Darkside of Music Explore Darkside ↗

The stories behind the sound

Nikki Sixx's Clinical Death, Adrenaline Chest Plunge, and the Birth of 'Kickstart My Heart'

Mötley Crüe 1980s Drugs Archive: verified 5/5 wildness

On the night of December 23, 1987, Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx overdosed on pure Persian heroin in the Franklin Plaza Hotel room of Guns N' Roses drummer Steven Adler. Sixx turned blue and stopped breathing, prompting first responders to declare him clinically dead for two minutes inside the ambulance. In a desperate last-ditch effort, an EMT who was a massive Crüe fan plunged two syringes of adrenaline straight into Sixx's heart muscle, miraculously reviving him. After escaping from Cedars-Sinai hospital in his leather pants hours later, Sixx returned home to shoot up again before writing the adrenaline-fueled anthem 'Kickstart My Heart.'

Follow the sources:

← Back to Music Archive

Daily darkside

Archive Record · 1980s
Nikki Sixx's Clinical Death, Adrenaline Chest Plunge, and the Birth of 'Kickstart My Heart'AI concept artwork

Drugs5/5 wildness

Nikki Sixx's Clinical Death, Adrenaline Chest Plunge, and the Birth of 'Kickstart My Heart'

Mötley Crüe / 1980s

On the night of December 23, 1987, Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx overdosed on pure Persian heroin in the Franklin Plaza Hotel room of Guns N' Roses drummer Steven Adler. Sixx turned blue and stopped breathing, prompting first responders to declare him clinically dead for two minutes inside the ambulance. In a desperate last-ditch effort, an EMT who was a massive Crüe fan plunged two syringes of adrenaline straight into Sixx's heart muscle, miraculously reviving him. After escaping from Cedars-Sinai hospital in his leather pants hours later, Sixx returned home to shoot up again before writing the adrenaline-fueled anthem 'Kickstart My Heart.'

Archive: verified
Scandals & strange historiesFacts & folkloreFollow the sources

The back catalogue

More Stories from the Music Archive

The encore is in the details.
Find the story behind the name.

24 stories

24 stories in this selection.

01

Bizarre1980s

Ozzy Osbourne's Infamous 1982 Des Moines Bat Bite Incident

Ozzy Osbourne

On January 20, 1982, during a concert at Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines, Iowa, an audience member threw a live bat onto the stage. Believing it to be a rubber novelty prop, Ozzy Osbourne snatched the animal and bit off its head. Immediately upon biting down, he realized something was horribly wrong as warm liquid filled his mouth and the wings began flapping. After the show, he was rushed to Broadlawns Medical Center for a grueling series of prophylactic rabies injections, cementing one of heavy metal's most enduring and shocking legends.

Archive: verified ↗
02

Feuds1970s

The Emotional Warfare and Cocaine-Fueled Creation of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours

Fleetwood Mac

During the 1976 recording sessions for 'Rumours' at Record Plant in Sausalito, California, Fleetwood Mac was engulfed in simultaneous intra-band romantic collapses. Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were engaged in screaming shouting matches between takes; bassist John McVie and singer Christine McVie were in the middle of a bitter divorce and only communicated about sheet music; and drummer Mick Fleetwood had just discovered his wife was having an affair with his best friend. Fueled by astronomical quantities of cocaine, the band channeled their mutual vitriol into songwriting, with Buckingham forcing Nicks to sing backing vocals on 'Go Your Own Way'—a brutal kiss-off track written explicitly about her.

Archive: verified ↗
03

Sex1970s

Led Zeppelin's Notorious 1969 Edgewater Inn Mudshark Saga

Led Zeppelin

In July 1969, during a stay at Seattle's waterfront Edgewater Inn (where guests could fish directly out of their hotel room windows into Puget Sound), Led Zeppelin, road manager Richard Cole, and members of Vanilla Fudge reportedly engaged in shocking backstage debauchery involving a freshly caught mud shark. While sensationalized accounts in the rock biography 'Hammer of the Gods' claimed the band attached fish parts to an escort, later memoirs and testimony from Vanilla Fudge's Carmine Appice confirmed a mud shark was indeed caught and used during wild hotel room antics with consenting groupies, becoming the defining myth of 1970s rock tour excess.

Archive: verified ↗
04

Tragedy1960s

The Altamont Free Concert Catastrophe and the Murder of Meredith Hunter

The Rolling Stones

On December 6, 1969, the Rolling Stones staged a massive free concert at Altamont Speedway in Northern California, hiring local Hells Angels chapters for stage security in exchange for $500 worth of beer. The event quickly descended into violent bedlam fueled by bad LSD and armed biker enforcers beating crowd members with weighted pool cues. As the Stones played 'Under My Thumb,' 18-year-old Meredith Hunter was stabbed and beaten to death by Hells Angel Alan Passaro near the stage after drawing a revolver in panic. The tragedy resulted in four deaths and was widely memorialized as the grim, symbolic death of 1960s hippie idealism.

Archive: verified ↗
05

Drugs1970s

Keith Richards and the Mythical Swiss Blood Cleansing Treatments

The Rolling Stones

For decades, a legendary rock rumor claimed that prior to European tours in 1973, Keith Richards flew to a private Swiss clinic to have his entire bloodstream filtered and replaced with clean blood to rapidly detox from severe heroin addiction. In truth, Richards admitted in his 2010 autobiography 'Life' that he fabricated the total blood-swap story to evade journalists asking about his rehab. He had actually undergone a cutting-edge blood hemodialysis treatment to cleanse toxins from his kidneys and liver, but found the vampire-like myth far more amusing.

Debunked ↗
06

Bizarre1960s

Brian Wilson's Sandbox Piano and Bedridden Psychedelic Reclusion

The Beach Boys

During the avant-garde composition of 'Pet Sounds' and the aborted 'Smile' sessions in 1966-1967, Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson succumbed to auditory hallucinations, intense paranoia, and heavy LSD experimentation. To stimulate creative vibes, he had eight tons of beach sand dumped into his living room in Beverly Hills, constructing a custom sandbox surrounding his grand piano so he could feel the sand beneath his bare feet while writing. As his mental health deteriorated following clashes with bandmate Mike Love, Wilson retreated into near-total seclusion, spending years confined to his bed eating junk food and smoking hashish.

Archive: verified ↗
Showing 1–6 of 24

Fact or folklore? Each story carries the archive’s own status and source links. Explore the evidence, too.

For the curious. For the creators.

Take the dark
side with you.

A little music history for your corner of the internet.

01 / EMBEDYour site. Our daily story.

Add the daily artwork and story to your website. It updates with the daily selection.

Widget instructions ↗
02 / APIBuild your own rabbit hole.

Query the Music archive by keyword, artist, category, or wildness. Start with a simple request.

Read the API guide ↗

From the music archive

Mötley Crüe / 1980s

Nikki Sixx's Clinical Death, Adrenaline Chest Plunge, and the Birth of 'Kickstart My Heart'

DrugsArchive: verified5/5 wildness

On the night of December 23, 1987, Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx overdosed on pure Persian heroin in the Franklin Plaza Hotel room of Guns N' Roses drummer Steven Adler. Sixx turned blue and stopped breathing, prompting first responders to declare him clinically dead for two minutes inside the ambulance. In a desperate last-ditch effort, an EMT who was a massive Crüe fan plunged two syringes of adrenaline straight into Sixx's heart muscle, miraculously reviving him. After escaping from Cedars-Sinai hospital in his leather pants hours later, Sixx returned home to shoot up again before writing the adrenaline-fueled anthem 'Kickstart My Heart.'

Follow the sources

Status and citations are supplied by the archive. AI concept art is an interpretation, not historical evidence.