MÖTLEY CRÜE bassist Nikki Sixx recently spoke to Wisconsin-Music.com about the group's "Red, White, and Crüe 2005...Better Live Than Dead" tour and their recent war of words with HANOI ROCKS over the title of the CRÜE's box set, "Music To Crash Your Car To, Volume 1", and the "The Dirt" autobiography, among other topics. Several excerpts from the interview follow:

Wisconsin-Music.com: Now [on this tour] you don't have an opening band, but you're playing a mini-movie?

Nikki Sixx: It's really an intro … we're in a movie, and it'll be coming to theaters, so it was fun for us to create something to start our show. And basically, the movie is called 'Disaster: the Movie', and it's very tongue-in-cheek. Remember how they used to do 'Airplane' and that kind of stuff, that would be a take-off on all of those airplane movies? Well, this is kind of taking the piss out of movies like 'Armageddon'. And it's really fun. Any time we can take a piss up anything, we do – including ourselves. So, that's kind of what it is, it's a setup for that, and it helps lead us into an intermission, and (laughs) I think the movie is going to be killer. We're actually playing a concert in the movie — claymation versions of ourselves.

Wisconsin-Music.com: So it's your voice?

Nikki Sixx: Yeah, we did all of the voiceover stuff. This concert, everything from the claymation stuff to the pyro cues to the aerialists to the midgets to the stilt walkers, the whole thing is just … it's a lot of fucking detail. So that what I was saying, forget about the fact that we play 25 songs – and most people are like, 'how do you remember that?' (laughs) and I guess it just gets entrenched in your brain … but there's a lot of details, and that's why I'm surprised – the lighting, the whole thing, kinda all came together last night, and it was cool to see the crew and the band … and MÖTLEY CRÜE as well … all being like, "Wow, it worked!” 'Cause we didn't know, when you put a show like that together. Our problem is, that we're insane.

Wisconsin-Music.com: There were some rumors floating around before the tour even started that there were going to be possible stand-ins, and different things. All rumors?

Nikki Sixx: Yeah, I know, that shit cracks me up. Cracks Mick [Mars, guitar] up so much that he came on last night with a white mask on. And he's all covered up and he has a white mask and he's playing. So, I'm like, ok. I look over sometimes at my bandmates and I'm like, 'What are you doing?' I think they're insane, that's how insane we are! One insane person thinking the other person is insane. That's what the loony bin is.

Wisconsin-Music.com: Now, it's pretty well documented that there's always turmoil between Tommy [Lee, drums] and Vince [Neil, vocals], and you're always the peacekeeper more often than not. Do you see anything different on this tour?

Nikki Sixx: Those two guys don't seem to need any outside input on anything. As a matter of fact, we did something this year that was not based on animosity. A lot of people have heard about it, and said it is. We each have our own tour bus. We've never done that before. I've got five kids and I'm married, Tommy's got two kids and he's been married, Vince just got married again, Mick's out of a relationship, Tommy's single as well. We've done a lot in our life, we've covered a lot of miles, done a lot of everything. To have that little bit of space — now, me and Tommy have recording studios built into our bus — but just to have that little bit of space, to actually have a bedroom instead of a bunk, it's really cool. So we said, let's have one big room, that we call the hospitality room, like always, and then let's have four separate dressing rooms, and JVC came in and made us these flat-screen TV rolling cases with DVD players and stuff, so it's like each guy has his own space. We all end up in one of the other guy's rooms all the time. It's just weird, we always end up together, and as far as people getting along, every time you turn around they're hanging out. We think it's funny. Him and Vince are just kicking it and all mellow, and I'm the crazy one now. We've switched personalities!

Wisconsin-Music.com: [HANOI ROCKS guitarist Andy McCoy] has recently gone on the record claiming that certain things that happened in "The Dirt" are "pure lies.”

Nikki Sixx: (laughs) You know what I love about that? You've got a has-been that never was, just fuckin' grabbing at straws to get attention. I mean, c'mon, man. And nothing he says makes any fucking sense! You ever read the interview where he said that his band sold more records than our band? I was like, 'Dude, are you crazy!' [mimics McCoy] 'We sold fifty million records and they sold forty, we were a bigger band than them.' And I'm like, 'Dude, why to you care about my ass so bad? You won't stop talking about it.' He's got a fuckin' crush on me or something. (laughs) Fuckin' fag.

Wisconsin-Music.com: The only way I've actually heard of HANOI was through everything that happened with Vince.

Nikki Sixx: Sure. It's a very sad thing to happen, but dude, stop already trying to get attention for yourself. He's like the drunk chick at a party, that won't stop splashing everybody. But she has bad tits. Stop! (laughs) No one's gonna fuck ya, no matter — Andy, no matter how much you talk about MÖTLEY CRÜE, your band still isn't gonna make it! Figure it out! I mean, go talk about Keith Richards, maybe that will give you another fuckin' one album sale. (laughs)

Read (and listen to portions of) Nikki Sixx's entire interview with Wisconsin-Music.com at this location.