Mötley Crue have dominated the music scene for decades since its inception. The band member Nikki Sixx has been grabbing the headlines with the band.
Many rock fans have often questioned the musical abilities of the band members (except beloved guitarist Mick Mars), and even though singer Vince Neil is more often than not the butt of the joke, founding member and bassist Nikki Sixx has also endured his fair share of criticism.
Nikki Sixx reveals the accusation
A discrete player to contrast with his extrovert persona, the musician admitted to Bass Player Magazine that he’d been accused of not being a “real bass player” for not adding enough to the songs, to which he replied:
“I get grief sometimes from people who say, ‘Oh you’re not a real bass player because you’re not all over the place’, but I’m not like that. My job is to support the song and be super tight with my drummer.”
“If there’s any room in there, I might throw in something melodic, but generally I stay in the pocket, which I believe has something to do with that three-string guitar [first guitar that Nikki practiced on, with only 3 intact strings].”
“I want to take one note and I want to maximize it, like how John Lennon wrote ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. The melody in that song is relatively simple, but it changes and grows, taking you on a journey. I try to do that with our songs: To me, that’s so important.”
Sixx was also a part of seminal glam bands in the ’70s like Sister and London, the latter with members that would go on to join Guns N’ Roses, W.A.S.P., and Cinderella. However, he ended up parting ways from all pre-Mötley groups due to the same disagreement on how to play cover songs:
“I remember this one audition: We’d break into ‘Cold As Ice’ by Foreigner, and the guy would be like, ‘You’re not playing it exactly like the record’- I didn’t even bother listening to the bass part before going in. My mentality was the song is in A, drops to D and it opens up on an F – what more do I need to know?”
“I always got fired because those bands were playing the songs exactly like they were on the record. I wasn’t very good at doing cover songs. In Mötley Crüe we would do a few here and there, but in general, we didn’t really do that. I don’t want to go into band rehearsal to be like ‘Learn this and learn that’. That’s never been my thing.”
Motley Crue are back at full strength, as drummer Tommy Lee played his first full set with the band on “The Stadium Tour” after performing portions of previous shows while playing through broken ribs. Tommy Lee had defied doctor’s orders — despite sustaining four broken ribs — to take part in his band’s long-awaited return to the stage with Def Leppard, Poison and Joan Jett and The Blackhearts.
