Artist: Sixx:A.M.
Label: Eleven seven music
Release: 2007
Length: 51:02
Rating: 4/5
You can read how life battered the hapless Frank Ferran, better known as Nikki Sixx, when his band was at the peak of its fame, in his book The heroin diaries – A year in the life of a shattered rock star (there’s an online presentation at theheroindiaries.net). It’s a confessional work by a man who has risen from the grave more times than Nosferatu, made up of suicidal scribbles from 1986 and backed up by newer comments from his friends and acquaintances, and it revolves around the hard-drug addiction the Motley crue bassist was wrestling with at the time. In one passage he wrote that heroin is a weird thing. “The first time you try it, your head spins, then you puke, and then you can’t move for a while. So why would you keep going with it? Because I wanted to be like my heroes Sid Vicious and Johhny Thunders.” But as Mick Mars pointed out when he described Nikki’s heroin escapades in the book, which at the time overshadowed even the exploits of the notorious Tommy Lee, Sid has been six feet under for a long time. Even the troubles of Vince Neil, who two years earlier had caused a drunk-driving crash that killed the Hanoi rocks drummer, looked like small potatoes next to the problems of Sixx, a man known for never having had any sense of moderation. So Nikki spent almost a whole year half-dead in his lavish villa in Van Nuys, chasing away numbness with cocaine and nerves with heroin, wandering through darkened rooms, hiding in closets and writing a diary.
The heroin diaries soundtrack, the musical companion to the book, kicks off with X-mas in hell and the anxious feeling of a man spending Christmas 1986 alone, naked and hunched under the Christmas tree with a needle in his hand. In the diary Nikki writes that he didn’t say a word to anyone that day, because he didn’t want to ruin Christmas for everybody else. The track Van Nuys, with its gloomy Manson-style rhythms, sings of the absurdity of the rocker life and resignedly toys with thoughts of death in a swanky corner of Los Angeles. The musical diary carries on in similarly sour tones with Life is beautiful, Pray for me and Tomorrow, marked by modern production and fairly catchy choruses, the kind Sixx was famous for back in the eighties. But musically the record is set up differently from the Moltey albums and is closer to modern rock in the vein of Creed, Nickleback and Alter bridge than to, say, the eighties stuff, so despite its obvious qualities fans of the old-school sound probably won’t be into it. The guys also shot an excellent video for Life is beautiful, whose imagery rests on inventive illustrations, cinematic tricks borrowed from the horror flick Seven and the color of congealed blood, which is also a sort of visual trademark of the book and the whole look of the record. In terms of content, the most interesting tracks are Dead man’s ballet and Heart failure, which describe Nikki’s clinical death on December 23, 1987 and his revival with adrenaline injections to the heart, something we were already schooled on by the song Kickstart my heart. Sixx had been through a similar episode earlier in London, where a drug dealer, after Nikki fell into a coma from an overdose in his apartment, first tried to bring him back with a baseball bat, then carried him out to the street and threw him in a dumpster. (“Valentine’s in London found me in the trash” – Dancing on glass from the album Girls girls girls)
So that’s the dark subject matter of the Heroin diaries soudtrack, which at moments still feels a bit too self-pitying and melodramatic. The difference between Sixx and other addicts is simply that thanks to his financial backing Nikki could afford a lot more than the rest, and that thanks to his famous name he could shout his troubles from the rooftops. So this is above all the personal confession of a spoiled and deathly unhappy addict who, rather than explicitly warning teenagers about the dangers of drugs, focuses on his own neurotic memories and moaning about how hard life is. Still, we shouldn’t be too hard on the wrung-out Sixx. His story in no way glorifies a debauched life, and the Heroin diaries book also teaches us that the author intends to hand 25 percent of his earnings from sales over to the charity foundation Running wild in the night, which helps abused and abandoned teenagers.
Perhaps the album’s stronger side is the music itself, which is put together with great care and, besides its harmonic variety, contains all the easily recognizable ingredients of quality modern production. That’s mostly thanks to James Michael, producer, guitarist and vocalist of Sixx A.M., who in the recent past has worked with and given advice to plenty of big names, such as Meat loaf, Scorpions, Rasmus and Papa roach. So you can listen to the album without the accompanying text, and it’s actually even better that way. But if the lyrics and the message of the record touch you and push you to get better acquainted with the glitz and misery of an eighties Hollywood musician’s everyday life, then go buy the book and help deprived kids.
Lineup
Nikki Sixx – bass, vocals
James Michael – vocals, guitar, keyboards,
drum programming
DJ Ashba – guitar, vocals
Production
James Michael, DJ Ashba, Nikki Sixx
Tracklist
1. X-mass in hell
2. Van Nuys
3. Life is beautiful
4. Pray for me
5. Tomorrow
6. Accidents can happen
7. Intermission
8. Dead man’s ballet
9. Heart failure
10. Girl with golden eyes
11. Courtesy call
12. Permission
13. Life after death
