In the tell-all band biography The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band, quoted by Ultimate Classic Rock, Sixx recalled having an out-of-body experience in which he left his body and watched as “Nikki Sixx — or the filthy, tattooed container that had once held him — was lying covered face-to-toe with a sheet on a gurney being pushed by medics into an ambulance.” Amazingly, he apparently floated back into his filthy, tattooed container, because he woke up in the hospital hours later and “ripped out [his] tubes and staggered in just [his] leather pants into the parking lot.” He then caught a ride home from two teenage girls who he’d found crying and mourning his supposed death, which by that point had been announced by several news outlets.

In a 2009 interview with Rolling Stone, Nikki Sixx and Mötley Crüe’s lead singer Vince Neil shared their thoughts regarding every track from Dr. Feelgood, which ended up being the band’s most successful album, peaking at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in October of 1989. Neil succinctly summed up “Kickstart My Heart” by proclaiming, “What can you say about ‘Kickstart’? It’s full blown in your face. It’s about Nikki dying.” For a song about his own death, Sixx remained relatively casual, saying, “I thought it was a throwaway,” but, perhaps ironically, went on to note that it “just really took on a life of its own.”