations of fans is what keeps the music alive. 'To be creative and stay creative--not just in music but in other things that I do--is very exciting,' he says. 'That's why I'm on this planet.' For Sixx, the journey continues to be about staying open to new ideas and finding new ways to create.
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00:0245th anniversary of the band.
00:04It's crazy, I never saw this coming, you know.
00:07Tell us about this tour.
00:09The band's so tight right now, we just rehearsed our ass off.
00:12Do you have a favorite song to play live?
00:14It kind of changes all the time.
00:16Kickstart my heart being about when I had a heroin overdose was brought back to life.
00:20The songs have outgrown the lyrics.
00:23You hear the song on a football game at kickoff,
00:26they're not thinking about what the song's about.
00:28They're thinking about what the energy brings.
00:31What does music do for people?
00:32I see people smiling and screaming and singing every word.
00:36I think music does something different to everybody because we're all different.
00:40You are watching Joanne Butler in studio with me, Nikki Sixx from Motley Crue.
00:51Nikki Sixx in the house, woohoo!
00:54Thanks for joining us on Life Minute.
00:5845th anniversary of the band.
01:01Completely insane.
01:02Did you ever imagine that?
01:03No.
01:04No.
01:05I remember after 10, nine years, I remember thinking, wow, it's been a real decade of decadence.
01:12And that we ended up recording the song Primal Scream.
01:16And I think we did the Sex Pistols cover on there and another song called Angela.
01:20And we put that album out while we were working on the follow-up to Dr. Feelgood.
01:25So I was like 10 years, you know, when I was growing up, like a lot of my heroes, like
01:31they only had like a four to six year window.
01:34Right.
01:35Like, right.
01:36And like even bands like Aerosmith, they're my favorite band of all time.
01:40They came out.
01:40I know everything about Aerosmith, probably too much.
01:42And they came out and they, those like first five albums, and then they just kind of crashed and burned
01:49and Joe Perry left and they had different, and it went through that whole weird thing.
01:54And then they came back with, with Run DMC and Walk This Way.
01:58And it was, it was awesome, but they had a short window.
02:01And so we look at a lot of the bands out there.
02:04There's not a lot that have been around 20 years.
02:07Oh, true.
02:0830 years, much 40, 40, and now 45.
02:12And I don't know, man, it's, it's, it's crazy.
02:15I never saw this coming, you know, I kind of was like, I remember I saw the Stones and they
02:21might've been in their 40s.
02:22And I was like, damn, these guys are old, man.
02:25And now I'm in my 60s.
02:26I'm sure there's someone in the audience going, how, how long till this guy drops?
02:31He keeps going, they don't stop.
02:34I know.
02:34It certainly doesn't feel that long.
02:36It just get better and better.
02:38You know, to be creative and stay creative and not just in music, but in other things that I do
02:44is, is, is very exciting.
02:45That's why I'm on this planet, I think, is to try to make up for the fact that my dad
02:50wasn't there for me and I'm able to be there for my kids.
02:53I have five kids and to stay creative and anything I do and be open to, at least like fun
02:58opportunities and being in Motley Crue and having other bands and radio shows.
03:03It's been such a creative, fun journey for as long as I can remember all the way back to being
03:08a kid.
03:08So I'm very grateful to sit here today.
03:11Well, we're grateful to have you.
03:13So tell us about this tour.
03:15It runs through September 26th.
03:17Looks incredible.
03:18What are fans going to get when they see you guys play live?
03:22Well, you know, I wasn't even really aware that it had been 20 years since Carnival Sends.
03:28My manager brought it up to me and was like, it's been 20 years.
03:33And we kind of started talking about what is different than 20 years ago.
03:37And what's really different is technology.
03:40And a lot of stuff that we can do with technology mixed with lighting and performance that is based around
03:50a lot of technology and being able to really push the envelope there.
03:54So it was a lot to put together, but actually an easier tour to do because we're not hauling around,
04:00you know, tons and tons of extra performers and stuff.
04:04We have four girls that do background vocals, they do burlesque, they do all kinds of fun stuff.
04:11So we mix that in with what we do and a little bit of pyro.
04:15And we're playing songs we haven't played in, I don't know, 30 years at least.
04:20And that was a lot of fun.
04:22And that happened because we kept having the same band argument, which is one guy wants to play this song.
04:30And another guy, we look at the set list, we realize, you know, the same 20 or some version of
04:36the same 20 top 10 hit singles.
04:40And we were like, it's weird, but we're going to have to start dropping singles.
04:47And so we put Take Me to the Top in there, which 150 million people saw the Dirt movie.
04:53And that was the main song in the movie.
04:55And we took S.O.S., Same Old Situation, out, which was the top 10 hit single off the Dr.
05:01Feel Good album.
05:02And then, you know, we added Too Young to Fall in Love.
05:05So we ended up losing Don't Go Away Mad.
05:08And so it was this weird feeling of like letting go of something we know has become common of our
05:15shows.
05:16Right.
05:17But bringing in stuff that fans voted online.
05:21So we literally listened to the fans.
05:22I'm seeing fans are saying this is their favorite set list they've heard in a decade or so.
05:28It feels like everything is falling in place.
05:31Right.
05:31That's so cool.
05:32Do you have a favorite song to play live?
05:34You know, I guess it kind of changes all the time.
05:37I mean, it's been really nice playing Take Me to the Top and Too Young to Fall in Love and
05:42Red Hot off the second record.
05:44And people don't even know what a lot of those songs are about.
05:48They weren't born louder than hell off of our third record.
05:51Some of the lyrics are really get down in the dirt, mixed with Bukowski, mixed with Lifestyle.
06:00It's fun to dig into some of that old stuff that's not so, you know, even Dr. Feelgood is a
06:07pretty hefty story about a drug dealer named Dr. Feelgood.
06:13And around the fact that, you know, this is the time the band got sober, Kickstart My Heart, you know,
06:19being about when I, you know, had a heroin overdose, was brought back to life.
06:23Those are pretty, but the songs have become, have outgrown the lyrics.
06:29So when you're watching a football game and you hear Kickstart My Heart on a kickoff, they're not thinking about
06:35what the song's about.
06:36They're thinking about what the energy brings and the energy of some of these older songs.
06:41Like I'm sitting there looking at it as a lyricist and a songwriter, but they're looking at it as a,
06:49this was my, my older brother's favorite song, or this is the song that I discovered Motley Crue because I
06:55never seen Motley Crue and I saw their movie, like Take Me to the Top.
06:58So it's, it's a lot of, like, newness, yet old school familiarity.
07:05Band's so tight right now, too, because we just, we just rehearsed our ass off.
07:10We had a very short window of rehearsal.
07:12So what we like to do is run the show twice, which is what we used to do in the
07:18old days.
07:19So we come in early, we run the show top to bottom with no lead vocals.
07:24So it's just about stamina and intensity and dynamics.
07:30Then Vince comes in, we run the show again.
07:33So that's three hours of playing six days a week.
07:37And then we had two weeks of that.
07:40And when we landed on stage, we were like really tight.
07:44A lot of these old songs came together really fast.
07:48Like, like Take Me to the Top came like one take and we were like, oh, okay, we got it.
07:54That's so cool.
07:55Like the hardest song I think to play is a song called Afraid off the Generation Swine album.
08:02It's a departure melodically and it's, it's a tempo shift.
08:07It's one of my favorite songs to play live.
08:09And it, it again is something really fresh and different.
08:13I've had people I've seen online are like, I never even heard that song Afraid.
08:17And it's like now my new favorite song.
08:19So it's been a good experience.
08:21Are you doing that one on this tour?
08:23We are doing Afraid, yes.
08:25All right.
08:25What about out of all the albums you made?
08:27Do you have a favorite or a favorite song?
08:30I mean, you know, they, they all mean something different to me.
08:33I was at different places at different times in my, my life.
08:36You know, writing a song like knock them dead kid, you know, after I'd, you know, gotten in a fight
08:42with the police on Sunset Boulevard and ended up in jail is something that I needed to do at the
08:47time.
08:48You know, I was in revenge mode.
08:50I was in my, my twenties and full of piss and vinegar.
08:54And, you know, you know, yeah, by the time we moved over to theater pain, the band had been on
09:00the road for so many years, opening for Ozzy.
09:03Mostly we got an opportunity to like with home sweet home to do some different kind of halftime things.
09:09Like a song called save, save my soul.
09:12So that's like a departure from shout at the devil, which was the departure from too fast.
09:17And it's just, it's, it's a constant evolution.
09:19We never quite know where we're going when a opportunity strikes, something comes up.
09:26I'm honestly, you know, I know fans don't want to hear this, but I don't believe in making full length
09:32records and any more at this time on the planet.
09:36For me, the amount of work that goes into, if you're doing 10 songs on a record, you got to
09:44write 20, right?
09:46And you better hope five of them are stellar.
09:49It's a lot of lyrics, a lot of notes, a lot of chord changes, a lot, a lot of time
09:54in the studio, which is all fine.
09:56That's what we do.
09:57We work hard.
09:58But what I don't like is that when people hear one song and you recorded 10 or you recorded 20
10:05and then 10 of them were demos and 10 was an album, they only hear one.
10:10Radio's changed.
10:11Streaming is changing and evolving as we go.
10:14So I'm really into the idea of lightning strikes, something comes down, I call the guys, I got this song,
10:22it's just sitting on the tip of my tongue right now.
10:24I told Tommy about it a year ago.
10:26I just told my friend and he goes, you told me to write a song called that 25 years ago.
10:33And I go, okay, I'm going to finish the song and then show it to the band.
10:36But it's like having a song and a whole team behind a song and being able to get the fans
10:43to really understand what the song is about.
10:45It's just not something that they just pass by or they go to the new Motley Crue album and they
10:50only listen to one song.
10:52So I love the idea of like we did The Dirt, we did five songs from The Dirt, we did
10:58three songs on this EP we just did.
11:00I mean, that's already a full length record.
11:03So I think we're just going to keep going.
11:05Like whenever something comes up, you feel something, heartbreak, joy, rebellion.
11:13Let's write a song about it and let's go cut it, you know, in the studio.
11:18I love that.
11:19That's awesome.
11:20One of my favorite songs of all time, Looks That Kill, not just a Motley song, but of all time.
11:26And it's like to say it's going to be part of a limited edition vinyl.
11:30Yes.
11:31Tell us about that.
11:32Well, BMG's been doing such a great job with us and that, you know, it's like creating something like you
11:39said, it's your favorite song.
11:40It's a lot of people love that song and to create a limited edition version of that is super special
11:47for the fans.
11:48That's like really what we're trying to do is create unique things for the fans that they can add to
11:55their collection along the way.
11:57And what about the dollar per ticket for ASAP?
12:01Tell us about that, too.
12:02You know, I was growing up and when I was in Seattle, I remember hearing that they may not be
12:08able to keep the music program going because they couldn't afford.
12:12And I was just a kid in high school and I wasn't actually really going to the music program.
12:18I was like playing in my friend's basement, like trying to learn smoke on the water and, you know, just
12:24be in a garage band.
12:25But it bummed me out because I saw a lot of kids, musicians that had dreams that didn't really know
12:32what to do with it, whether it's classical music.
12:34And the same thing in the arts program, me being a creative, I believe that, you know, music and art
12:42and animation and scores and wardrobe and live, it all goes together.
12:48So in a lot of cases, there's not enough money to be able to support these kids.
12:55And so the after-school arts program is something that's very important to me and to the band.
13:01We are giving a dollar a ticket away in our shows.
13:06We just did a great thing with Covenant House that I built a music program at Covenant House from the
13:12proceeds from my book, The Heroin Diaries, which is about recovery.
13:16So I talked to the band.
13:19We decided to do three club shows in L.A.
13:22It was called The Hollywood Takeover, and we donated not just the money from the tickets because they were clubs,
13:28but like auctioned off like all the instruments, the stage clothes.
13:34We did a lot of like high-end meet and greets, dinner with the band.
13:38You know, we talked to a lot of big companies.
13:40We said, you're coming in.
13:42You're coming in.
13:43It's $25,000 a table because we need to do this for the kids.
13:47And we were able to give $400,000 to Covenant House, and we're hoping to give another $400,000 from
13:53ASAP from this tour.
13:56And it's just part of our initiative as a band.
13:58You know, we are very lucky.
14:00We've had a long career.
14:02We've been able to take care of our kids, make sure our kids can get the best.
14:07How can we help other people take care of their kids?
14:10I love that.
14:11So good.
14:12So good.
14:12And the limited edition box set?
14:14I mean, it's so cool.
14:15Again, BMG, they're so great to work with.
14:18We just have a really clear understanding together of what Motley Crue is or is not.
14:25So they're not like taking our catalog and trying to polish it up to turn it into something that it's
14:31not.
14:32They're able to say, what was this album about?
14:35And we want to do a box set about this too fast for love or shout at the devil or
14:41Dr.
14:41How do we make that something that the fans have to have?
14:46They've got to put it on their bookshelf.
14:48And that's, you know, the new box set, what it's all about.
14:51Cool.
14:52What's the first vinyl record you ever bought or got as a gift?
14:55I remember very young, my mom was bouncing around a lot.
14:59We somehow ended up in some people's house in the Hollywood Hills.
15:03And this kid that my mom was friends with the other mom and they had a little boy.
15:11He had a record player that when you put the lid down, the needle was built into the lid.
15:17And he had 45s, which for years was my favorite number because of 45s like that.
15:28I remember for years, what's your favorite number?
15:30I'd say 45.
15:31I traced it back.
15:32Well, he had all these singles by the chipmunks.
15:36And I didn't know anything about business or licensing, but all the chipmunks are playing all these like Beatles songs,
15:43Rolling Stones songs.
15:44They were all licenses and there was the chipmunks and it was like it was a cartoon show at the
15:49same time.
15:50So I remember listening to this music coming out of this little thing.
15:54And that was like some of the earlier times in radio obviously had a huge impact on me because that
16:01was the only way that I could get music was for my grandmother's AM radio.
16:06I just remember sitting by this thing and just listening to the DJs talk about the music and then hearing
16:14the music actually was very influential in me having my 10 year run as a with a radio show.
16:21I love it.
16:22What does music do for people?
16:23I see people cry.
16:25I see people get in fights.
16:27I see people get naked.
16:30I see people smiling and screaming and singing every word.
16:35I think music does something different to everybody because we're all different, you know, and you could see Motley Crue
16:41on a Monday and have a whole different emotional experience than you would two Mondays from then.
16:46You know, you might be going through something different.
16:48You might need Motley Crue as a way or rock and roll as a way to break out, just get
16:55out of your rut.
16:56You know, we really feel that since we were kids that, you know, people are out there and they're working
17:00their ass off.
17:01And, you know, I don't care if you're Democrat, Republican, straight, gay, none of it matters when you come to
17:08a Motley Crue show.
17:09What matters is we're all there for the same reason.
17:11That's just to enjoy and express our joy for music, whether it's us or any other band.
17:17I don't care, but we just think it's kind of something that's very important to people.
17:21So good, Nikki.
17:22Thank you so much.
17:23You're so cool.
17:24You're awesome.
17:24Have a great show tonight.
17:26Have a great show tonight.
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