Motley Crue’s Nikki Sixx discussed Chris Cornell’s death on his radio show.
“There’s been so much news and information floating around about Chris Cornell and the fact that he was dealing with anxiety. And we don’t know yet, but he might have taken too much of his anxiety medication.
“I was just thinking about anxiety in general,” he continued. “And I think anxiety can be a good thing — it can get you do to stuff. If you’re a songwriter and you know you have a deadline, you might feel anxious and it might push you. Or if you have a job, you have to get out the door and be on time. Or you’re in college, you might have anxiety about tests etcetera. So it can be a good thing. It can also be crippling. I know that when I got off the drugs in the ’80s, I had lots of anxiety, ’cause my body kind of hadn’t found a balance yet. So things gave me anxiety. It probably sounds funny to some people, but going to the gas station, going to the grocery store… I was doing things outside my norm. I was used to just being high on drugs and being in this bubble of being on the road, and all of a sudden, I was off the drugs and I wasn’t in the bubble and I was at home and I was having to do everyday stuff… And I used to feel really nervous and really anxious about that.”
Sixx added: “It just had me thinking about Chris and how somebody that’s so talented and that’s been in this music business for so long, performing and traveling and seeing people. He had gotten clean and sober, and he was trying to deal with the anxiety. I think anxiety is something a lot of people deal with, whether it’s a little bit or a lot. And these medications, like if you have a sleep issue and you take something to sleep, too much of that will kill you, too much of this stuff. It’s scary.
“Why did he take too much, if he did? Was he just feeling very anxious that day and he thought maybe he’d take one more? I mean, it happens with people everywhere on the planet. It doesn’t make him a bad guy.”
Nikki went on to say that he feels especially sorry for Chris‘s family, which has had to live through this unthinkable tragedy. “I do every day think about his wife and the kids, and I guess in a kind of a morbid way, I looked up Chris and family [online], and I saw these beautiful pictures of him with his wife and him being a dad, just being a guy, being a… dad, you know,” Sixx said.
“We’re not rock stars when we have kids. We’re dads. We’re just guys. We get on our knees, we make funny faces, we do romantic things for our wives.”
Nikki concluded: “I don’t know… I just don’t get it.”
