Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx has revealed that he started taking bass lessons again in an effort to be able to play the instrument using only his fingers.
“Before the pandemic, I got into this lesson thing,” Sixx shared during an appearance on My Mom’s Basement With Robbie Fox while promoting his new memoir, The First 21: How I Became Nikki Sixx.
“I started taking guitar lessons online, I just pluck away on the guitar, and I can write an OK song on the guitar, but I don’t know a lot about the instrument other than I like to write from root notes.”
Sixx added, “So I started taking guitar lessons online, and then eventually in person. I started taking bass lessons online, eventually in person. Then I was pushing myself to play with my fingers. … On The Dirt soundtrack, all those songs I played with my fingers, which was the first time. And it took some adjustments with the audio because I’m an aggressive pick player.”
Sixx shared that he enjoyed the lessons so much that he considered taking vocal classes, too.
“[I thought to myself] while I’m at it, why don’t I just take vocal lessons? I’ll be a better background singer, and when I’m writing songs, it’ll be easier to explain to the actual singer or whoever. … And I was surprised at the range that I had, but it was a little bit in the lower register — I like to sing more of a falsetto-y thing.”
The veteran musician does occasionally sing backup vocals but doesn’t do lead vocals in Mötley Crüe or his other band, Sixx:A.M. During the same interview, Sixx explained the reasoning behind this.
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“got to this place where I was just like, I don’t have enough years under the hood [as a lead singer]. I don’t have a lot of control over my voice. I seem to have been able to sell over a hundred million records with this crackly old thing I’ve got now, so I kind of let that go for some reason. … That would have all gone bye-bye with the pandemic anyway.”
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