Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Inside the
Speaker 1: Studio on iHeart Radio. My name's Jordan runt Dog. But
Speaker 1: enough about me. My guest today needs no introduction, but
Speaker 1: we're going to give him one because he was in
Speaker 1: Motley Crue and he deserves it, damn it. In addition
Speaker 1: to being a bona fide rock legend, he's also a
Speaker 1: writer and an activist. He showcased both talents with his
Speaker 1: two thousand seven memoir The Heroin Diaries, A Year in
Speaker 1: the Life of a Shattered rock star. The brutally honest
Speaker 1: self portrait top the New York Times bestseller's list and
Speaker 1: helped change the conversation around addiction and recovery. Now he's
Speaker 1: back with a new book about his early years, entitled
Speaker 1: The First twenty one How It Became Nikki six. It
Speaker 1: chronicles his tumultuous youth, being shuttled among family members in
Speaker 1: the Midwest before heading the Los Angeles at age seventeen
Speaker 1: to seek his fortune. Sure, they're hedonistic tales of l
Speaker 1: a at its most deboshed in the late seventies, but
Speaker 1: The First twenty one is also a story about hope,
Speaker 1: hard work, and endurance. I'm so happy to welcome NICKI six.
Speaker 1: First off, every superhero needs their origin story, and that's
Speaker 1: what the first twenty one is. Your new memoir focuses
Speaker 1: on your early years. What kick started this project, What
Speaker 1: made you decide that to share this part of your story. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing that really concerns me and has for years,
Speaker 1: is that athletes, musicians, you people, entrepreneurs that come into money,
Speaker 1: a lot of times they end up broke. So you know,
Speaker 1: I have this this way that I do it, and
Speaker 1: I've done it since day one. I save and of
Speaker 1: everything I ever make, that's after taxes, after commissions, and
Speaker 1: I have to adjust my life around that. So I
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of write a book and like help
Speaker 1: other people like um. You know, they have these ideas
Speaker 1: and dreams, spend their whole life and then they get
Speaker 1: a deal with the m b A and then five
Speaker 1: years later they're broke. Um And and I was really
Speaker 1: excited about the idea. And we have property where we
Speaker 1: live here in Wyoming, and the back part of my
Speaker 1: property is like twenty acres. I go back on the
Speaker 1: back part and I'm sitting on this kind of the
Speaker 1: end of the property goes down into a gulch and
Speaker 1: I was sitting at the crow Flies. I'm literally two
Speaker 1: hours from where I grew up in Idaho, right across
Speaker 1: the grants. So I'm looking out and I'm just I'm
Speaker 1: thinking to myself, Um, you know, just how beautiful and
Speaker 1: difference this is that Hollywood and it reminds me of
Speaker 1: my childhood. And then I had this fleeting thought and um,
Speaker 1: it was like where did everybody go? And UM, I
Speaker 1: came in the house and I wrote this like couplet,
Speaker 1: like a short poem, and it said, um. One of
Speaker 1: the lines was, you know, once once I, once I
Speaker 1: started to fly, I forgot up. And it wasn't you
Speaker 1: that lost out. It was me, in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: losing connection to childhood friends and two family. And that's like,
Speaker 1: you know, the the Financial Book is something I'd like
Speaker 1: to do sometime in the future. But it doesn't sound
Speaker 1: very sexy. You know, it doesn't sound very it's you know,
Speaker 1: it does really anybody that book? Now during the pandemic,
Speaker 1: there's enough stress, and you know, I'm sixty two. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe in you know, eight ten years, that's something that
Speaker 1: might be more interesting. And UM, I called up our say, UM,
Speaker 1: I want to tell my story from birth to twenty one.
Speaker 1: But the day I changed my name to Nikki six,
Speaker 1: we started talking about it and we got really excited.
Speaker 1: It's it's a prequel speaking. Also, it was an opportunity
Speaker 1: to not only tell a story of a small town
Speaker 1: boy that fell in love with, you know, music of
Speaker 1: first on AM radio and then FM and then vinyl
Speaker 1: and the small four thousand people uh and took that
Speaker 1: that passion and went for it. And it's it's the
Speaker 1: obstacles along the way, It's the lessons you learned, it's
Speaker 1: everything that was able to put together in the first
Speaker 1: twenty one years. I believe that whether you're talking to
Speaker 1: Lebron James, or if you're talking to top race car
Speaker 1: driver or if you're talking Richards, probably somewhere in their
Speaker 1: first twenty one years they're going to have that kind
Speaker 1: of like aha moment, like this is what I want
Speaker 1: to do. People in radio tell me, yeah, remember the
Speaker 1: moment I'm going to be in radio. People that are
Speaker 1: podcasters were like telling me that they were influenced by
Speaker 1: these people. And then when podcasting came along, gave an
Speaker 1: opportunity and a lot of this happens in our youth
Speaker 1: because in our youth, we throw into the wind. And
Speaker 1: if you're Tony Hawk now you probably don't want to
Speaker 1: jump off the top of a house on a skateboard.
Speaker 1: But when he was in his first twenty one years,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's what one of the greatest he was,
Speaker 1: you know, felt invincible, and so I wanted to capture
Speaker 1: some of that innocence and the discovery of music. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what was that aha moment for you? What did success
Speaker 1: look like for you as a kid growing up in
Speaker 1: in Idaho, Um. I never really knew there was such
Speaker 1: a thing as success when money or any of it.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to be in a band. I wanted
Speaker 1: to people that wanted to do the same thing I
Speaker 1: wanted to do, which was to play music. And my
Speaker 1: my idea of what I wanted for music was is
Speaker 1: not the same as that guy or that guy and
Speaker 1: uh San slugging it out and going through auditions and
Speaker 1: trying to put together musicians were like minded. And I
Speaker 1: was very, very strategic and very organized in my heads,
Speaker 1: like I am in a band with a guy that
Speaker 1: like that, and a guy like that, like I gotta
Speaker 1: have a band with four stars in the band, five
Speaker 1: stars like that's what I want, That's what I grew
Speaker 1: up with, UM, And so it was the that the
Speaker 1: focus of what I wanted while I was learning to
Speaker 1: be a songwriter, UM and copying the greats, whether it
Speaker 1: was the Cheap Tricks or the Miss Sweets or the
Speaker 1: Slaves and the Pistols and putting it all into my
Speaker 1: own blender and coming up with the ideas. So then, UM,
Speaker 1: it was really hard for me because nobody in Angulists,
Speaker 1: well that's not true, not nobody. A lot of people
Speaker 1: Los Angeles didn't want to play original music. So I
Speaker 1: would go to auditions and it was a top forties
Speaker 1: circuit back then, so you had to be able to
Speaker 1: play Summer analyd Zeppelin, you had to be able to
Speaker 1: play Tennessee See and uh you know, I don't know, uh,
Speaker 1: Parliament in Cadelic and these musicians got fantastic because of
Speaker 1: Mark came up through that playing four sets, and I'd
Speaker 1: being able to play everybody's music. That's why it's such
Speaker 1: a great player. I would go to these auditions and
Speaker 1: they would be um, like, well, you know, you're not
Speaker 1: exactly playing designs by foreigner exactly like on the record,
Speaker 1: and I'd be like, yeah, I mean, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I kind of play the way I play.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I have a bunch of original music.
Speaker 1: We don't original music. There's no money in it. And
Speaker 1: I was like, the best, what's the purpose of being
Speaker 1: a musician if you don't. I was young. You don't
Speaker 1: write your own music, you don't write your own lyrics.
Speaker 1: If you don't, whatever you're going through And um so
Speaker 1: I just eventually had to start putting bands together. So
Speaker 1: this would have been you got to to l A
Speaker 1: when you were seventeen and what around seventy five? What
Speaker 1: was l A like at that time? This is post
Speaker 1: Laurel can you sort of post the Troubadour club type
Speaker 1: of stuff? Like what was the scene like then? It
Speaker 1: was great? It was really great because, um you punk
Speaker 1: rock and it was kind of faltering and new Wave,
Speaker 1: which was in retrospect, had some bands with some really
Speaker 1: good songs. But as a young kid that was watching
Speaker 1: Don Kirschner's concert Midnight Special and seeing the New York
Speaker 1: Dolls and see an Aerosmith on a stage this big
Speaker 1: and just doing train cap rolla and I'm like, this
Speaker 1: is not again. It just reinforced what I wanted, but
Speaker 1: that there was There was rock bands, and there was
Speaker 1: some kind of hippie rock bands, and there was punk rock,
Speaker 1: and there was new way. I just felt like none
Speaker 1: of it fit me. I wanted to push. And that's
Speaker 1: where eventually, uh, you know, getting together with Blackie law Las.
Speaker 1: We were like minded. Uh you know, we formed a
Speaker 1: band which was Blackie's band if you if you read
Speaker 1: the book called Sister and Um, then it was all
Speaker 1: original music. I remember sitting there with Dane Range and
Speaker 1: come John st John on keyboards, Lizzie Graham guitar, Blackie
Speaker 1: on guitar and vocals, and me on bass in a
Speaker 1: studio and I, uh, it was first pretty you know.
Speaker 1: And I called my grandparents back in Idaho and I said, Um,
Speaker 1: I found the people, right, I found the people, um,
Speaker 1: and I knew that was the right path. Blackie is
Speaker 1: a leader. I'm like naturally like a band leader because
Speaker 1: I had to become. Otherwise I would have been on
Speaker 1: the top forty circuit and i'd I'd still be playing
Speaker 1: cold as I in Orange County. Um and so. But
Speaker 1: Blackie fired me and Lizzie and Dane because we were green.
Speaker 1: We weren't very good in the studio and that I
Speaker 1: already been writing all these songs, but it's Blackie's band
Speaker 1: is Blackie's songs, which later went on to become WASP,
Speaker 1: and he's a great songwriter and very talented musician. Um
Speaker 1: and we formed again. It was like, well, we don't
Speaker 1: want to be the Plimsils or the go Gos or
Speaker 1: the Knack, and we don't want to be Fear or
Speaker 1: Dead Kennedy's we want cheap trick a meats, you know,
Speaker 1: Matta Hoople queen And that's where the band London. That's
Speaker 1: how it formed. And then we got really big on
Speaker 1: the scene because there was nothing like it, and I
Speaker 1: knew I was on the right path, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. I wasn't playing other people's music or I
Speaker 1: wasn't in someone else's band, because you were being true
Speaker 1: to your own voice. I mean, was that ever scary
Speaker 1: for you though? Were there ever moments when you thought, okay,
Speaker 1: this this might not work out? Or did that not
Speaker 1: even cross your mind? At that point? It didn't even
Speaker 1: cross my mind. I never even thought about it, and
Speaker 1: I never considered quitting. Um No, if that's uh courage,
Speaker 1: you know, you say, oh, that young kid had courage
Speaker 1: or or if he was just had blind faith. But
Speaker 1: I wanted what I wanted lived in twenty four hours
Speaker 1: a day. It's all I thought about. All the way
Speaker 1: back in Idaho. I would draw pictures of bands. I
Speaker 1: would draw the you know, the amps and with the
Speaker 1: stage that would look like in in in the writing
Speaker 1: this book, we went all the way back and like that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, reconnected with old friends, my first girlfriend, and
Speaker 1: a couple of the people said, yeah, the thing we
Speaker 1: were on in Jerome, Idaho, population four thousand. On Fridays,
Speaker 1: they would have an auditorium. Some musicians would come in
Speaker 1: from wherever or and I remember there was this like
Speaker 1: bass player, huge h afro and bell bottoms, and this
Speaker 1: guitar player that had this long, shaggy hair and a
Speaker 1: weird mustache and a drink. And I was just like,
Speaker 1: that is what I'm talking about the band last week.
Speaker 1: And everybody would always say I would leave these things,
Speaker 1: whether it was in Los Angeles or in Idaho or
Speaker 1: in Seattle. And I made my notes of what they
Speaker 1: did wrong, what if they they did this, if that
Speaker 1: been that hook should have started and and and they
Speaker 1: all laughed. They were like, oh my God, it was
Speaker 1: like torture. You know, notebooks full of what the perfect band.
Speaker 1: It's all I thought about. And it was the songs
Speaker 1: and the lyrics and the visual and and um. Anything
Speaker 1: short of that I wasn't interested in. It's so fascinating
Speaker 1: to me going through sort of the list of influences
Speaker 1: you've cited. I mean, you've got Queen and Sabbath, but
Speaker 1: also you've got like Harry Nielsen and Elton John and
Speaker 1: these people that really are amazing songwriters. I mean, the
Speaker 1: craft that goes into their their pieces are so interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, who are some people like that that are
Speaker 1: you know, maybe not people that people would necessarily expect
Speaker 1: to be influences on you, but folks that really taught
Speaker 1: you what it is to make a good song and
Speaker 1: a good melody and really craft that. It was about studying.
Speaker 1: It was about studying, constantly studying. I was bad in school,
Speaker 1: but great in front of that record player. I would
Speaker 1: sit there and I figured out, like listen to on
Speaker 1: the headphones and get ideas of my own. Everything that
Speaker 1: I was absorbing. I was like, oh, I could put
Speaker 1: that into this idea, or I could put it into
Speaker 1: that idea. And I hadn't become a really good songwriter yet.
Speaker 1: I was just learning and it was really exciting, exciting.
Speaker 1: It's funny, Harry Nielsen you bring up Harry um My
Speaker 1: son Decker's middle name is is. I was in Idaho
Speaker 1: and we made money by, uh doing all kinds of jobs,
Speaker 1: and I saved up enough money. I was at my
Speaker 1: friend's house to go down to the local like drug
Speaker 1: store that sold you know, everything from milkshakes to vinyl.
Speaker 1: And I said, I'm gonna go down there and I'm
Speaker 1: getting the new Deep Purple record, and everyone, yeah, whatever.
Speaker 1: It was five dollars and cents from mowing lawns. I
Speaker 1: got on my bike and my my friend sister was
Speaker 1: a couple of years now, you remember this the seventies.
Speaker 1: She had on Daisy dukes, a tube top and this
Speaker 1: long all one's length there. And I would literally when
Speaker 1: I was house, I'd be like, you know, but she
Speaker 1: wanted nothing to do with the dweeb like me. You know,
Speaker 1: I was, oh game, I had no nothing that I
Speaker 1: couldn't even really talk to her. That she's probably like,
Speaker 1: your friend is weird. And then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: she paid attention to me. She said she said, hey, um, Frankie,
Speaker 1: can I can I ride down to the vinyl shop
Speaker 1: with you? And I was like yeah, and so she
Speaker 1: wrote down and I went to the section D and
Speaker 1: there it was Deep Purple and I got it. I
Speaker 1: heard it on the radio. I'm gonna absorb everything on
Speaker 1: this record. She goes, you know, you should find this one,
Speaker 1: and I was like, no, I'm I'm good with this one.
Speaker 1: She goes, batted her eyes and said you should get
Speaker 1: this record, and it was Harry Nielsen Nielsen Schmill has
Speaker 1: jumped into the fire on it without you on it.
Speaker 1: And I went back and my friends were like, why,
Speaker 1: where's the Deep Purple record? And so then I fell
Speaker 1: in love with Harry's music, and as the years win,
Speaker 1: I found that he was a great influence. So if
Speaker 1: I was doing a riff, uh the banana banana da
Speaker 1: da on um two two fast too fast for love,
Speaker 1: you have two fast for love the verse, I would like, well,
Speaker 1: what would Harry sing over this? What would John Lennon said,
Speaker 1: what would Robin Robin Zanders sing over this? And then
Speaker 1: well how would Tony Iomi play this? So you know
Speaker 1: I was I was a train wreck as far as creativity,
Speaker 1: it was pick a lane, but I just couldn't. I
Speaker 1: couldn't get enough. And uh it was It was funny
Speaker 1: because years, years, years, decades later, I went to an
Speaker 1: a A meeting. Uh. We went around the room and
Speaker 1: one of the things they do is, you know you,
Speaker 1: you say who you are, and uh, if you're an
Speaker 1: alcoholic or a drug addict. So I'd be like, I'm
Speaker 1: Nicky six all of them, you know, alcoholic, I'm a
Speaker 1: truck addict, I'm this some of that, and I'm here
Speaker 1: to get better. Right. Next guy says, you know, I'm John,
Speaker 1: I'm an alcoholic. Next guy goes, I'm here scalp b
Speaker 1: m I And I'm looking at this older gentleman and
Speaker 1: I'm like, kind of looks like Harry. It can't be
Speaker 1: Harry meals anyway. Next guy, so it comes up to
Speaker 1: me after the meeting. It says, hey, hey, kid, hey kid,
Speaker 1: I guess I was a kid. I was like thirty, right,
Speaker 1: and he was probably I don't know, fifty five or something,
Speaker 1: and just give me a home. And I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know where depends where do you live if
Speaker 1: you live in like, you know, uh, Beverly Hills. No,
Speaker 1: because it's like two live in hidden hills, Like, oh,
Speaker 1: I live in hidden hills too. So on the drive
Speaker 1: over we started talking. Came so obviously it was Harry Neils.
Speaker 1: So we started talking about music that were in me
Speaker 1: and Harry became good friends. Harry would my house and
Speaker 1: there'd be on the door out of nowhere, just a
Speaker 1: weird time of day, and Harry would be standing there
Speaker 1: and he goes, this is my friend Richard. That would
Speaker 1: be Ringo Starr and they would come in. They would
Speaker 1: sit in. Would you know. I don't smoke, and I
Speaker 1: never really dug it with people smoked in my house,
Speaker 1: but they were both smoking, and they were sitting in
Speaker 1: my front room telling stories about the Beatles and about
Speaker 1: this and this thing that John did with Harry at
Speaker 1: the Troubador or that that, you know, so those famous
Speaker 1: stories we've read about, and I'd be like, smoke all
Speaker 1: you want, man, because I'm just absorbing this and it.
Speaker 1: You know, he kind of got to understand who I
Speaker 1: was and that I was a songwriter and Motley Crewe,
Speaker 1: so we kind of talked about possibly me producing a
Speaker 1: for him, and I was just like, wow, thank God
Speaker 1: to you know, for that girl at the tube top um.
Speaker 1: Look how life life is. And unfortunately Harry did pass
Speaker 1: and I got to do that, but I named my
Speaker 1: my son's middle name after him. But you know that
Speaker 1: that's how music is. Man. You you meet people and
Speaker 1: they say be careful, you know, meeting your heroes. Everybody's
Speaker 1: had that happen. I'm sure you've interviewed people and got
Speaker 1: off and was like, Wow, that guy wasn't what I
Speaker 1: thought he was or that girl. But at the same time, yees,
Speaker 1: you can cultivate all this positivity from people, whether sing
Speaker 1: the records or reading their interviews or if you're lucky
Speaker 1: enough to meet them or become friends. And you know,
Speaker 1: guys like Steven Tyler had a big effect on me.
Speaker 1: That's my Rolling Stones and Steven messages on my voicemail
Speaker 1: when I was struggling with addiction and and he would
Speaker 1: sing into my mind. You know, I would just be like,
Speaker 1: this is like one of my you know, childhood heroes. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, the whole the whole experience of discovering music
Speaker 1: is uh one of the most exciting things for me.
Speaker 1: Thinking of everything you're telling me now, I mean, do
Speaker 1: you is there a separation between you Nikki and and
Speaker 1: Frank Jr. Did they almost feel like like two separate
Speaker 1: people do do they sort of coexist in you? Well,
Speaker 1: that's a really great question. Um. So I changed my
Speaker 1: name because the information that was downloaded into my head
Speaker 1: when I was a kid by my mom about my dad.
Speaker 1: That's why I changed me. It could be Frank Farron
Speaker 1: and Motley Crue or in London or in anything else
Speaker 1: I would have done, but it was about I'm not
Speaker 1: going to carry on your name the way than me,
Speaker 1: and that information was not all her percent true. We
Speaker 1: found out and going back and going through this talking
Speaker 1: to family members, uh, talking to people there. But my
Speaker 1: dad did leave. But why did he leave? So I
Speaker 1: think that there was a separation of I create my
Speaker 1: own family, my own legacy, which I've done. But in
Speaker 1: retrospect um I realized that that Frank and Nikki are
Speaker 1: the same person. Now sicky that the other guy, he's
Speaker 1: a little different, but I think he exists. He might
Speaker 1: only come out every now and then, But in general,
Speaker 1: I'm enjoying to know myself as a child. Uh, not
Speaker 1: through the lens of Motley Crewe or through the lens
Speaker 1: of anything, just through the lens of family members. Story.
Speaker 1: The things that I realized now were so important to me.
Speaker 1: When I hit the seventies, I had a foundation of
Speaker 1: family that I never I blamed it all of my dad.
Speaker 1: So I split, you know, and I did. I had
Speaker 1: a great grandmother, a great grandfather, a great family members
Speaker 1: that were around, but it was something in me. You know,
Speaker 1: you be away from that life. I mean, it's something
Speaker 1: that I feel like I'm coming to grips with now
Speaker 1: my own life in my early thirties. You grow up,
Speaker 1: you leave home, you start putting your head down and
Speaker 1: working hard and trying to build your own life with
Speaker 1: your own people and your own connections, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden you sort of realize that you want to
Speaker 1: reconnect with your past. That you want to, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of learn more about about who I don't want
Speaker 1: to say who you were, but but sort of what
Speaker 1: what's what's deeper inside of you. It's almost like the
Speaker 1: inverse of that John Lennon line. You know, life's what
Speaker 1: happens when you're busy making other plans. Suddenly you realize
Speaker 1: that there was this whole other history that you had,
Speaker 1: was this cathartic for you getting in touch with with
Speaker 1: these family members and your first girlfriend. What was that
Speaker 1: experience like for you? I mean it was it was
Speaker 1: definitely cathartic in a lot of ways. Uh couldn't have
Speaker 1: happened in a better time and the worse time obviously
Speaker 1: during the pandemic. But I got a lot to spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time talking to people and I couldn't
Speaker 1: spends with a lot of zooms, a lot of interviews,
Speaker 1: a lot of things that I would hear that I
Speaker 1: forgot about, and you would hear from three or four
Speaker 1: different people and you go, wow, I do the same
Speaker 1: thing now. You know. It's these visual things and a
Speaker 1: lot of them are positive and there's obviously always negatives
Speaker 1: in there too, and you try to grow from that. Um.
Speaker 1: I I feel that when people read the and this
Speaker 1: information and from like ten or twenty people that I've
Speaker 1: I've more like twenty or twenty five people that I
Speaker 1: are very close to it. I've sent the book too,
Speaker 1: and they were like, I see my own child, I
Speaker 1: I see like wow, when I was that age and
Speaker 1: I discovered this band, it really changed my life. And
Speaker 1: when it's got me to think I wanted to we
Speaker 1: were like, you know, when I was going through my
Speaker 1: first twenty one. Now I'm like a professional photographer and
Speaker 1: I shoot some of the biggest bands in the world.
Speaker 1: They didn't end up picking up an instrument, they ended
Speaker 1: up picking up a different instrument, etcetera, etcetera. Journalists excess.
Speaker 1: So I think inside the first twenty one and my
Speaker 1: dream is that yes, it's about a young kid, you know,
Speaker 1: coming from Idaho, but it's also about you and your
Speaker 1: story and the next person and the next the girl,
Speaker 1: and I think that people can absorb it. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I thought would call it a wholesome read, but it's
Speaker 1: definitely different tone to it. I wanted to have empathy,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to, through discovery, give people the benefit
Speaker 1: of the doubt. You know, I was young. This is
Speaker 1: what was downloaded to me. You know, maybe maybe it
Speaker 1: happened this way, or maybe it didn't happen that way.
Speaker 1: Like my dad leaving, my uncle said something, you're really mad,
Speaker 1: and he never came back that moment to me. And
Speaker 1: again I don't have documented proof, even though I am
Speaker 1: with the family that raised my sister who was born
Speaker 1: with Down syndrome. My dad was a super proud Italian Sicilian.
Speaker 1: He wanted his son named after him. Uh, he wanted
Speaker 1: to take my sister home, but um, you know they were.
Speaker 1: She was home with us for eleven months. Obviously you
Speaker 1: couldn't because she was too young. But she could never walk,
Speaker 1: she could never talk, she was blind, she had a
Speaker 1: heart problem, she had down syndrome, and she needed a
Speaker 1: family to take care of her um research. We believed
Speaker 1: the moment of impact why he left was when my
Speaker 1: sister went to at the home And for me, it
Speaker 1: was my first taste of people are disposable, like she's gone,
Speaker 1: I could be next. It's very young, right, And then
Speaker 1: you get a mom that's saying your dad's a bad guy.
Speaker 1: Your mom's now, your dad's an alcoholic, your dad was
Speaker 1: an organizer, your dad was a drug addict. And then
Speaker 1: I talked to family members and my uncle Pop said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think I ever saw Frank ever
Speaker 1: even drink a beer. And your mind's life, Oh what
Speaker 1: the fuck have I been carrying around with me for
Speaker 1: all these years? And then then I had to go
Speaker 1: through forgiveness. I got to forgive my mom, give because
Speaker 1: like I got five kids, I got a career, I
Speaker 1: got an amazing wife. I don't I don't want to
Speaker 1: sit around rehashing things that I don't even know for true,
Speaker 1: let's go and let's get going. I hope you feel lighter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel I feel a lot lighter. Except for COVID nineteen.
Speaker 1: I think everybody put on there at least. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I feel lighter, But man, I miss being uh um
Speaker 1: mobile and physical and going to the gym and um.
Speaker 1: You know. So part of this process during the right
Speaker 1: of this book is, you know, we left Los Angeles
Speaker 1: to sold our house and moved to Jackson, Wyoming and
Speaker 1: the top of and you can't see anybody from our house.
Speaker 1: So I went from complete suburbia and hearing stories from
Speaker 1: my friends about their buying bulletproof back the kids, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know what, I need to get back
Speaker 1: to my roots. And COVID helped us make that final decision.
Speaker 1: We've been thinking about it, and my wife loves it
Speaker 1: here and I get to come back, but I also
Speaker 1: get to raise my daughter here, uh and reconnecting, and
Speaker 1: I just feel so much healthier and better and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, looking forward to getting out of the road
Speaker 1: with Molly Crewe grounded more grounded. I'm very uh. I
Speaker 1: have ideas I read down I step one, step two,
Speaker 1: step three leads to blank. You know, I always say,
Speaker 1: what's we want to win the super Bowl? How do
Speaker 1: we move back all the way to draft right? You
Speaker 1: have to get the right got to coach together the
Speaker 1: right defensive life. Bam, bam bam. And I don't really
Speaker 1: um like the idea of like going to the super
Speaker 1: Bowl and just being like, well, we went to the
Speaker 1: super Bowl, but we lost. Very driven, you know, with
Speaker 1: with my band, with Motley Crue, with everything else I do,
Speaker 1: but being grounded with COVID, being in Wyoming has got
Speaker 1: me to be a little more in my body, if
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Less Like everyone's like, if you've got
Speaker 1: a problem, called Nikki, He'll he'll like help, You'll work
Speaker 1: his team player. And uh now I just feel like
Speaker 1: cut loose of that brain always on fire. You know,
Speaker 1: I have to say earlier, I mean you recently celebrated
Speaker 1: twenty years of sobriety. Mean, first of all, most importantly congratulations,
Speaker 1: I mean an incredible achievement. Uh the last year year
Speaker 1: and a half has been hard on all of us,
Speaker 1: but especially people struggling with substance abuse issues. I know
Speaker 1: many people in my own life that have had a
Speaker 1: really rough go of it in the last year and
Speaker 1: a half. What would you say to those people that
Speaker 1: really are feeling the isolation and the stress and the
Speaker 1: anxiety and the pressure of of the COVID situation that
Speaker 1: are struggling with addiction. It's definitely a hard time for people,
Speaker 1: all people UM in different ways financially and UM families
Speaker 1: not being able to see each other, UM, we all.
Speaker 1: What I found for me that help during this time
Speaker 1: was to go inside because I can't go outside like
Speaker 1: I want to, so I go inside making some side work.
Speaker 1: So being a person in recovery, there's a there's a
Speaker 1: lot of tools out there. It's like, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: I need to redo my fourth step, Maybe I need
Speaker 1: to reach out more. Maybe I need to make a
Speaker 1: hot list of also in recovery and reach out once
Speaker 1: a week, send him a text, Hey, how's it going.
Speaker 1: We we have to become more of a community in
Speaker 1: that sense, because one of them the Great out A
Speaker 1: and n A and some of these programs, and not
Speaker 1: everybody adheres to those same principles, but is that you
Speaker 1: have a community of people that are like minded and
Speaker 1: going through a recovery right there, just like what I
Speaker 1: was using. I I only hung out with people that
Speaker 1: were using right. So when you get into recovery, you
Speaker 1: go and you go to your meetings, you have sponsor
Speaker 1: and you can program. You start to build up some
Speaker 1: time and you're like, wow, the first time, my if
Speaker 1: I've gone a week without drinking or a month without drinking,
Speaker 1: and people get to a year and so now they're
Speaker 1: meetings say they they can now. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: Zoom meetings, which is fantastic, some speaker meetings via Zoom.
Speaker 1: But I believe going inside, doing some inside right now
Speaker 1: to be beneficial for when eventually we can really go
Speaker 1: back outside. That's incredible advice. And I know we all
Speaker 1: can't wait until you can go back outside. With Montley Crue,
Speaker 1: I know the Stadium Tour has been pushed back a
Speaker 1: year wisely, so for for two years you're, oh, my gosh,
Speaker 1: how do you feel about that? You know, acceptance as
Speaker 1: the answer. So I was, I was in full Have
Speaker 1: you read the first chapter of the Stadium Tour on
Speaker 1: them in the book, So it's about you know, the
Speaker 1: training and preparing and what we have to do. The
Speaker 1: reason that I wanted that book instead of starting on
Speaker 1: the second chapter, which was all the way back was.
Speaker 1: I wanted people to know where I was at now
Speaker 1: before you you flash back. And I also wanted fans
Speaker 1: to understand the the hard work that it takes to
Speaker 1: be in a band. And and you asked me, like
Speaker 1: when I was younger, it was I ever scared? Was
Speaker 1: I ever you know worry, wasn't I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: just my wife says I will work till the day
Speaker 1: I die. I love work. I love solving problems. I
Speaker 1: love inventing things and watching them become real. You can
Speaker 1: touch it to play it. Um. So I wanted people
Speaker 1: to see that in the stadium tour, what diet was like,
Speaker 1: what training was like, what dedicationa was like. To the musicianship,
Speaker 1: you to your musicianship. You know, it's a lot of work,
Speaker 1: and um it was like right up there was like
Speaker 1: I was ready to go to rehearsals, to start preproduction,
Speaker 1: to get on tour. I was. I was, you know,
Speaker 1: in the best shape time I could. My musicianship was
Speaker 1: on top of where it's been a lot of years,
Speaker 1: because you know, I had a focus, the reason of
Speaker 1: focus instead of like just playing like two you know,
Speaker 1: I got kids, I got a wife, I got other businesses.
Speaker 1: So and now it was like pure focus was on
Speaker 1: the stadium tour and then COVID. But I wanted to
Speaker 1: know that looks like like when it becomes time again, UM,
Speaker 1: probably for me and about December, I will go back
Speaker 1: into that, Saint. I'll go back into that first chapter,
Speaker 1: and by the time hit the pre production, you know,
Speaker 1: and rehearsals in May, and then the show in June,
Speaker 1: I'll be you know, up. But what I'll be up
Speaker 1: and ready to go, and so will the What I
Speaker 1: like is the idea of right now going inside, doing
Speaker 1: some work, uh, finding out better ways to deal with
Speaker 1: different types of situations, and then going back out. My
Speaker 1: is that when people get back into it, they're not like,
Speaker 1: all right, thank god, I'm back. You know, we can
Speaker 1: French kiss and blow boogers at each other and let's
Speaker 1: just spread the germs. It's like, what did you learn
Speaker 1: this time? What did you learn about yourself? I learned
Speaker 1: a lot about my kids. I learned a lot about
Speaker 1: my family. You know, I'm I was forced and they
Speaker 1: were forced to be together. So when the news first
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, UM, I pulled all my kids. They
Speaker 1: were out of college, out of where. Everybody was living
Speaker 1: in the house. So like we had, like the dinner
Speaker 1: table was packed every night. Anything my kids come over for,
Speaker 1: you know, Dad's birthday or Christmas or different holidays. Spend
Speaker 1: a day here, come over fourth of July, spend the weekend,
Speaker 1: jump in the pool. They have their own lives, right,
Speaker 1: you know, revolved me. I'm here and they always know
Speaker 1: I'm here. But now we're all together in the kitchen
Speaker 1: at night and the warning drinking coffee and I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know, that's my favorite coffee cup. You're drinking out
Speaker 1: up there. You know, have you thought about ever doing dishes?
Speaker 1: You know, it was all this stuff that you're like, um, wow,
Speaker 1: these are this is my family, these are my kids.
Speaker 1: This is how our personalities. And you know it's watching
Speaker 1: movie night one night, uh, one night, my daughter would cook.
Speaker 1: The next night, my wife would cook, the next night,
Speaker 1: my son would cook. And no one ever wanted me
Speaker 1: to go. So you know, well that's a really wonderful
Speaker 1: I mean, hesitate to use the phrase silver lining, but really,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's how often would that happen that you've got,
Speaker 1: you know, all your kids there as a family, just
Speaker 1: you know, not for a special occasion. It's just you're
Speaker 1: all all back under one roof. That's really special. It
Speaker 1: was we tried to make the best of a horrible situation.
Speaker 1: I know for all different you know types of people.
Speaker 1: And I know a lot of bands are out on
Speaker 1: the road and they're they're touring right now, and we
Speaker 1: chose to not do that. You know, we just we
Speaker 1: said we didn't have a proof to believe that we
Speaker 1: would go on the road and our fans would be safe,
Speaker 1: or the crew or band members, or we would end
Speaker 1: up in cancelations or what. Because we're playing stadiums, we
Speaker 1: have to we have to also mitigate the weather, right,
Speaker 1: So we start in June it's great outside, get into
Speaker 1: like mid September, and depending on where you are. This
Speaker 1: first an American tour um, you know, so we don't
Speaker 1: really have time to cancel five shows that Adam and
Speaker 1: late October December because they're all outside of it was
Speaker 1: being a tour. So you know, everyone's doing the best
Speaker 1: they can. A lot of my friends call me and
Speaker 1: they say, this is what the roads like, this is
Speaker 1: what's happening. You know. I don't like the name names,
Speaker 1: because then it becomes some version made four media outlets
Speaker 1: from you is like Nikki six said he talks to
Speaker 1: blank and they said this, I'm like, um, and they
Speaker 1: tell me, you know what they're going through. Some of
Speaker 1: them say it's like touring during the apocalypse. Someone were like,
Speaker 1: you know, we're so insulated living in a bubble that
Speaker 1: we're keeping trying to I had people that are placed
Speaker 1: smaller places that say, um, they don't get go on
Speaker 1: the edge of the stage because the fans are right
Speaker 1: up against the barricade and they're right there and they're,
Speaker 1: you know, like this is lived for to be on
Speaker 1: stage right in the fans space. They're at your face.
Speaker 1: They're like this is like such a cool moment. And
Speaker 1: they're like, yeah, I have to stand back from the
Speaker 1: audience because I don't want to get anything. Also, we
Speaker 1: know now that we can be carrying it not even
Speaker 1: know it, so you know the testing and some bands
Speaker 1: have doctors on the road. So we made the decision
Speaker 1: by just doing it next year, they'll be better, um
Speaker 1: um guidelines so to speak. You know, I didn't want
Speaker 1: to be a guy in a band or or any
Speaker 1: of the members of Moss say if you want to
Speaker 1: come see us, you have to do this because I'm
Speaker 1: not their dad, my band is not their mom. We
Speaker 1: wanted it to be mandated by UH, like with Live Nations.
Speaker 1: So Live Nation announced that you can't get into the
Speaker 1: shows unless you have proof of vaccination or negative tests.
Speaker 1: That's great. At least those people that are going to
Speaker 1: that show understand what their situation is and they're not
Speaker 1: mad at name the band. So I think by next
Speaker 1: year we're gonna have you know, a lot, a lot
Speaker 1: more um clarity on what's going on. I'm dying to
Speaker 1: get on stage. I mean, I'm tim dying to get
Speaker 1: back in the gym. I'm dying you know my book. Man,
Speaker 1: I worked my ass on on this thing, and I
Speaker 1: can't believe, like I'm holding it like it's it's my
Speaker 1: catalyst night shoes. Can you believe it like happens so fast? Well,
Speaker 1: because of coronavirus, I wasn't touring, wasn't going to the office,
Speaker 1: I wasn't doing photo shoots. I was just working on
Speaker 1: this thing. And you know, for me, a huge loss
Speaker 1: was I lost all my book, my book tour. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. You know, we we talked about it. Like,
Speaker 1: what do we like have a class all and you
Speaker 1: know I can see the fans, they can see me,
Speaker 1: but how do I get the book and sign it?
Speaker 1: And then a lot of the UM you know retail
Speaker 1: was like, well, you know, we're not comfortable in my
Speaker 1: books really exciting and thousand or more people per um
Speaker 1: city and you know, how do we do that? Do
Speaker 1: we let ten in at a time? This book is
Speaker 1: going to take twelve hours? You know, we don't feel
Speaker 1: safe for our employees like all this stuff. So the
Speaker 1: book tour has gone and and it bums me out,
Speaker 1: but you know, again, like the tour, we're just trying
Speaker 1: to do the best thing that we can do for
Speaker 1: the big picture. Yeah. Oh, I can't wait until the
Speaker 1: band can get back out there. And I can't wait
Speaker 1: till till people are able to read this. My my
Speaker 1: last question for you, if you could go back and
Speaker 1: talk to that seventeen year old kid getting off the
Speaker 1: bus in uh in l Ah, what would you tell him? Um,
Speaker 1: I would tell him just follow his heart. We all
Speaker 1: like have guidance and if you can tune into it.
Speaker 1: I didn't have a backup plan my kids when I'm
Speaker 1: like okay, well you're gonna go to college and taking
Speaker 1: this course, so whatever you do, you're gonna be able
Speaker 1: to manage it, and UM have at least an idea
Speaker 1: of six is. I had no backup plan. I had
Speaker 1: to read books. I had to figure out how lawyers work.
Speaker 1: I had to figure out how not to get ripped off.
Speaker 1: I had to start my own record company with Motley
Speaker 1: Crue because no one wanted to sign us, and I'm
Speaker 1: glad we did because we have one of the most
Speaker 1: lucrative records deals Street because we were now the band
Speaker 1: everybody had to have. We took our records, our masters
Speaker 1: from Electra Records, and own our music completely. Everything about
Speaker 1: a brand. And I didn't know that when I was
Speaker 1: in Idaho sitting in the park, like playing this fake
Speaker 1: less Paul. But you had to learn so like fall
Speaker 1: your guidance, why you but do the work if it's out,
Speaker 1: do the work you want to be a guitar player,
Speaker 1: do the work you want to be in broadcasting, Do
Speaker 1: the work. I believe in hard work. That's the guidance,
Speaker 1: hard work determinating I will anybody if I can, I
Speaker 1: will stay in the studio longer, I will. I will
Speaker 1: rewrite a book if I have to, if I don't
Speaker 1: think it's good enough. I constantly believe in in improvements
Speaker 1: and improvements, and um, it's worked for me. So if
Speaker 1: I guess, the only thing I would say is like,
Speaker 1: just keep educating yourself. Man out there yourself, and someday
Speaker 1: I'll write that book on how to when you make
Speaker 1: it not end up broke. Five years later, we definitely
Speaker 1: need that book out there. Yeah, Yeah, thank you. Fantastic interview, NICKI.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for for your music and your
Speaker 1: time today. It's a huge honor. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: We hope you enjoyed this episode of Inside the Studio,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. For more episodes of
Speaker 1: Inside the Studio or other fantastic shows, check out the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite podcasts.