MÖTLEY CRÜE bassist Nikki Sixx recently sat down with Yahoo Entertainment and likened singer Vince Neil’s unique vocal character to that of LED ZEPPELIN vocalist Robert Plant or JANE”s ADDICTION frontman Perry Farrell.
Nikki was doing the talk to promote his new memoir, ‘The First 21: How I Became Nikki Sixx’, which looks at Sixx’s childhood and early adult years prior to forming MÖTLEY CRÜE.
The MÖTLEY CRÜE bassist had stated before that the band’s song “Live Wire” was based on domestic violence, something Nikki had experienced in his youth which also made Vince Neil the ideal singer for the band.
“With Motley Crue, Vince has this amazing, unique voice — sometimes like Robert Plant, Perry Farrell… they have these interesting voices that are… they’re not pitchy, they’re just raw and just kind of on top,” Sixx said, adding, “I always loved that about Vince’s voice and I would write for Vince.”
Vince will tell you ‘Nikki wrote all those lyrics for me,'” Nikki continued. “I did. I gave him stuff. I understand his voice so much.”
“When we’re doing demos, I’ll sit in the studio with Tommy [Lee] and we will get it so that it sounds like this song… he delivers it, he owns it. One of the things he sometimes says like I write too many lyrics in a short period of time — ‘Shout at the Devil’ is a great example,” explained Sixx, “But we work through it and he’s got this thing.”
Nikki also touched on the MÖTLEY CRÜE singer’s voice when performing live, which has come under fire for his poor onstage performances as of late.
“I’ve worked with a lot of singers that have huge vocal ranges — they take vocal lessons, they warm up, they warm down and there’s guys… Vince warms up and does his thing, but he just goes out… I got lucky! I got a guy with a really different voice,” said Nikki, who is quite happy that MÖTLEY CRÜE never hired a traditional singer.
“Imagine if he was a bluesy singer — if he was a David Coverdale? I love David, I love his voice — or Glenn Hughes, some of my favorite people and favorite musicians… Could he deliver ‘Bastard’? Could he deliver ‘Dropping Like Flies’? Could he deliver ‘Generation Swine’? I don’t know, I’ll never know. But I do love that about Motley Crue that we kind of four individually… I don’t know. It’s almost like we don’t belong together. We’re all so weird and different and it makes for some really interesting magic,” he said.
‘The First 21: How I Became Nikki Sixx’ arrives on Oct. 19.
