STACK December 2016 Issue No. 146

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S plitting the 22 songs which
together make up SIXX:AM’s
two most recent albums, Prayers
For The Damned and Prayers For
The Blessed, was a job bassist
Nikki Sixx specifically prepared for.
After a NewYears Eve show with
previous band Mötley Crüe, the
musician had a few hours sleep and
then flew to New Mexico with his
wife, with the express purpose of
sifting through the material. “I had
all the songs in my phone and I just
laid there on the beach for a week,
listening to them and just making
notes,” he says. “We were sending
them back and forth. There were a
lot of songs, and we had to figure
out how they lived together.”
The second volume in the pair,
Prayers for the Blessed, has just
been released. Like its mate
(released six months ago), it’s a
remarkably compelling call-to-arms
without specific disparagement
or commendation for a definitive
thing. It’s about the action. “The
albums are not political – we are
not a political band,” Sixx says. “But
it would be shallow of us to not be
a mirror of what’s going on around
us.” The lyrics in killer single Rise
(from Damned ) seem particularly
fortuitous, but the best part of the
track is the breakdown, in which
classical strings accompany singer
James Michael’s delicate falsetto,
invoking a completely different era.
It inspires the feeling that fighting
visit
14 DECEMBER 2016
MUSIC NEWS
continued
HALEY
BONAR
NIKKI SIXX SIXX:AM
Q1/ Nagging thoughts seems to permeate this
record – do you think those kinds of
aches lose their nagging power when
you sing about them, or do they just
take a form that’s handleable?
I'm not sure if they were ever 'nagging'
per se, but more like ruminating, spinning
around my atmosphere until I find a way
to write it out. They take on a new form
of power, probably more so, by becoming
something poetic in a song.
Q2/ There’s a really tiny ticking,
for a cause is something people
have done across the ages. That
wasn’t deliberate. “It’s fantastic
when people hear stuff, [and] we
go, ‘That actually makes perfect
sense,’” says Sixx. “As soon as
it’s recorded and done, it’s like
giving birth. We hand it off and
everybody gets to have their own
interpretation. I remember reading
an interview with David Bowie and
he said, ‘I really didn’t know what
some of my songs were about until
10 years after I recorded them.’ I
love it.”
With all three members
of SIXX:AM coming from
distinguished musical backgrounds,
Sixx attests that not only is he a
fan of his compadres, there’s never
been any resting on individual
laurels. “James had a lot of
weight as the producer on his
shoulders,” he says. (Michael has
produced albums for Papa Roach,
Alanis Morrisette, Meat Loaf and
many others.) “DJ was extremely
diligent about pushing himself as a
guitar player. The lyrics were very
important. There’s no filler.”
The live arena is where the trio
come into their theatrical own, and
Sixx is adamant that commitment
and effort are paramount. “It’s a
challenge, it’s exciting, it takes
your breath away,” he says. “Rock
crowds are not easy to win over. If
you suck you’re going to get your
ass handed to you, and you know
that. It doesn’t matter if I was in
Mötley Crüe or DJ [Ashba, guitarist]
played with Axl [Rose] for a while.
If you don’t f-cking bring it, you’re
going to get your ass kicked. We
take that really seriously.”
Prolific indie folk artist Haley Bonar
has just released her latest album
Impossible Dream, a bittersweet
collection of reflective, sometimes
ascetic tunes.
fluttering sound towards the end of Your
Mom Is Right that kind of reminds me of a
butterfly hitting the sides of a jar. Is this song
about escaping something?
Good ear – nobody has yet mentioned that.
Jeremy Ylvisaker put that track on at the end on
one of our last sessions... it totally reminds me
of a bug inside of a jar as well. I think the song is
about wanting to, but not being able to, escape.
It takes on the same message as Hometown
(“Hometown goes wherever you go”), but from
a different perspective. It echoes of family
dysfunction and one's inability to escape that in
youth.
Q3/ Can you tell us a little bit about the
Called You Queen video? It’s adorable.
My sister Torey wrote and directed that. She is
an amazing visual artist, and has done many of my
costumes for my other band Gramma's Boyfriend.
She and I have been collaborating our
entire lives, and so it was really fun to
see her take on a new medium using my
music. My other sister Sydney stars as the
lead in this and the Kismet Kill video - she's
so good on screen, so uniquely captivating
and beautiful. I had recently re-watched
The Wizard of Oz and was deeply inspired
to create something that was a modern-ish
version of it... Torey's ideas and mine swirled
around and the end product was this video.
I love the light-heartedness of it, the child’s
INTERVIEW
perspective; the need for salvation and adoration,
gluttony and self-love.
Q4/ Are you singing “piss in your ice-cream” at
the end of Jealous Girls?
Yes. The line is "You wonder when you'll wake up
from this long-distance daydream of playing while girls
scream/ Alone in a hotel, like piss in your ice cream.”
All of my lyrics are available in a "library" on my
website. :)
Impossible
Dream by
Haley Bonar
is out now via
Thirty Tigers/
Cooking Vinyl.
Read the full
interview
FACTOID: SIXX:AM enjoy mining the annals of classic rock and pop when looking for ideas – Nikki Sixx cites Queen, David Bowie and Elton John as inspirations for the band's hard rock.