Nikki Sixx’s Heroin Diaries: Back Into the Past

The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star, Nikki Sixx with Ian Gihins, Pocket Books, 2008.

This is not really a book, but rather a collection of Nikki Sixx’s diary entries from 1987 with additional comments from various people who were mentioned in her entries. This is like an additional textbook to the smashing New York Times bestseller The Dirt, the complete autobiography of his world famous hard rock band, Motley Crue, straight from the horse’s mouth. I’ll be revisiting The Dirt later. Now, let’s focus on The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star by Nikki Sixx with Ian Gihins.

Nikki Sixx was and still is the bassist and primary songwriter for Motley Crue, one of the most influential and prominent hard rock bands in American rock and roll history, if the world were an exaggeration. His wild and insubordinate attitude to both life and music, on stage and off, was the building block that shaped the entire music industry in the 1980s. Cock Rock, Glam Metal, Hair Metal, call it what you want. , but it’s undeniable that it all started and revolved around bands like Crue when Steven Tyler and Joe Perry were too busy shoving each other offstage.

Through this diary we can dive deep into Nikki Sixx’s life of rock and roll, alcohol, drugs and sex. Most of the entries contained about Sixx doing drugs, trying to get sober, getting ready to go on stage and a bit about his bandmates here and there. Each entry comes with additional commentary from his band members, former managers, ex-girlfriends, and Sixx himself, trying to put in small details about what really happened at various events mentioned in each of the entries. That really helped readers understand what the heck he’s talking about.

The layout of this book is all over the place so you really need to focus on what you are reading. Macabre arts and drawings here and there and most of the content was black, white or red. It was a bit unpleasant for me because more than once these hideous designs distracted my eyes from reading the texts. Like I said, this book is just a supplemental read for The Dirt. For those who wanted to know more about Motley Crue, I suggest reading The Dirt would be more than enough. For collectors, this is a must.