Creativity Quote by Nikki Sixx

Nikki Sixx is describing the most rock-and-roll kind of focus group: deny the reunion out loud while privately testing whether the old machine still starts. The line is half confession, half strategy, and it lands because it treats a band not as a sacred brotherhood but as a product you can prototype. “Try it on” is the tell. Reunions aren’t framed as destiny or redemption; they’re framed as wardrobe. Does the look still flatter? Can you still move in it? Does it feel ridiculous under daylight?

The subtext is about control. In the streaming-and-nostalgia era, the public assumes every legacy act is either cashing in or clinging on. By insisting they “weren’t getting back together” during recording, Sixx admits to managing the narrative before the narrative manages them. It’s preemptive skepticism: if it doesn’t work, you can walk away without the humiliation of a big announcement turned quiet failure. If it does work, you get the clean reveal - and the added mythology of reluctance.

It also signals a musician’s pragmatism about chemistry. You don’t decide a reunion in a boardroom; you decide it in the room with the amps, where the body remembers what the press release can’t. Sixx’s phrasing makes the studio the truth serum, a place where sentiment is less persuasive than sound. The intent isn’t to romanticize the past; it’s to see if the past can still generate voltage.