Mötley TRUE
Mötley Crüe’s 150 prostitute orgy, heroin overdoses and swallowing lightbulbs for fun revealed in new movie about the most debauched band in history
IMAGINE being the subject of one of the most debauched rock ’n’ roll movies ever.
Featuring extreme drug use, wild sex with groupies and epic Jack Daniel’s benders — it’s not your usual family viewing.
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Then picture having to take your 18-year-old daughter to the premiere.
That’s the reality facing Mötley Crüe rocker Nikki Sixx, 60, ahead of new film The Dirt — based on the rock band’s outrageous 2001 autobiography which covers their rise, fall and rise.
The cult book — The Dirt: Confessions Of The World’s Most Notorious Rock Band — is so rich in rock ’n’ roll folklore, it is a surprise it has taken so long to become a fully fledged movie.
But Nikki and his bandmates — singer Vince Neil, 58, guitarist Mick Mars, 63, and drummer Tommy Lee, 56 — refused to make a sanitised version of their escapades. That was an accusation levelled at the creators of hit film Bohemian Rhapsody, for downplaying Freddie Mercury’s sexualty.
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Speaking exclusively to The Sun, Nikki says: “We couldn’t sanitise the story or you wouldn’t feel it was correct film-making. You can’t make it super-clean and Disney-like.
“We need to tell the whole story. So there were no punches pulled.”
He is not wrong. Whereas Paramount, who have made millions from Bohemian Rhapsody, hoped to tone down the debauchery when a movie was first mentioned nearly a decade ago, streaming site Netflix has no such idea.
So, when the 18-certificate film is available to stream from March 22, viewers will see ALL The Dirt.
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Lines of cocaine with silver straws
Nikki Sixx, Mötley Crüe founder
Groupies performing sex acts under restaurant tables, wild house parties, mud-wrestling strippers — and Ozzy Osbourne snorting red ants and his own urine beside a swimming pool.
But there is a tragic side.
Nikki calls it a “miracle” that the four original members, who sold 100 million records, are still alive.
In 1984, serial-womaniser front-man Vince got a 30-day jail term after he was at the wheel in a drink-drive crash which killed a passenger, Hanoi Rocks drummer Nicholas “Razzle” Dingley, and left two people in another vehicle with brain damage.
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Tommy, who later married Baywatch beauty Pamela Anderson — and starred in their infamous sex tape — got hooked on alcohol and cocaine while Mick became addicted to painkillers he was taking for a joint disease.
Nikki, played by Brit actor Douglas Booth in the movie, sank so low he overdosed on heroin and was declared dead, only to miraculously come back to life in an ambulance.
He had another heroin hit shortly after “as that’s what addicts do”.
Nikki says his own bad behaviour was triggered by the fact he had “no parents”. His dad walked out when he was a youngster and his mum was an alcoholic who regularly brought home new step-dads.
He hated his parents so much, he legally changed his name to Nikki Six from Frank Feranna. Frank was the name of his estranged dad. In one of the movie’s opening scenes, a young Nikki tries to send his mum to prison by slitting his wrists and blaming her.
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The Dirt film trailer - The story of the world’s most notorious rock and roll band, Motley Crue
He says: “It was a cry to get away, I just couldn’t take being beat by another stepdad. I couldn’t take another — my mum sending me back to my grandparents one more time.”
The veteran rocker, now a reformed heroin addict and sober for 16 years, says Mötley Crüe became his replacement family as they bonded over their wild behaviour in the 1980s, when drugs and unprotected sex were not frowned upon as much as they are today. Everywhere they went, they could get drugs.
Recalling a night in London, he says: “We went to this Russian place, until 4am. All of a sudden eight waiters come out with silver platters, take the lids off and there’s lines of cocaine with silver straws for us for dessert.
“It was era specific and when we were making the film it was important for us to shine a light on that era.”
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Nikki says their Girls, Girls, Girls tour was later canned in the UK for fear one of them would return in “a body bag”. But they ignored all pleas to rein in their antics, even from their much-loved Far East tour manager Mr Udo, who warned Nikki to quit heroin or end up like his rocker pal Tommy Bolin, who died of an overdose at 25.
Instead of taking his words on board, Nikki hired 150 prostitutes and, as a thank you, sent 30 to Mr Udo’s room — which he happened to be sharing with his family. He says: “He told me the next day that, in Japanese culture, what I did was pretty insulting.”
Mötley Crüe became known for their notorious lifestyle while trying to make their name in music. After Nikki and Tommy formed the band in 1981 — later attracting Vince and Mick — they lived in an apartment in Sunset Strip, West Hollywood, which became the area’s No1 party location — and foremost place to throw a TV out the window.
Recalling the two-bedroom “hell-hole”, Nikki says: “The problem was, where we lived was 100ft from the Whiskey A Go Go. If someone is playing there, we would hang out, have drinks, everyone would then come back to our apartment — which had no windows or doors because they had been kicked in by the police or people breaking in. This spot was, like, apocalyptic.
"The health department had to evacuate the building because there was so much trash and rats, bugs and cockroaches.
We were animals – and so were many of the females
Nikki Stixx, Mötley Crüe bassist
“We were so young — Tommy was 17. We just threw trash out the window — eight feet high. If somebody threw a television out the window and it landed on my car, I’d lose my f***ing s**t.
“I look at the film and think I’d kill somebody if they did that to me. But there were no rules.”
The band may have formed a tight bond, initially forged by a scrap with their audience during their first gig, but that did not stop them sleeping with each other’s girlfriends.
Their long-suffering manager Doc McGhee says in the movie: “Don’t ever leave your girlfriend with Mötley Crüe, ever — because they will f*** her.”
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Vince had sex with the girlfriend of the band’s A&R man backstage at a gig — and Nikki slept with one of Tommy Lee’s many early girlfriends. Reflecting on Doc’s quote, Nikki says: “That would be accurate. It’s weird to think about that now.
“Everybody was on this reckless adventure, girls and guys, and it was all consensual which is interesting to look back at. Now I’m married, I’m a father of five, I have a baby on the way, I’m sober — but looking back, it was crazy. We were animals, pigs — and so were many of the females.”
Nikki — who in 2007 formed another successful rock band, Sixx:A.M. — now campaigns against drugs in the US, highlighting the opioid epidemic.
He hopes a musical version of his best-selling book The Heroin Diaries — based on stories from his using days — will do for opioid awareness what rock musical Rent did for tackling Aids.
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He says: “The opioid epidemic has killed more people than the Vietnam War, more people than car crashes kill every year. It p***es me off we’re now finally using the word ‘epidemic’. It’s now time to strike with the musical.”
But he is bracing himself for a new phase of Mötley Crüe pandemonium, buoyed by the release of three new songs for the movie — and the prospect of going back on the band’s 2015 contract that they would never tour again as a four as Mötley Crüe.
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But first things first, he has a big LA premiere to deal with — and a potentially awkward conversation with his teenage daughter.
Nikki, who has been wed three times, says: “She’s going to see a side of her dad she’s never seen, which maybe will help with understanding the decisions I made — that I stayed in relationships longer than I should have because I was scared I was going to be abandoning my kids the way I was abandoned. But the first scene at the house party is going to be a hard one to explain . . . ”
I don’t envy him.
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