The rock stars Nikki Sixx partied with on the night he died and came back to life
They do say Nikki Sixx is like the second coming of Jesus, and while that might be a bit of an exaggeration, he did complete the miraculous feat of rising again after it was thought that he was truly gone.
The date was December 22nd, 1987, and as per usual, Sixx was enjoying a storm of a night, complete with a rather head-spinning concoction of booze, drugs, and more drugs, but rather than waking up with a slightly sore head and bleary memory the next morning, the Mötley Crüe frontman terrifyingly nearly never woke up at all.
It was perhaps what you could call a festive gathering when Sixx and some of his friends got together for a night of indulgence – except it almost cost him his life. Having only broken through the noise of the rock masses four years earlier, with Mötley Crüe’s second album, Shout at the Devil, being released in 1983, it was clear that the highs of the highs had come particularly fast.
Sixx was always open about his addiction, being later quoted as saying: “Alcohol, acid, cocaine… they were just affairs. When I met heroin, it was true love.”
Indeed, it was that particular substance which had been at play on that fateful December 1987 night, when the musician took one of his near-fatal overdoses and had a closer brush with death than most.
But as it turns out, Sixx was not alone when he almost saw the Grim Reaper appear. Joined by Robbin Crosby, better known as the guitarist from the American glam metal band Ratt, as well as Slash from Guns N’ Roses, it was clearly a starry-eyed, rock and roll affair. Nevertheless, it was one that still went terribly wrong.
The panic reached its fever pitch when Sixx was declared clinically dead for the span of two minutes, and those 120 seconds would have seemed like a lifetime to everyone helplessly watching on, and it would have served as a moment on which to reflect on a talent so seemingly wasted.
But then a paramedic arrived, swooped into action, administered two doses of adrenaline, and suddenly Sixx was back in action. It was an early Christmas miracle of the distinctly rock and roll kind, meaning that Mötley Crüe could live to fight another day, and Tommy Lee was not left without his fellow ‘Terror Twin’.
Given Sixx’s claim that he must have overdosed “at least half a dozen times,” it seems it was unlikely that even this was the instance that broke the camel’s back. His band were seen as one of the most notorious in the world and even gave Ozzy Osbourne a run for his money in terms of their antics. That really does tell you all you need to know.
Eventually, by 2004, Sixx had thankfully declared himself as sober, most likely to the sound of a sigh of relief to all those around him. The memories of that night, some 17 years prior, were clearly just too unnerving to bear. Despite what his name might suggest, Sixx is like the cat with nine lives – and even though his brushes with the other side seem to have totalled more than that, somehow he still keeps going.
