When Nikki Sixx, James Michael and Dj Ashba get together,
something special happens. The last time the supergroup aligned
as Sixx:A.M., their first album, 2007 s The Heroin Diaries
Soundtrack gave birth to the single, Life Is Beautiful, which
became radio s most-played rock song of 2008. They joined the
Crüe Fest tour and played for more than half a million rock fans
with Michael at the mic, Dj on guitar and Sixx on bass. Recently,
they rejoined to create This Is Gonna Hurt, their second album
and the second soundtrack to a New York Times best selling book
by Nikki Sixx. The 11-track companion CD hits stores May 3rd.
The idea for the album came one day when Michael stopped by Sixx
s Funny Farm photo studio. The pair were looking through some of
the bassist s recent pictures, which depicted people missing
limbs, some who were incredibly overweight and prostitutes who
all engage with Nikki for photographs included in the book THIS
IS GONNA HURT. Michael and Ashba were struck by Sixx s ability to
capture beauty in situations where society judges it as other
than. It made them think about their own assumptions and feelings
and as they do, the group got together and wrote and recorded
songs about the experience.
Michael says, The way Nikki had set the surroundings, you realize
the photo subject has such an incredible story to tell. It was
very thoughtful and very beautiful and I believe he was taking a
picture of the person inside, even though the outside was not
what we re used to seeing and certainly didn t fit the average
person s concept of what beautiful is. When I listen to the
finished record, it s these images I see.
The title came quickly, Michael says of This Is Gonna Hurt. It
just seemed so appropriate for what we were going to embark on.
It was gonna hurt us to make this record and to discuss these
topics. It was a painful experience but also something that ended
up being pretty beautiful in the end.
Of course, this journey is one the band has embarked on before.
When they made The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack, they presented the
horrors of addiction with the caveat that there was always hope.
Their song Life Is Beautiful, with its infectious chorus and
pleading melody, struck an immediate chord with thousands of
people. Almost the minute it went to radio, we were getting
Facebook and Myspace messages every single day saying, This song
literally saved my life. Thank you so much, Michael says. Or
posts like, My husband or my wife was a drug addict, and this
song helped me through his or her addiction. To this day we get
messages like that.
Other sources for inspiration on the record came from outside of
the photography studio as well. The laidback, feel-good rocker It
Sure Feels Right hit Nikki one day as he was driving in Los
Angeles, the city he s lived his entire adult life in, and
realizing that no matter how hard things get things always work
out and how happy he is to live there. And the album s final
song, Skin, came to Michael one night when he was playing the
piano apart from the band. After working on This Is Gonna Hurt
for eight months straight, he was overcome by the subject matter
he d been singing about and was inspired to write a piano ballad
just making sense of it all.
In the end, the group defied all odds and made a second record
that built on the sound and positive message of The Heroin
Diaries Soundtrack not because the needed to, but because they
wanted to.
I think this record ended up affecting all of us on a much
deeper level than we thought it would. The album is about being
honest with yourself. When you sit down and start really
acknowledging who you are and how you behave towards other people
and how you judge other people, it s gonna be painful. This is
gonna hurt.