Mötley Crüe’s Nikki Sixx on drugs & Richard Pryor in new book

In 1987, Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx was clinically useless for 2 minutes after overdosing on heroin at age 29.

Decades earlier, he was launched to drugs at an particularly early age by his mom’s then boyfriend in Mexico. “I have faint memories of Bernie and my mother drinking and smoking weed, although I didn’t know what weed was at the time,” the 62-year-old rocker writes in his new memoir, “The First 21: How I Became Nikki Sixx” (Hachette Books), out Tuesday. “And I have some memories of Bernie asking me if I wanted to try what he was smoking. I recall doing that and feeling kind of tripped out, and it wasn’t until much later that I realized he’d turned me on to marijuana, and I wasn’t even seven years old.”

Born Frank Feranna Jr., Sixx would finally graduate to taking LSD whereas attending Roosevelt HS in Seattle, Wash., and having a mind-altering expertise. “The batch we got ahold of was called Four-Way Windowpane,” he writes in the book, which covers the primary 21 years of his life — two years earlier than he co-founded Mötley Crüe in 1981 with drummer Tommy Lee.

“You were supposed to take one square and split it up into four pieces, but I had never seen acid before. I thought that one square was one hit, not four. It was not a good experience . . . I’d say that it altered my mind. I don’t think I’ve seen my hands, the clouds, a tree, the grass or the mountains or heard my voice the same way again.”

Then as a youngster, he went from utilizing drugs to promoting them, together with mescaline: “It came in the form of an off-white powder, like a lighter shade of cocoa. That gave me the idea of mixing it with cocoa and selling it at the school. ‘Chocolate Mescaline’ was the brand name I came up with for this surefire thing.”

“The First 21” additionally reveals that Sixx’s mom Deana as soon as dated comic Richard Pryor whereas they have been dwelling in Lake Tahoe, Calif., in the ’60s. “He was kind, and I remember him down on his hands and knees, playing with me, cracking jokes that I thought were the funniest things in the world,” he writes. “He had held on to his own inner child, but would sometimes be sad . . . But by the time I entered high school, he’d become more than famous — he was an icon.”

Sixx recounts how his personal journey to fame revved up whereas he was in one other band, London, enjoying the Starwood on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. The membership showcased such rock acts as Quiet Riot, whose then-lead singer Kevin DuBrow as soon as requested Sixx to affix his band (“I turned him down flat,” he says). It was owned by gangster Eddie Nash, the alleged mastermind of the Wonderland murders in the Laurel Canyon part of Los Angeles in 1981. “He was a perpetually coked-up, paranoid, vicious and violent man,” writes Sixx.

And “The First 21” reveals simply how Frank Feranna Jr. grew to become Nikki Sixx: He stole the title from Jeff Nicholson, who, as frontman of a California cowl band known as Squeeze, glided by Niki Syxx.

“I loved that name right away — even though it was missing that sweet extra K,” Sixx writes. “Then and there, I decided to steal it. For a while I went around calling myself Nikki London . . . ‘Nikki Nine’ was on the table briefly.”

But finally he went again to his authentic inspiration, tweaking the spelling: “Then I thought, ‘F – – k it . . . I’m just going to be Nikki Sixx.”