Stepdad’s Cheap Three-String Guitar Defined My Career

Nikki Sixx said his life would probably have gone differently if he’d started out playing a good-quality guitar.

Instead, his musical endeavors started with a cheap, incomplete instrument his stepfather had owned – and the Motley Crue icon asserted it defined his career.

“When I first learned to write music I had a three-string nylon,” Sixx told Guitar World in a recent interview. “I started writing notes – I’m still the weird kid with the notepad, except now it’s on my iPhone – and I would always be documenting everything, like fights in the schoolyard.’”

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He continued: “I had three strings; I would read my lyrics, play a root note, and try to express my life as a teenager through music. When he gave me that guitar, he actually carved my future out. If I’d had a traditional guitar – which I love – I’d have had a whole different outlook on the bass.”

Sixx also reported that he has an “interesting approach and outlook on bass” for Motley Crue, adding that a particular ‘70s song had been instrumental to his playing.

The ‘70s Song That Encapsulates Nikki Sixx’s Bass Playing

“I was driving with my wife and ‘Smoke on the Water’ came on; and I go, ‘Just wait for it,’’ he recalled. “All of a sudden you hear it. She looked at me and goes, ‘That’s you!’ I go, ‘Always has been, always will be.’

“Then I put on an AC/DC song. She’s not a musician, right? But she goes, ‘I understand!’ So that’s where I want to be. … We were listening to some music last night and I go, ‘Listen to this bass.’ My wife goes, ‘That bass player is driving the song.’

“It was a song by Seal – and it was so different from my approach – but it’s the right approach [for] there. I’m like, ‘What if I had that approach in my band? What would that sound like?’”

Asked if he was still looking to develop his bass sound, Sixx replied: “I’m constantly searching for the more garage side of it, for me. Like, if I wasn’t 500 years old, I would probably start a garage band! But I’m not doing that at this point.”