If you're in Los Angeles, swing by Nikki Sixx's house to wish him a happy birthday, as the Mötley Crüe bassist turns 51 years old today. Of all the self-destructive rock stars who emerged from the '80s hair metal scene (and there were no shortage of casualties), Sixx's survival is nothing short of miraculous. While most of his bandmates in the Crüe were content to drink too much Jack Daniel's and crash expensive cars, Sixx spent most of his quality time experimenting with heroin. According to his excellent book The Heroin Diaries, Sixx believes he overdosed at least six times in his life, with one of those incidences coming on December 23, 1987, when he was legally dead for two minutes before paramedics revived him with a pair of adrenaline shots directly to his heart (this incident is memorialized in the Crüe hit "Kickstart My Heart").
But Sixx is sober now, and even in the haze of addiction, he still managed to carve out one of the more impressive catalogs of the glam metal era. As Mötley Crüe's chief songwriter, he carved out the riffs for modern classics like "Shout at the Devil," "Too Young to Fall in Love," "Too Fast for Love" and "Dr. Feelgood." On the band's most recent album (2008's Saints of Los Angeles), Sixx teamed up with songwriters James Michael, DJ Ashba and Marti Frederiksen for a batch of highly underrated slabs of hard rock (including the swaggering "Down at the Whiskey"). Even though Sixx is clean, he still knows how to party, which is why you should crank up "Girls Girls Girls" in his honor.