This Is Gonna Hurt: Music, Photography and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx (4 page)

Between the overstuffed leather couch on which I’m sprawled and the antique, hand-carved Chinese cherrywood chairs, you can see flickering on the wall a twelve-foot-tall cross that I bought right off the top of a church. Nailed here and there are 1920s French crucifixes, thirteen in all, under antique glass and mounted on old, fading velvets. There are also some mannequins with giant spread wings, a steampunk-meets-Mad-Max child-sized mannequin dripping in raven feathers, surrounded by Persian carpets and books…tons and tons of old books. The taxidermy on the walls makes me feel like I have a million friends with two million beady eyes staring down.

This is my home away from home, my office, my haunted haven. My photography studio.

This is where I pull ideas out of thin air and somehow “see” them before I start the process that will end with them captured, mounted, and nailed to my walls. There is no Welcome to Funny Farm Studios sign. There is just an iron gate that needs three keys to open. So maybe it’s a bit like Fort Knox here, and that suits me and my taxidermic friends just fine. (If I told you they all had names, would you think me insane?)

If you wander out of the lounge, you have a few choices. Turn to your left and you end up in the medical room. I have always had a fascination with 1800s medicine. It’s surreal to think of what humans had to endure not so long ago. A bone saw is more than even I can fathom. There are oversized syringes, bottles that once held everything from cyanide to formaldehyde, and illustrated medical cards from a time long past, once used by doctors to compare symptoms in order to come up with diagnoses. Encircling the dental molds and meat cleavers is my collection of jawbones.

The wall behind you is covered in prints of my latest work, strung up on raw wire and held there by antique clothespins. I’ve taken the ceiling out, leaving the industrial inner workings of the building exposed (the guts, so to speak). Fluorescent light fixtures hang down, and inside the clear plastic covers, I’ve placed my collection of old medical scissors. When the lights come on, you see thirteen-inch shears floating above your head.

In still life (and death) photography, I express my love of bones, and not only human ones, by the way. I do have a nice collection of human skulls. Maybe a femur or two as well. They’re all unique and all beautiful like people, and unfortunately for those around me, they all have names. When workmen come to Funny Farm, I often get a call from my wonderful assistant Sara (imagine her job) saying the painters won’t go into the studio alone or they heard noises in the other room…Good God, just think what the UPS man would say if he knew what he’d been delivering to me for years.

Point being, death seems to take on a life of its own in my photography.

So here’s a good question: Why, if photography makes me feel so alive, do I so often end up shooting some form of death? “I live in death, I can smell it, it’s in the air and the air smells sweet,” I’ve been overheard saying.

The
Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
says that death is the graduation ceremony, while living is just a long course in learning and preparing for the next journey. If we acknowledge death as the beginning, then how can we fear it? In my twenties I wanted it so bad that I got it, but I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t finished what I started, so to speak, nor have I now. I don’t fear death; I welcome it with open arms and a smirk. But until that wondrous day, I will continue to savor and celebrate all those who have graduated before me.

The makeup area is strung with silks and lace and painted gold, like a bordello. On the directors’ chairs I spray painted “horror” and “pimp.” (Nobody ever gets the horror/whore joke.) I had state-of-the-art makeup lights and tables put in for all the crazy shit we do here. Actually, it’s been a godsend considering the massive amount of time working on makeup, hair, and prosthetics here. I had a huge hole cut in the wall and framed like a picture so I can keep an eye on the models and makeup artist as I prep the studio and the lights.

When I see old faded black-and-white Polaroids of me in the 1960s, I wish I could have shot them. I constantly scrounge for new techniques everywhere, from online to foreign secondhand stores to the back rooms of friends’ darkrooms. I am always exploring, always pushing myself. When I see my kids laughing, it’s a picture. My girlfriend painting, it’s a picture. And so on and so on…

For one memorable session I did here, I needed a model who would be basically a blank canvas, but at the same time would seem like something just left of center. I needed her to do partial nudity, or else the clothes were going to date the image. Ralis, the makeup artist I hired, took the reins, knowing what was in my head and what was about to happen to the model’s face. He sent me photos of a dozen candidates and only one jumped out at me. Her name was Ekaterina, and you could see her Russian ancestry even through her glossy modeling pictures. I had a vision that involved turning her pretty face to hell. I felt that if I took a beautiful girl and disfigured her, I might be able to capture something unique in the lens. These girls usually pose to look as gorgeous as possible, so how would she respond to the camera once we were through with her? Old habits die hard. So even though on the outside she would be falling apart, on the inside her instinct tells her she is still beautiful. I was excited to see if I could capture an emotional meltdown.

My vision was very carnival-sideshow but mixed in with a bit of androgyny. I shot her in a way that brought out her beauty and the scars equally. She could either be a transsexual, a Russian circus performer, or just a beautiful girl who had been doused in battery acid. Disclaimer: I only took the shots…the story is in your head (well, there was a story in mine, too). But I must leave you with these parting words from Ekaterina, who told me, “Thank you, Nikki. I have never felt so beautiful in my whole life.” I smiled that smile I get when I want to say, “I told you so.”

CRIPPLED CHILDHOOD
fig.Cc43

One of the first big shoots I did at Funny Farm was the “You Will Not Grow” session.

I like to say that all things start off innocently enough before taking on a life of their own, and this was no different. I called up graphic designer Paul Brown and explained the idea. I needed a set built to look like a dilapidated, decaying, postnuclear children’s classroom. For models, I needed a female midget and a male at least seven feet tall. I also needed a master at lighting, a prosthetic makeup artist, and someone to help me get the set, clothes, and vision down on paper first.

Paul took it all in casually and said, “Benny Haber is the best assistant in the business and a master at lighting. Ralis is the best there is for makeup, prosthetics, set design, and all around demented visions.” That’s all I needed to know as I was basically foaming at the mouth at this point.

The idea of the photo was about being held back. The midget teacher was a small, angry dictator abusing her authoritarian role. The giant student was a meek, overgrown schoolboy. You could see, not only on his face, but in the hate drooling out his screaming mouth and down his chin, that he was frustrated to the verge of becoming something monstrous…

My part in all this, you ask?

Well, I have been held back for moments, sometimes brief, sometimes longer (my bad for giving my power away to abusive assholes). I wanted to convey the absurdity of someone so small telling a person, “You will not grow.” The giant student could easily destroy his teacher but he has been brainwashed and mindfucked, and he follows the rules even though the rules can’t cage him. “You Will Not Grow” is his reality until he decides to change it.

My photography is one huge purge. Like everything else—all the music and lyrics, the videos, and now the photographic images—they all boil down to a single moment of creation: me sitting here alone at Funny Farm, writing to you from my heart, trying as I always have, since I was a kid, to say, “Look how beautiful that is.” I remember hearing many times,

“Don’t point at people less fortunate than yourself,” to which I exclaimed, “But they’re beautiful!”

I turned myself into the person everyone pointed at. All the scars and markings of a life seen through the eyes of a dreamer. Dreaming of better things, honest things.

Beautiful things…like the ones in this book.

I am not angry any longer, I am grateful. I am able to see my life through photography because of these experiences.

Life is weird living in a cage. It’s sometimes weirder being let out.

That’s where creativity has stepped in time after time and saved my life.

Creativity in its purest form is when you’re willing to stand erect, eyes slammed shut, and let yourself fall. Whether it’s backward toward a cement floor or forward off a thirteen-story building, you have to believe that somehow, someway, you’re not going to crack your head on the floor or hit the street below. Unlike the overblown ad campaign for the newest cologne, or the equally horrible-smelling commercial featuring the diamond ring that signifies a love that lasts “forever,” this journey is not one that has a safety net waiting to catch you softly in its arms but, I hope, one that is more like laying your head upon a bed of nails. And, if you’re lucky, piercing your heart in the process and reminding you how to feel. I live and love and make music and make pictures in this place and, like I said, I don’t know what I’m doing or why I do it, but I do know this: I love it, and
I hope it moves you like it moves me.

I WILL NOT GROW
fig.Ng291

CIRCLE OF LIFE
fig.f9.d

Interlude

LIFE’S NOT ALWAYS BEAUTIFUL

I
was young and remember everything was beautiful. I am told I used to pick flowers and give them to my mother. I would smell the air and sigh “I love you” to whomever was near by. I was told I loved all animals (even dead ones ) and was sweet as apple pie. I was told I used to mutter the words “God is good.” That’s where the story gets muddled and murky and, to be honest, I only remember going to church and being told to kneel before and confess to God. I do believe in God, but not the god that’s forced down the throats of innocent “god-fearing” pedestrians. I won’t remember that part of my childhood as “blessed.” Some say I am cursed, demons in my scrunched-up fists, calling out to those who will listen (I got you right now).