FREE : MUSIC, PHOTOGRAPHY AND LIFE THROUGH THE DISTORTED LENS OF NIKKI SIXX PDF

Nikki Sixx | 224 pages | 05 Mar 2013 | HarperCollins Publishers Inc | 9780062061881 | English | New York, United States Nikki Sixx: Why I Wrote About Kat Von D - Us Weekly

There are sordid tales of debauchery, odd photos of freaks and lots and lots of skulls. I recently caught up with the Motley Crue rocker, who just scored his first top ten debut this week with his new band, Sixx:A. I'm gonna be doing the This Is Gonna Hurt book tour and touring with my bands. It's a blast! We'll be designing clothes on the road in the middle of everything else. Us: I read the book over the weekend, this is a very good follow-up to The Heroin Diaries. It's a little more artistically driven with the photography. Could you tell me a little bit about why you decided to explore that angle of things. NS : I've been doing photography for years. I have tens of thousands of images so I decided I wanted to push this idea of my photography out. I knew in my heart it wasn't going to be successful, because most things I do are set up for failure. I like to set myself up for failure. I assumed The Heroin Diaries was going to fail. NS : It was set up for failure, and it touched so many people because of the honesty in it, and it feels great. I don't want it to fail, but I'm prepared to fail. And this book was like me trying to resurrect my sister, dealing with a lot of my issues. This is me in recovery, me as a father, me in my struggle to stay grounded as a rock star, and it's all being captured during this real live moment. You kind of get to feel and understand what's happening. And the band bonded together as three brothers and at the same time I was individually sort of dealing with my own demons. NS : Photography and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx have, and I could put out five books of just photography. I thought it was very fragmented. But someone said, 'no, there's something with the light. Very rarely do I use flash, This is Gonna Hurt: Music sometimes I'll even use candle light, to try and reenact some of the feeling that I love in Renaissance style oil paintings. So to me it's really nice when people get the art, but then the writing was me sort of trying to understand it myself, and I think that the book was an accident. In terms of the text, did you have a problem figuring out what to write about because you'd said it all last time? NS : I really felt that this moment in time gives me an opportunity in looking at what's going on socially and how I fit into it. To be able to go back to the beginning of being a kid and really look at what was happening — how I grew up, dealing with fame, addiction, recovery, being a father, and staying an artist throughout this — was really interesting. I didn't understand how I could be in the circus and be laughed at, and then I could be your best friend, a sex symbol. But maybe human beings are all the same. We're all looking to just be accepted. NS : Yeah. I was surprised and I was thrilled. When I was invited to Washington, D. This is a global issue that I'm talking about This is Gonna Hurt: Music this book. I'm just doing it in my broken, creative way. NS : I would never do reality TV. It's not my thing. I can't even put anybody down, I just think that I have more to offer. Us: How did your band mates react to what you revealed in the last book? Are they gonna Photography and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx bothered by some of the things you reveal in this book? This is Gonna Hurt: Music did you seek permission? I think that would be disrespectful and out of line. NS : No, I've been on the planet a long time, and in retrospect, it was a small time in my life, and it was the time in my life when I wrote this book. I think people know the truth, and my job is to do a book of photography and talk about what's going on socially and not comment too much on people's personal lives. I speak to what it's like to have a relationship with my band, and I speak what it's like to have a relationship at that time with a woman. Did you have a thought about that? Or not putting her in? I'm not really about talking too much about relationships, but I'm in a beautiful relationship right now. I This is Gonna Hurt: Music being in love, and I love being in that creative zone, where you just, feel that everything you do is honest and real, and you're not second guessing anything. Being in a rock band, being in a relationship, having a relationship with my subjects that I'm photographing, it's all the same thing. I have to have that complete honesty and complete trust. The thing I think a lot of artists forget is that you need to have fun. When you're really having a good time, I feel like it's infectious and everybody shares in it. And this is such a great time for me because everyone's talking about the book, they're This is Gonna Hurt: Music about the Sixx:A. By Ian Drew for Us Weekly. To read more of Ian's blog, click here. For access to all our exclusive celebrity videos and interviews — Subscribe on YouTube! Photography and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx Like Us! More News. Us: Really? Us: So you've just been saving these photographs all along? Collapse widget. Nikki Sixx, Photographer -

Audible Premium Plus. Cancel anytime. By: Nikki Sixx. By: Tommy Leeand others. Throughout his career, Sebastian Bach has sold over 20 million records both as the lead singer of Skid Row and as a solo artist. By: Sebastian Bach. Who could forget the sexy "Cherry Pie" girl from hair metal band Warrant's infamous ? Bobbie Brown became a bona fide vixen for her playful role as the object of lead singer Jani Lane's desires. With her windblown peroxide mane, seductive scarlet lips, and flirtatious curves, she epitomized every man's fantasy. But the wide-eyed Photography and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx beauty queen's own dreams of making it big in Los Angeles were about to be derailed by her rock-and-roll lifestyle. By: Bobbie Brown. When this best-selling autobiography was originally released, everyone was shocked: The Long Hard Road Out of Hell was the darkest, funniest, most controversial and best-selling rock book of its time - and it became the template, both visually and narratively, for almost every rock book since. Marilyn Manson is not just a music icon, it turned out, but one of the best storytellers of his generation. By: Marilyn Mansonand others. Inat the age of 20, Duff McKagan left his native Seattle - partly to pursue music, but mainly to get away from a host of heroin overdoses then-decimating his closest group of friends in the local punk scene. In LA only a few weeks and still living in his car, he answered a want ad for a bass player placed by someone who identified himself only as "Slash. Guns N' Roses went on to sell more than million worldwide. By: Duff McKagan. People ask me how come I'm still alive, and I don't know what to say. When I was growing up, if you'd have put me up against a This is Gonna Hurt: Music with the other kids from my street and asked me which one of us was gonna make it to the age of 60, with five kids and four grandkids and houses in Buckinghamshire and California, I wouldn't have put money on me, no f--king way. But here I am: ready to tell my This is Gonna Hurt: Music, in my own words, for the first time. A lot of it ain't gonna be pretty. I've done some bad things in my time. But I ain't the devil. By: Ozzy Osbourne. The son of a classical pianist straight out of the Bronx of old Archie comics, Steven Tyler was born to be a rock star. Weaned on Cole Porter, Nat King Cole, Mick and his beloved Janis Joplin, Tyler This is Gonna Hurt: Music tearing up the streets and the stage as a teenager before finally meeting his "mutant twin" and legendary partner, Joe Perry. In this addictively listenable memoir, Tyler unabashedly recounts the meteoric rise, fall, and rise of Aerosmith over the last three decades and riffs on the music that gives it all meaning. By: Steven Tyler. Van Halen's rise in the s was one of the most thrilling the music world had ever seen - their mythos an epic party, a sweaty, sexy, never-ending rock extravaganza. During this unparalleled run of success, debauchery, and drama, no one was closer to the band than Noel Monk. Throughout Van Halen's meteoric rise and abrupt halt, this confidant, fixer, friend, and promoter saw it all and lived to tell. Now, for the first time, he shares the most outrageous escapades. By: Noel Monkand others. Alice in Chains was the first of grunge's big four - ahead of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden - to get a gold record and achieve national recognition. With the charismatic Layne Staley behind the microphone, they became one of the most influential and successful bands to come out of the Seattle music scene. But as the band got bigger, so did its problems. By: David de Sola. For the first time, Slipknot and Stone Sour frontman Corey Taylor speaks directly to his fans and shares his worldview about life as a sinner. And Taylor knows how to sin. As a small-town hero in the early '90s, he threw himself into a fierce-drinking, drug-abusing, hard-loving, live-for-the-moment life. Soon Taylor's music exploded, and he found himself rich, wanted, and on the road. His new and ever-more-extreme lifestyle had an unexpected effect, however; for the first time, he began to actively think about what it meant to sin. By: Corey Taylor. In RocksJoe Perry exposes his unrepentant, unbridled life as the lead guitarist of Aerosmith. He delves deep into his volatile, profound, and enduring relationship with singer Steve Tyler and reveals the real people behind the larger-than-life rock gods onstage. The nearly five-decade saga of Aerosmith is epic, at once a study in brotherhood and solitude that plays out on the killing fields of rock and roll. By: Joe Perryand others. And that's why Raising Hell is a must-have for anyone who wants to hear about the iconoclastic culture of headbangers and the wild lives they lead. The book contains the crazy, funny, and sometimes horrifying anecdotes musicians have told about a lifestyle both invigorating and at times self-destructive. By: Jon Wiederhornand others. Slash, alias Saul Hudson, geboren am By: SlashPhotography and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx others. It's the riveting account of a blue collar, high-school dropout emerging from Seattle, Washington, to become one of the greatest singer-songwriters and voices of his generation. With input from people who knew and worked with him - together with Cornell's own words - the book recounts in great detail the rise of his immortal band Soundgarden as they emerged from the s post-punk underground to dominate popular culture in the '90s alongside other Seattle bands like Pearl Jam. By: Corbin Reiff. As soon as she graduated from high school, Pamela Des Barres headed for the Sunset Strip, where she knocked on rock stars' backstage doors and immersed This is Gonna Hurt: Music in the drugs, danger, and ecstasy of the freewheeling s. By: Pamela Des Barresand others. Much has been written about him, but until now we've only had his songs as clues to his experience from the inside. In Scar Tissue, Kiedis proves himself to be as compelling a memoirist as he is a lyricist, giving us a searingly honest account of the life from which his music has evolved. By: Anthony Kiedisand others. There would have been no KISS without Gene Simmons, the outrageous star whose superlong tongue, legendary sexual exploits, and demonic makeup have made him a rock icon. KISS and Make-Up is the wild, shocking, unbelievable story, from the man himself, about how an immigrant boy from Israel studied to be a rabbi, was saved by rock and roll, and became one of the most notorious rock stars the world has ever seen. By: Gene Simmons. It is a collection of compelling photography and stories that capture the rage, love, optimism, darkness, and determination that shape his work. It chronicles Sixx's experiences - from his early years filled with toxic waste, to his success with Motley Crue, to his death from an OD, Photography and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx his eventual rebirth through music, photography, and love. Love story, bad-ass rock tell-all, social commentary, family memoir, This Photography and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx Gonna Hurt offers the compelling This is Gonna Hurt: Music of an artist and a man struggling to survive, connect, and find a happy ending Photography and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx a search that fuels Sixx's being. I dont care who you are there is something in this book to inspire everyone to live to their full potential and truly enjoy life. Highly recommend this book! Being read by the author makes it that much better sine he was there and the emotional impact of that makes it real for the listener. Get this book! What would have made This Is Gonna Hurt better? I did not make it very far into this book - it is without doubt an authentic and sometimes entertaining representation of Nikki's life experience, but I stopped listening because Nikki repeatedly comes off as a self-centered and rather insensitive voyeur and exploitationist of Photography and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx who occupy the underbelly, which just isn't all that, to me at least. When he gets away with his pictures of the German prostitute, catching her at awkward moments that she clearly resents and he kind of revels in her resentment, I was done. Sure great photographers can ruffle their subjects, and when you snatch a cigar from Winston Churchill, or hire a drunk woman to ambush NY society women on the street, that's shit running uphill, which is interesting, reversing the expected social order. So too does treating social outcasts with insight and sensitivity reverse the order. Instead I was left with the impression that Nikki was also shitting on the outcasts, but somehow it was OK because he was an outlaw rockstar who also lived in the gutter. What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike? The performance was fine. Loved it was so into it finished it in one sitting. Albeit of course I returned to re-listen many times. I have found a side of Nikki Sixx that one couldn't imagine. I can listen to his voice all day. Inspiring This is Gonna Hurt: Music make me want to be a better version of myself. Yes many people think Sixx is an arrogant egotistical prick. And yeah he was for many yrs. I am glad to have watched as he got his shit together, and the Heroin Diaries helped inspire me to do the same. I got this audio book and I have a hard copy also for the photography I am glad I listened to the audio because it is good hearing your heros find themselves on different levels. This book has helped me as much as th Heroin Diaries to start thinking of others and not too much about me. Thanks Sixx and I really appreciate your honesty and the fact you have taken responsibility for you. You are a great dude. Bravo Nikki Sixx!! I cannot tell you how much this book has helped me in so many ways! As a mother of an addict Nikki's books have taught me a lot. I once thought that I was reading to help my son but from his words found I was helping myself too. I love photography and his is right in my wheel house. I also look at what some feel is ugly and find beauty in it. ​This Is Gonna Hurt on Apple Books

It was a crisp spring morning in I was newly sober and looking for something to replace the drugs that had been running through my bloodstream for years, and for some odd reason decided to go into a camera store. It was a simple little Canon 35 mm SLR and a couple of lenses that started an adventure that will probably plague me forever, like music. Well, okay, to be honest, it wasn't really the beginning of me shooting pictures: I had been snapping Polaroids of the band and our life on the road for years. But that's a different book. I believe my photography addiction somehow ties into the fact that I've always had an eye for the oddities Photography and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx life. Even as a kid I saw the world in my own way and thought most things that were different were beautiful and magical. Even things that other people thought were horrifying and Photography and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx and weird. I'm six Photography and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx seven years old, walking down a street in L. We pass by an amputee. I gaze at her, transfixed. Photography and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx couple months ago I'm sitting on Photography and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx plane next to Tommy Lee. I'm on my laptop, going through some of the photographs I've created. He asks to see. He clicks through a bunch, then stops and stares at one showing an obese woman standing on a pedestal, mouth open wide in a scream, spewing some kind of This is Gonna Hurt: Music liquid. When I see the mainstream marketing imagery of beauty and love, I see a lie. Some people look at a rose and see romance and love. I see thorns and droplets of blood and heartbreak. I see the struggle to survive and connect and find a happy ending. I remember as a kid looking through old photography books about sideshows and circus performers and wondering why people thought them so odd. Did people think they don't have feelings because they're missing limbs? They can't love because their bodies are misshapen? They can't be beautiful because they don't conform to our stereotype of beauty? Whilst walking in downtown Los Angeles one day, a homeless man asked me for a helping hand. I think the fact that he had no hands played to the side of me that finds such irony poetic. I told him I had a few dollars to spare if he had a few moments for me in exchange. We sat together, not much different in our stories, but worlds apart in our realities. At one point he asked me why I was sitting there talking to him. After all, most people just look away at the sight of someone in his shoes, or lack thereof. I told him, as I tell you now, I didn't know why. I do what my heart tells me to do and often I don't understand, but I do know this: that day was one of the last times I was without my camera. The man's image haunts me still. Not in sorrow, but because he, too, is a survivor, and he felt blessed to be alive, even on the hard, cold, streets of downtown L. Not capturing that moment was a great lesson in being a photographer. This is Gonna Hurt: Music is full of so many false starts and abrupt finishes and unexpected detours. Just when you think you have it all figured out, something new comes along and rips the rug out from under you. I cherish this about my existence. People come up to me and ask, "Nikki, how can you be in one of the world's biggest rock bands, have a side band with a hit album, have a clothing line, be a successful author, have your own radio show, be a father of four, and on top of that still have such cool-ass hair? By now, I can't imagine not taking pictures whenever the moment moves me — from the first rays of morning light bouncing off the windowsill to the laughter roaring out of a wild man standing on the corner of the freeway, begging for change. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, they say, and I say they're right. I also say you see what you want to see, so I keep my eyes wide open at all times. I sometimes feel like a robot, scanning the planet for information. As an artist, I take it all in knowing it will somehow be regurgitated later, maybe as a lyric, or a chapter in a book, or a photograph. When I see something, I grab whatever's handy and start clicking — my iPhone, my Holga or Diana toy cameras, my little Canon point-and-shoot, my homemade pinhole wooden camera, or the big Nikon D3, or my new friend, a Gilles- Faller wet-plate camera from All just different ways to collect what falls beneath my gaze. I think the photographer who turns up his nose at a low-res cell phone camera has lost what he fell in love with in the first place: capturing that magical moment. Taking a picture is just telling a story. You know, like the blink of an eye, a flash, then it's gone. I know that for me, the magic is in the moment. I live for the mystery of that. I learned this somewhere along the way. I hear it in AA meetings often: one day at a time. I even hear one minute at a time. I forget this sometimes, and when I do I start to feel out of sync with life. I think photography realigns me with the moment. I don't have a favorite style of photography. But there are so many others. She turned the world on its head in the s when she took photos featuring her underage daughter in tantalizing positions, a pre-sexual kitten mixed with Photography and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx queen. Raw and beautiful in the lighting and rich in texture thanks to the darkroom work, This is Gonna Hurt: Music is brilliant. Photography and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx it is also her own young daughter, nude for all the world to see. It Photography and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx me think, as an artist and a parent. One side of my brain is inspired, one side repulsed. Old cameras capturing odd people with ancient souls, sitting on antique books and furniture, sometimes shot in abandoned places, or sets made to look suitably destroyed and decayed I will leave it to the history books to decide whether it's good or bad. If it's up to the critics, well, put it like this: word on the street is there ain't no Grammy in my future. I ruffled way too many feathers in the old boys' network for that to happen. I hope to follow suit in photography. Photo sessions for me are like injections of life. I pace back and forth impatiently, like a man with a machine gun, and trust me when I say I have an itchy trigger finger. Once I get the picture, I "get the talent out," as the expression goes, meaning I send the models away. This is the moment when the magic comes to life. It's like capturing a soul. Going through the photos frame by frame, cursing the focus of this one, amazed at the perfection of that one. Then it's all about the processing of the images, the dodging and burning, and if there is any juice left in your engine or time on the clock maybe a print or two to hold in your hands. I almost always take an image home with me at the end of a shoot, like a cannibal takes a head. A trophy, I guess. My favorite sessions are with the old, decrepit, deranged, and uniquely beautiful. The once living or now on the verge of dying. Maybe we're just stopping time until we graduate to the next level some call it heaven. No matter how they look, I say they are pretty things. After all, if they can make you feel, they must be special. There is a sensation to something that has been around for a long time, a kind of energy that I get from it. The older we are, the better we become. Just look at Keith Richards. I am not far behind. I search high and low to find people who move me emotionally to photograph. Some come to me through friends of friends, casting directors or other photographers, but it isn't easy. I have tried my hardest to get into places most people run from. Shooting galleries are almost impossible to penetrate, and mental institutions have so much red tape you'd think they were sacred. Whorehouses aren't easy to get into when you're lugging a camera, but I have gotten into a few. For me, it's love of personal contact that pushes my creativity. That's why I love shooting on the street. Whether it was in Cambodia, Thailand, Australia, or someplace else, finding people who have fallen on the hardest of times, those who seem forgotten, has provided me with my happiest times as a photographer. They need to have their beauty acknowledged by capturing the image. I always take my cameras with me on tour. Photography takes me away from the normal routine and boredom of airport-limo-hotel-venue. Sometimes it takes me far, far away. You're supposed to ask the concierge when you're searching for the nearest great restaurant or local hot spot. Somehow I always feel like an alien because I never want to know about the nightlife at least not that kind.