Nikki Sixx said he’d written his latest book to demonstrate that his childhood wasn’t as bad as he’d previously thought, in the hope that the realization will help others.

The Motley Crue bassist has spoken in the past about coming from a broken home, being abandoned by his mother and brought up by his grandparents as he hustled his way through life.

“The truth is some bad things happened in life and I carried a lot of bullshit around with me for a long time,” Sixx told Billboard as he discussed his new memoir, The First 21. “But some strokes of luck happened, too. My dad left and I got to go live with my grandparents and their unconditional love. And we were fishing and hunting and traveling and living in the country a lot — modestly. I was having these experiences, some of which were probably not great for me in that we moved a lot, but I found myself in books and music and became a writer.”

He continued: “If even one of those things hadn't happened, would I be where I am now? I don't know. It was a little like getting a second opinion. When you're young, how do you even know how to do that? From where I am now I can see the value in some of these things I was maybe angry about before.”

Sixx reported that he’d come to accept that his life was a chain of events. “You don't just wake up and roll out of bed and you’re Alice Cooper,” he said. “You don't just get your first guitar and, wow, you're writing 'Brown Sugar.' It's a process and I wanted to talk about that process so that other people can see how bands become the way they become, or how I became the way I became and eventually formed Motley Crue. ... maybe it's something they can apply to their own journey.”

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