Back in November, 2021, a Crue fan posted their excitement to Nikki Sixx, when a book on Motley Crue called “Kick Start My Heart” by Martin Popoff arrived at their home.

Well, Nikki Sixx responded in a way that took a lot of people by surprise, when he said that Popoff was just “another person making money” off Motley Crue’s legacy, And if you have read books from Martin Popoff, most of us were like ‘WTF’.

It’s pretty obvious that emotional stability is something that the Crue guys struggle with.

And when other people mentioned the good work that Popoff has done for the hard rock and heavy metal industry with his books and reviews, Nikki Sixx replied by calling him a scumbag, a criminal, a leach.

I suppose every artist wants to control their own narrative (and then they hand over the narrative when they seek out interviews with publications to someone else).

But they cannot stop people from publishing works on them.

Is Nikki serious?

People are writing books on dead rock stars and making money in the process. People are writing unauthorized biographies on current rockstars and making money from it. I have seven books on Led Zeppelin from different writers. All of them unauthorized but written brilliantly.

If you want to be in the public eye, these kind of books are part of the territory. And writers like Popoff fill a void because the artists fail to satisfy it. There is demand and no supply.

From my understanding of this book, Popoff even makes mentions of the references he uses to produce this work. It’s just his take on various authorized books.

And while I don’t agree with Nikki Sixx on this, it doesn’t mean I’ll stop listening to his music, but he should step down from his ivory tower once in a while and actually see the body of work that Martin Popoff has produced.