One can say many things about Mötley Crüe’s Nikki Six, but that he’s not crystal clear on what he says. During an interview to Kerrang he talked about grunge, his band, how they survived the 1980s, among other things. Here are some excerpts of the interview.
The explosion of Nirvana in 1991 did great damage to Mötley Crüe. Was it fair that you were lumped in with bands such as Poison and Warrant?
“I have to say that I don’t think that Nirvana and Pearl Jam killed the bands you mention, I think that they killed themselves. They were making copycat music.
“We, on the other hand, simply imploded. Forget about the lifestyle for a minute – the thing that ultimately allowed us to pull ourselves through was the music that we made, and how good we can be when we really put it together.
“Every great band has hills and valleys; they start at the bottom and if they’re lucky they make it to the top of the mountain. But eventually, you have to go down. Very few bands are lucky enough to become popular and stay popular forever.
“That’s just the way music is – it changes, technology changes, fashion changes, and social outlooks change. But again, today a lot of bands are just so f*cking safe.”
Do you think that Mötley Crüe’s music has been overshadowed by, shall we say, the band’s extra-curricular activities?
“One hundred percent. One thing that we all agreed on early on was that we would be very honest about our lives.
“So we’d do an interview and be asked what we did the night before, and we’d answer, ‘Oh, we did some cocaine, got into a fight and f*cked a prostitute.’ And they would look at us and say, ‘Who the f*ck are these people?’
“But there were other people who were doing that who didn’t talk about it. I won’t mention any names, but there were quite a few bands who I talked to when I was doing ‘The H*roin Diaries’ who said, ‘God, please don’t let people know that we did that too.’
“And that was just never Mötley’s way. We were very open lyrically and in interviews, and it kind of took off from there. And then with the book ‘The Dirt,’ people were reading about us, but not really listening to the music. I mean, they’d listen to it, but all the time they’d be thinking about how wild we were.
“One of the things we wanted to do with the film was to show the musical side, too. We wanted to relaunch our music to a new fan base, and to our old fan base, too. We wanted to do exactly what you’re talking about, which is to point the finger back at the music.”
Will these fans ever get to see Mötley Crüe play live again?
“I was actually doing an interview with Tommy [Lee] a couple of weeks ago, and we were asked if we would ever play together again. And Tommy said, ‘I don’t know. Maybe if we got into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame or something, we could dust off a couple of our old classics.’
“I was, like, ‘Really?’ And he said, ‘Why not?’ But we don’t have any plans because we were told by the Hall of Fame that we would never get in, because of how we’ve acted, so that’s kind of it.”
Would you ever consider touring as a band again?
“Well, I don’t know. We haven’t had that conversation. I mean, we wrapped up for a reason.
“I don’t know – I keep saying a hard no to that, but if something came up, like, we were invited to play the Super Bowl half-time show, maybe that’d be something we’d be interested in doing. But touring has never been a conversation, and we do talk about stuff all the time.”
After all that the four members of Mötley Crüe have been through, do you remain friends?
“Erm… I think that me and Tommy and Vince are very close right now. Mick is very quiet and so we never see him. But right now there’s no problems. [Laughs] Things are fine.”
Are you happy?
“I’m so fu* happy.”
