Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx is taking back a story described in the band memoir “The Dirt” in which he is quoted saying he “pretty much” raped a woman at a party.
Sixx now says he does not remember that story and may have made it up, but also apologized.
“I don’t actually recall that story in the book beyond reading it,” Sixx said in a statement to Rolling Stone. “I have no clue why it’s in there other than I was outta my head and it’s possibly greatly embellished or [I] made it up. Those words were irresponsible on my part. I am sorry.”
Mötley Crüe wrote 2001’s “The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band,” with journalist Neil Strauss. In the book, Sixx is quoted as saying he once tricked a woman with whom he was having sex into unknowingly having sex with Tommy Lee.
“We f—ed for a while, then I told her I had to go to the bathroom. I went into the party and found Tommy,” the book quotes Sixx as saying. “‘Dude, come here.’ I grabbed him. ‘I got this chick in the closet. Follow me, and don’t say a word. When I tell you, start f—ing her.’”
The book said he stood directly behind Lee and that the woman grabbed his hair and yelled his name while Lee had sex with her.
The next morning, the book says, he received a call from the woman saying she had been raped by another man who attacked her while she was trying to hitchhike home. In hearing her story, he thought “that I had probably gone too far,” the book said.
“At first, I was relieved, because it meant I hadn’t raped her,” Sixx wrote. “But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I pretty much had. I was in a zone, though, and in that zone, consequences did not exist. Besides, I was capable of sinking even lower than that.”
A representative for Sixx did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In his statement to Rolling Stone, Sixx said that “The Dirt” was written during “a really low point in my life.”
“I had lost my sobriety and was using drugs and alcohol to deal with a disintegrating relationship which I still to this day regret how I handled. I honestly don’t recall a lot of the interviews with Neil. I went into rehab in 2001 and really wish I would’ve done my interviews after I was clean and sober like I am today,” Sixx said. “There is a lot of horrible behavior in the book. What I can tell you is that we all lived to regret a lot and learned from it. We own up to all our behavior that hurt our selves, our families, friends and any innocents around us.”
“The Dirt” is the source of a new biopic at Netflix focusing on the wild first 15 years of the band’s existence, though the rape scene as described in the book is not included in the film. Jeff Tremaine, the film’s director, responded to a question from Rolling Stone about the description in the book.
“It gets dark,” Tremaine said. “The book has dark moments in it. I think a lot of these stories back then did. The rock & roll lifestyle was a crazy time back then.”
Read the full Rolling Stone story here.