Nikki Sixx thinks that Mötley Crüe were “most probably” sexist in their heyday, calling the 80’s a “different time.”
The band’s bassist was being interviewed by Classic Rock (as per NME) when he reflected on the differences between life now and three decades ago. Asked whether Mötley Crüe were sexist at that time, he was open with his answer.
“In today’s environment, most probably,” he admitted. “As was everybody. In the 70’s, when I grew up, it was just the messaging that came through, and you were emulating your heroes.”
Sixx’s admission doesn’t come as much of a shock. Stories of misconduct have plagued the notorious heavy metal outfit. Their 2001 biography The Dirt (adapted by Netflix in 2019), for example, tells of Sixx tricking a woman into thinking she was having sex with him when in fact he had switched places with Tommy Lee. It also contained a rape story involving Sixx.
The treatment of women in the Netflix adaptation was widely criticised. “If you were wondering why women still find it so difficult to this day to be taken seriously in the recording studio, as musicians, and in the music industry — never fear, Mötley Crüe are about to make it explicitly clear,” Refinery 29 wrote in their review of the biopic.
Just after the biopic’s release, Sixx said basically the same thing as he did to Classic Rock when asked if Mötley Crüe should be worried about their past indiscretions following the #MeToo movement.
“No,” he said back then. “Here’s the thing: if anybody was abusing power, that’s one thing. But it was a time when everyone was living a life that is very different from today’s.”
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“That was then and this is now,” he continued. “No, we don’t have anything to worry about. But we would have done the wrong thing if we had made a film that worried about presenting us in a way that was politically correct.”
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Check out the trailer for The Dirt:
