MÖTLEY CRÜE Bassist: The Band's Getting Along Better Than Ever

MÖTLEY CRÜE bassist Nikki Sixx recently spoke to Matthew Wilkening of Ultimate Classic Rock about the postponement of the band's Detroit-area concert in early September after a truck transporting about $6 million worth of equipment for CRÜE's tour with KISS was involved in a road accident.

"The camaraderie between the bands is really high and the crew," Sixx said. "If it wasn't for that, it could have been a real disaster, because that entire truck was carrying both of our gear. We hired the same carrying company, so everything was super easy and if it hadn't been for everyone working so hard, they wouldn't have been able to put the stuff back together because some of this stuff, I've never seen anything like it. When the truck flipped, it basically popped like a pimple and all the gear went out the top and the semis went over the top of a lot of the gears. So these huge bars of steel pulled all the pyro and mounted it into the rafters and stuff. That stuff was snapped like a toothpick; it was unbelievable."

Asked if there is still a friendly competitive vibe between MÖTLEY CRÜE and other bands when they are touring together, Nikki said, "I've talked with this about Paul [Stanley, KISS frontman]. We're backstage, we're hanging, we're talking about everything and anything under the sun. Then we go to get ready. When we get on that stage, man, it's all or nothing. It's been that way since day one. It doesn't matter who we're on tour with. For MÖTLEY CRÜE, we have to give 150 percent and I know for sure the guys in KISS, they're the same way. So are we in competition with each other? Not really as much as we're in competition with ourselves to keep pushing ourselves. Now when you have a band like KISS playing with you, you can't fuck around and I know it's the same for them. You know, we're going out there and giving everything. It's not like you have a slacker playing right after you or right before you so I think that's like really healthy. We really didn't discuss, as in a friendly competition, but I know that it's there."

On the topic of MÖTLEY CRÜE's plans to record and release new material, Sixx said, "We're going to make music. First thing you do is you write it, you record it, then you have it, then what do you do with it? Do we release EPs? Do we release albums? Do we release two songs a week? Or, you know, for 16 weeks? We don't know yet and that's kind of exciting. It's kind of interesting to be in that place and not be going, 'Well, here's the release date, the full 10 songs have to be mixed and mastered by this date. We don't necessarily know exactly what we're going to do. I mean, we like what we're doing right now. It feels good. It feels organic. We like that we have this body of work that we can pick from to play live. The band's probably getting along better than, maybe, ever."