Nikki Sixx is a man who wears many hats. Not only is he the bassist and songwriter for Motley Crue and Sixx: A.M., he's also a radio host, author and master of social media.

During some downtime from Motley Crue's current tour with KISS, we caught up with Sixx on the phone for an interview that we've divided between Loudwire and our brother site Ultimate Classic Rock.  See what he told us about the band's new single 'Sex,' his Twitter rant against Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine and what lies ahead for his band Sixx: A.M. in the following Q&A. And for more on Motley Crue's tour with KISS, as well as their plans for new music, click on the button at the bottom of this article to read Ultimate Classic Rock's portion of the interview.

Tell us a little about the unique release of the new Motley Crue single 'Sex' ...

You know what I'm really happy about? We wrote the song, we recorded it and we recorded it old school. We just got in a room, pounded it out, did a few of the dubs, had some fun with some synths, with some good sound to thicken it up. Vince did his vocals and we mixed it pretty quick and we had a choice, so [we decided] "Let's not go pounding radio, the old-school way … let's let people discover it the way that they discovered us when we were kids, the way they discover bands even now." You hear about it, someone talks about it, someone plays it for you, e-mails it to you, so that was really exciting. Radio stations wanted to pick it up and play it, there was no agenda on our part and then the audience, a lot of the time, was hearing it for the first time the night of the show. People would say, "Dude when you were in Chicago, you know you sold 10,000 copies and when you're in Detroit ,you sold 9,000 copies of the song," because they're hearing it live and they're going, 'Wow this is cool, new Crue, how come I never heard this?'

You and Tommy Lee in particular are very active on Twitter. Do you enjoy it as much as you seem to and is there anything you've tweeted that you regret?

Of course. You know, I've done a few things. Because it's an artist doing it, because it's a human being doing it, it's not an assistant or the management company, or the record company tweeting for you. You're going to say s--t that's going to ruffle feathers or you're going to stay stuff that's really personal and other people can really relate to it. That's what I like about it, I've embraced it. In the beginning, when Twitter first came out, I was like, 'I don't know if I want to be that open,' but as [my radio program] Sixx Sense became such a huge part of my life, I became  willing to be more and more vulnerable and just laying my life open on the radio show. Twitter didn't feel as so scary to me. I was like, "I don't know if I want people to know what color socks I'm wearing today," and in the end, if something happens to me, like what does that have to do with this life? And what I found out is that it has everything to do with everyone's life because we're kind of all doing this at the same time, in real time.

One of the things that for me that was really interesting is when [Megadeth frontman] Dave [Mustaine] was saying maybe assinine statement about America turning into Nazi America. I mean, I reached for my phone and I said, 'This guy's a f---ing a--hole' and he is, you don't say that about your f---ing country. But I was able to say that and I had a lot of people go, 'Hey man, everyone's entitled to their own opinion and Nikki you're in the wrong,' and 'That guy should be thrown out of the country,' and other people [wrote] 'He shouldn't be thrown out of the country, he's entitled to his own rights' and it just went on and on and on and I didn't take any of it personally. What I did was I took it in and went, 'This is great! This is like a world conversation,' and I was able to have my opinion and that guy has a right to have his own opinion, whether he wants to think that about our country. I don't think that about our country but I have strong opinions on other stuff and I've had people come after me. It is a cool, cool thing and you can be real on it and in there's times when you can also say, 'Guess what? We got tickets up for sale!'

What does the future hold for Sixx: A.M.?

The biggest plan that we have is to make our third record. We have had the obstacle of touring because of Motley Crue and because DJ [Ashba] is playing guitar in Guns 'N Roses and [singer] James [Michael] is producing. It's like every time I'm available, DJ's on the road, or every time DJ's off the road, I'm touring or James is in the middle of a record. I don't believe there will be any touring on this [past] record and we've already starting writing ideas, except we haven't actually gotten together. We're gonna do the record and that album has to without a doubt have a tour.

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