Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx discussed paying homage to Metallica on their new cover of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” in a new Billboard interview.
He said the idea to cover Madonna came to him while he was taking a stroll with his dogs, which he does at the end of each day as part of his meditative practice.
“When my mind’s open like that, these ideas pop in,” he observes. “And [it] popped in my head, and I sort of like looked up, as if to laugh at God, and went, ‘You’re pretty funny.’” Sixx felt it was “actually a really horrible idea.” When he told Rock, the producer replied, “Yeah, I don’t know. Good luck!”
But Sixx impressed him and Lee with a rough demo he had cut, and the band completely renovated the track but left the lyrics intact. (“It was weird to hear Vince singing, ‘I’m like a virgin,’” he admits.) There’s a part of the song that “does this little gahnk-guh-guh-guh-guh-guh-gahnk that Mick does, a bit of a nod to Metallica because [when] Metallica heard the Dr. Feelgood album, [they] used Bob Rock to make the Black Album,” says Sixx. “It’s kind of a nod back to those guys because we were workin’ with Bob again.”
