Prior to his success as the bassist and primary songwriter in Motley Crue, Nikki Sixx was invited to join Quiet Riot.

In 1978, Sixx was still in his pre-Motley band, London. Meanwhile, Quiet Riot’s founding bassist, Kelly Garni, had been dismissed in dramatic fashion after the musician drunkenly fought his bandmates (and plotted to do worse). Looking to replace him, the Quiet Riot guys reached out to Sixx.

“I remember that Randy [Rhodes] and Kevin [DuBrow] had asked me to join the band. They were looking for a new bass player,” Sixx recalled during a recent conversation with Kerrang! Radio. “At that time, they had a record deal, I think in Japan.”

Sixx politely declined the offer, focussing instead on his own material. “I was writing a lot of the songs that would later become Too Fast For Love,” he explained. As it turned out, the decision was prescient. “Then Randy left and did Ozzy [Osbourne], it was right around that time that London broke up. And I did Motley Crue.”

As everyone knows, the Crue soon cut their teeth on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, emerging as one of the biggest rock bands of the ‘80s. Sixx credits the L.A. music scene with aiding in the group's rise.

“I was in the scene, I was feeling the energy of what rock and roll was like in Los Angeles at that time, coming out of new wave and punk and stuff. It felt very fresh,” he recalled. “And when Motley started, very early on I think a lot of people were drawn to Motley Crue because they knew me from London. But it took like one gig and they were like, ‘oh wow, this is the next better thing.’ And it was.”

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