Mötley Crüe’s Nikki Sixx says a sexual assault described in the band’s memoir The Dirt may not have actually happened.
“I don’t actually recall that story in the book beyond reading it,” the musician said, in a statement to Rolling Stone. “I have no clue why its in there other than I was outta my head and it’s possibly greatly embellished or [I] made it up.
"Those words were irresponsible on my part. I am sorry."
In the 2001 book, written with Neil Strauss, Sixx recalled a sexual encounter with a woman at a party. At one point, Sixx invited his bandmate Tommy Lee to take over. “I stood directly behind Tommy,” Sixx said in the book. “He f**ked her while she grabbed my hair and yelled, ‘Oh, Nikki! Nikki!”
In The Dirt, Sixx acknowledged that he had “probably gone too far.”
But, in his statement, Sixx explained: “The book was written in 2000 during a really low point in my life. I had lost my sobriety and was using drugs and alcohol to deal with a disintegrating relationship which I still to this day regret how I handled…I honestly don’t recall a lot of the interviews with Neil.
“I went into rehab in 2001 and really wish I would’ve done my interviews after I was clean and sober like I am today.”
Sixx added that the book details “a lot of horrible behaviour” but he and his bandmates “lived to regret a lot and learned from it.”