A Crue-l Year

I’m enthralled by Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx’s book, The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star.

It’s 1987. Motley Crue is on the verge of peaking in fame, money and debauchery. Sixx is addicted to heroin and thinks cocaine and Jack Daniels are as harmless as candy. He’s in a destructive and awful relationship with singer and dancer (and fellow addict) Vanity. His bandmates are messed up in their own ways but Sixx is sicker than all of them put together. The book reprints his actual diaries from that time and supplements them with raw and honest comments from band members and others who were witnesses.

I met Tommy Lee shortly after he and Heather Locklear split up. No bloody wonder! Now, after reading about their antics on the road it’s amazing those Crue guys weren’t clubbed over the head by their significant others. Are women married to rock stars that unaware, that understanding or that…apathetic? But I digress…

The paranoia, the addiction, the self-destruction, the excess and the success – it’s a compelling and fascinating read, despite the fact that I would never in my wildest dreams call myself any sort of a Motley Crue fan. It’s an inside look at a bad boy rock band’s life over one year and it’s just as crazy and sad and exciting as you might imagine. And lucky for Sixx, he lived to tell about it.