Chamblee54

The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star turned up on the used book table at the Chamblee library. A hardback copy was $2. THD is a visual overload. Every page has comic-book drawings, in a horror show theme. The text/background switches back and forth between red, black, and white. If you are in a spot with low lighting, red on black text is almost impossible to read.
THD is about the life, and near death, of Nikki Sixx. He is the bass player/creative force for Mötley Crüe. THD starts Christmas 1986. The main portion ends at the end of 1987. There are a few pages, telling the short version from 1988, until the book’s publication in 2007. The copyright is assigned to Nikki Sixx, with Ian Gihins the editorial miracle worker. Mr. Sixx kept a diary throughout 1987, and added comments in 2007. A cast of characters adds further commentary.
Nikki Sixx did a lot of drugs in 1987. Heroin, cocaine, and Jack Daniels were the big three. Crüe went on tour in June, and were on the road the rest of the year. The “Girls, Girls, Girls” tour may have been the high water mark for rockstar bad behavior. One story has Nikki, and Tommy Lee (Crüe’s drummer/Nikki’s co-conspirator) set a hotel room on fire. Nikki thought it was someone in their entourage, and was surprised when it was a Chinese tourist. There are many more stories.
Frank Carlton Serafino Feranna Jr. was born December 11, 1958. THD starts two weeks after his 28th birthday, ending his chance to join the 27 club. At some point, and ex-girlfriend took a boyfriend named “Nikki Syxx.” Frank Feranna had a tough childhood. After his father left, Frank was bounced around between his mother, and his grandparents. Somewhere in there, his mother is said to have dated Richard Pryor. Frank got older, with a lot of issues. AHD goes into great detail about his childhood, and the self-medicating that followed.
The GGG tour came to the Omni, in Atlanta, November 20, 1987. By this time Guns and Roses were the opening act. (Slash on the same tour as Nikki Sixx, what could possibly go wrong?) “Axl Rose was onstage in Atlanta when he saw one of the security guards, who turned out to be an off-duty cop, pushing their fans around. Axl jumped off the stage and started fighting the guard, so security grabbed him and took him backstage. So Slash sang a few songs, and Guns’ drum technician sang “Honky Tonk Woman”—four times, not terribly well.”
“As concert promoter Charlie Brusco walked through the back door of the arena shortly after the concert started, he knew something was wrong. “I heard this horrible sound,” Brusco says. “I look up, and one of the guys in the road crew was singing.” A roadie for the band named Big Ron was on lead vocals, because, earlier, Rose had jumped offstage, punched a cop, and been carried away. The Omni’s head of security told Brusco, … “Third strike, he hit a black female Atlanta police officer. He’s going to jail.” Brusco begged for Rose to be allowed to finish the show. Finally the security chief said, “If he apologizes to the police officer in writing, we’ll let him go.” Brusco agreed. He was led to Rose, who was sitting at a makeshift booking table wearing his trademark bandanna. Rose dutifully signed his apology, and security brought in the female officer. Then Rose looked up and said, “Fuck you, you fucking jag-off cop.” He was hauled to jail, and the show was canceled.”
An amazon one-star review: “I don’t know how you read this and aren’t questioning how Nikki Sixx isn’t in prison for rape; “Nikki. He asked me if I was serious about her, and when I replied that we were just getting to know each other, Nikki started telling her how hot she was. As he bent her over what was a locker-room bench she complained that she was in the middle of her period. Nikki told her he wasn’t scared by a little bit of blood and proceeded to have intercourse with her right there on the spot, in front of anybody who happened to be there.”
THD is ever-so-slightly misogynistic. The phrase “CHICKS=TROUBLE” appears throughout the book, beside the tittie bars and groupies. The ladies are definitely not as important to Nikki as the drugs. “My dick didn’t seem to be aware that she was there. She kept asking me what was wrong, and I was so out of it that I thought she meant what was wrong with the world, so I started talking about global poverty and shit. I’m not surprised she left. I suspect she won’t be coming back.”
“We paint the outside of our bodies beautiful but the inside is like dead men’s bones. … We mistake lust for love and pop more pills, slam more drugs, drink ourselves silly or end us, as I did, scraping the inside of a pipe just to hit the resin and flush life down a toilet.” Evangelist Denise Matthews, aka Vanity, was Nikki’s girlfriend for much of 1987. A former gf of Prince, Miss Matthews had a volatile personality. Being a serious crackhead did not help. Evangelist Denise Matthews passed away February 15, 2016. Her kidney failure is almost certainly the result of her crack addiction.
Near the end of 1987, Nikki shot too much heroin. Many people thought he died. He managed to pull through. The next few years saw Nikki get sober, only to relapse, only to get sober again, only to relapse. Rinse and repeat, unlike the appalling approach to personal hygiene. Hong Kong, December 19, 1987: “P.S. I smell so bad, I haven’t showered since LA I can see people actually look repulsed when they get a whiff of me. I stand next to people just to fuck with them. I didn’t bring any clothes with me, just cash. Fuck, what else do I need.”
After 1987, the narrative becomes much less detailed. Nikki gets married and divorced a few times, with a few children born along the way. At one point, he abandoned his wife and kids, which made him feel horrible, but did not stop him. Finally, Nikki detoxed for good, and was clean when THD was written in 2007. According to his instagram, Nikki Sixx has been sober 20 years on July 2, 2021. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.