Nikki Sixx is the creative force and bass player for Motley Crue, the infamous glam-ish metal band that peaked in the late 1980's, early 1990's. His journal-form autobiography, The Heroin Diaries, follows Sixx through 1986-1987, the height of the band's excesses and Sixx's drug use. Brief commentaries by witnesses and peripheral characters pepper the book, filling in details left out of the journal entries which, I suspect, were massaged or even, in cases, written after the fact for continuity's sake. The almost 20 years between then and the book's publication date (2006) are covered as bullet points in the last half-dozen pages. It's a fast read despite the predictable redundancies inherent in the life of a junkie.
As a narrative, this is the story of a man who seemed to have it all and had a lot of fun while feeling completely miserable. In bits and pieces we learn that an unfortunate but not unprecedented family drama spoiled Sixx's childhood, amounting to what you'd call abandonment issues that in part fueled his addictions. He frames the book as a cautionary tale but, realistically, its appeal lies in its modest gossip and voyeuristic value.
In theory, rock autobiographies and biographies sound like good reading. But they rarely are so, for various reasons including the fact that musicians are not often interesting people and because the genre attracts a lot of hack writing by unskilled storytellers. The best I've read was No One Here Gets Out Alive and Miles: The Autobiography.
