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Now, normally a serious topic like this would be a bit much for your average blog posting here, but seeing as the tabloids are full of lurid drugs stories these days (I'm assuming the names Doherty, Winehouse or Lohan aren't unfamiliar), and Nikki Sixx - the Crüe's bassist and songwriter - has released a hard-hitting book detailing the worst days of his own battle with addiction, it's worth dropping the nonsense for a second and talking seriously about this, don't you think?

The Heroin Diaries does pretty much what the name suggests. It's a collection of journal entries made by Nikki during 1987, when his band were the biggest rock band in the US, and he was living the life of a drugged-out rocker to the max. But this is no glamourisation of drug use, or apology for bad behaviour, what he's done is detail all the paranoia, squalour, filth and desperation that was going on at the time, without making it seem like a good idea to follow in his wobbly footsteps in ANY WAY WHATSOEVER.

And this following on from Mötley's super-salacious group memoir The Dirt, which was the same kind of thing, but funny (mostly).

So, having read the book, and listened to the 'soundtrack CD' that came with it (basically Nikki's new band Sixx: AM doing dark preposti-rock songs about stuff which comes up in the book, together with him reading bits of it in a dark, husky voice), the chance to talk all this over with the man himself was too good to miss. Consider it a public service or something...

What I Expected: The unexpected, this is Nikki Sixx, obv...a humourless trawl through the unpleasant aspects of drug abuse, coupled with a stern warning for THE KIDS, MAAN...a certain amount of self-mythologising...lots of swearing....
What I Did Not Expect: Shameless namedropping on my part (the Duff McKagen bit...yeah...I'm SO ROCK)...to be threatened with a voodoo doll...to find out that even though Nikki is now clean in the drugs sense, he still doesn't really wash himself very regularly...

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Your ChartBlog interviewer was: Fraser McAlpine

Here's the video for 'Life Is Beautiful', which is the hit single he was talking about...

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Now, a conversation with Nikki Sixx is not like conversations with other stars. He stopped twice during our chat to talk to other people, which is fine, we've got the technology to edit these diversions out. But one of the times he stopped to talk to an IT person about the entry password on his house, and reset it, while still being connected to a complete stranger halfway across the world! Don't believe me? Listen to this...

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Oh, and in the spirit of DVD extras and whatnot, here's what happened when I (foolishly) asked Nikki about his favourite swear-words. I've bleeped most of it, but still, it's not for the faint-hearted.

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