AG (Australian Guitar: Paul Southwell): The latest Sixx.A.M.album has some great production on it and obviously James Michael has done a lot of it, so how did you liase with each other?
NS: We worked very closely together. James lives in Nashville and I live in LA.. DJ Ashba lives in LA as well but he was on tour with GnR. So we did these huge songwriting sessions where we would write a tonne of music and then sort it out. When James was back in Nashville piecing all of the pieces together. Then we would come back to LA and have more sessions. He’s phenomenal as a producer, a singer and a songwriter. As an all round artist he is fantastic to work with and we all our pieces that we do. We did our lyric writing through iChat which is fantastic. He’d be in one place and I’d on the road or somewhere else and we’d sit there, listen to music and write the lyrics right then. He would then go in and sing them.
AG: He’s got a bit of a Muse and maybe even Black Crowes feel to his vocals as well.
NS: Hmm, I’ve never heard that, especially Black Crowes.
AG: Ah, just a little bit in the ballads. Anyway, for the single, ‘Lies of the Beautiful People’, how’d you get a hold of John 5?
NS: John is a friend of ours and I wrote with John on a song for Meatloaf called, ‘The Monster is Loose’.
AG: Right, well there’s a lot of guitar solos on there which is similar to the previous album with that wah and trill thing going on. Did you contribute any guitars at all?
NS: No, no, just bass.
AG: So with your old basses, do you still have your old Spectors from 1987?
NS: I have a couple. Most of my stuff gets broken on tour, I tend to throw things a lot. I’ve recorded the album with the same bass that I recorded ‘The Heroin Diaries’ with and a lot of Motley Crue’s last albums with the 1959 P-bass.
AG: Okay and how about the Gibson Thunderbird?
NS: It’s more of a live machine. I used that live, in the studio I use the P-bass a lot since it has a good round sound. Where the Thunderbird is just so rock and raw. It is not as controllable. I know that the Thunderbirds are all set up with volume and tone but I have mine all stripped down to just toggle switches, it’s like a race car.
AG: I’ve noticed on it that you’ve even got an on/off switch.
NS: That’s it. I don’t use anything else live.
AG: What about the little finger rest at the back of the bridge. How’d that happen?
NS: Ah, we just came up with that about twenty five years ago or so. I kept holding the bridge of the bass and so I kept pulling the bass out of tune or the bridges would break off. I needed something to hold onto so we built that thing to keep my finger in and I can sort of lift the basses up with it.
AG: So what did Gibson say to you when they said they wanted to do a signature bass?
NS: They loved it, you know and I think it especially exciting for them because that was the least popular of all the basses. To me it is the greatest bass that was ever made. Their sales went through the roof [with the signature bass] because so many young bass players that were influenced by me as a bass player or that liked the band. Look, the basis of it all is that I love the thing so they [the fans] would get their hands on it. It’s got such a long neck and it is just something else; there is nothing else like a Thunderbird, especially for me live. It is just really the only bass that I like to play live.
AG: Has that bass influenced that way that your write?
NS: Probably in some sense but I don’t know. It all kind of happens and comes out at once. So, I don’t really pay much attention to that. I’ll write on anything that is around or even just hum it into your iPhone, you know, if you have an idea. All it really takes is that it has to get out of your brain and onto some instrument. I love bass and I write on bass but I also write on guitar and sometimes even piano.
AG: When you’re writing for Motley, do you sit down with Mick [Mars – guitar] and collaborate or do you bring ideas to him?
NS: Yeah, um, we do it in different ways. We all write individually and then we write together so it’s like any band. That’s how I am anyway and then it’s just, ‘wow, love this, don’t love that’, you jam on it and then whatever happens, happens. It’s very organic in the sense that it’s not really thought out too far. You know each other so well, you know that Mick is going to bring in some cool riffs, you know that Mick is going to bring in some cool songs and that Tommy will have some cool songs and there you go; off and running.
AG: You’re touring Motley, do you think you’ll ever tour Sixx.A.M.?
NS: I don’t think so, at this point anyway. It’s not that [machinations of industry], we haven’t quite figured out what we are as a band. We love the idea of making music but we don’t know if touring like a traditional band is what we are. Maybe for us it would be something more like being part of a soundtrack for a Broadway play or doing some sort of a one night only event filming it for satellite or something. But for the idea of touring itself, I don’t know if it’s really who we are.
AG: With Motley I saw you when you toured with Motorhead, the production is huge so is everything cued to keep away from the pyro?
NS: Ha, I guess it just years of knowing when it is going off and where to be, yeah.
AG: You’ve got a Greatest Hits album out soon with ten unreleased live videos on it. Can you tell us about those videos?
NS: I mean, it is the ultimate package to get. I know, for me, when I find a band…a lot of times, just getting a greatest hits is great way to get introduced to the whole catalogue ‘cos you go, ‘I love these songs, there has got to be more songs like this’, and then you can go to the album. That is what I love about iTunes, I that you can go back to an album and get turned onto it. Then you find out that you’re a pretty big fan of a band and that maybe you only know a couple of their songs. So I love the releasing of the greatest hits and turning the new fans onto Motley Crue.
AG: With all of the massive back catalogue and the book that you’ve done, how does the really dark lyrical material sit with you these days? That being the heroin period.
NS: Um, I mean, Sixx.A.M. and Motley are two different things. There is not one similarity in either one of them except for me. They are two completely different sounding projects, conceptually and everything. I love that, it is very exciting and I’m very proud to be in Motley Cure and I love doing Sixx.A.M. so I feel very grateful.
AG: The thing about the Sunset Strip of the 80’s is that there are so many casualties. How do you cope with that being that you were there?
NS: You know, it’s so funny that people think that we were there but we only played on Sunset Strip for a couple of shows and then we were gone. There was a scene but it was the late seventies; there was punk rock and then there was this kind of a mess of new wave and I was in a band called London and there was this bubbling up of rock bands coming up. Motley Crue came up and we burst onto the scene and it was like people were really ready for something new. Within a very, very, very, very, very short time we were out supporting Kiss, our first record was out and then we were back in L.A. and we didn’t play the Sunset Strip or anything like that. We had made our second record [Theatre of Pain] and we were gone on tour with Ozzy [Osbourne]. So then in ’85 when ‘Theatre of Pain’ came out, bands started coming out on the music scene and MTV had grasped the idea of playing videos. There was Van Halen and Motley Crue so a lot of bands came up, in ’87/’88 GnR came up so now we were almost eight years past when we started. WE never really felt like we were part of that, we felt like we were part of L.A. and that’s why we excited the Sunset music set because The Doors, Jane’s Addiction, GnR, The Eagles and Tom Waits; so many bands that came form L.A. but it’s not about the 80’s.
AG: Having toured with so many bands and seen so many live setups, what’s in your live rig these days? You must have seen so many bands with heaps of live equipment.
NS: Oh, I don’t know, I don’t really pay much attention to equipment, to be honest with you. I kind of believe in just plugging into an Ampeg SV-T with my Thunderbird and just go.
AG: In that case, does your Ovation acoustic inspire you?
NS: I love it because it is an instrument that I can write on just sitting around because I don’t have to have an amp with me. So I love that and it is a tool to write music with, for me. I’ve recorded with it and it sounds really good as well.
AG: How you think capturing ideas over the last twenty or thirty years has changed?
NS: I just don’t believe in recording studios anymore. I think it comes back to writing great songs and then you can figure out how to capture it, however that is but capturing it as fast as possible. I’m not into long recording sessions, I think the band should be tight and be on their game with their lyrics and choruses all worked out. Then you just capture it. Those early Zeppelin albums captured the moment. Add a couple of overdubs and you’re done.
AG: One of Motley’s really good albums for me was the one you did with John Corabi. Do you think that you’ll ever get back with him at all?
NS: Okay. No, no, that was a moment in time.
AG: I’m guessing the way the industry dictates what is creativity to an extent?
NS: It was a moment in time. That’s not Motley Crue, that was just a different project.
AG: Okay, fair enough. How do you feel about the way that the books will be perceived over time?
NS: I think it is good and I like that a lot of young people are getting my books. It’s helping to opens their minds up about drugs and drug addiction. There is a social commentary on what is happening. I really look down my nose and I’m not very quiet about it; reality TV, I think it is a bunch of crap and we need to raise our standards as musicians and as people. I don’t buy into the whole Paris Hilton, Kim Khardasian, that whole pop rock teen driven world. I think it needs to be more about art and creativity and feeling secure with yourself and doing the best that you can do and not worrying about what over people think. So, I think we are at a very dangerous place where you’ve got girls who think that to be a successful woman, I need to be ‘that’ or to be a successful dude then ‘that’ is how I have to act instead of looking at yourself and asking, ‘what is it that I really want to do?’ When I was growing up, man, that was my choice as a teenager. I was like, ‘do I want to stand up for something that I believe in or do I want to be one of the sheep and just run with the crowd’?
AG: Mate, I understand, unfortunately we’ve run out of time.
NS: Alright, thanks.