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EXCLUSIVE 98 MIAMI LIVING His love for music motivated him to work a whole summer when he was 9 detasseling corn, so that he could buy his first guitar from the Sears catalog for $128. He learned the basic guitar chords from a kid he rode the bus to the corn fields with. DJ would learn a new chord each day using carvings in the back of a bus seat, and would go home every night to practice. As the years passed, art and music remained a constant in his life. In 6 th grade, DJ took a job at The Blade, the local newspaper, folding papers as they came out of the machines. His boss, he tells me, was an old creepy, tall, skinny dude with an intimidating presence who everyone was afraid. The "creepy" three-story building was divided by job: the first floor was where the ink-covered "trolls" (DJ and his coworkers) worked, the second floor held the cushy offices and the third floor "at the end of this long spooky hallway that nobody dare go down" was his boss' office. One day, DJ decided to pitch his boss the idea of a comic strip in The Blade. "I've always had this creative bone in my body to do something and they (his aunt and uncle, the "inventors of the technology for aerosol cans and PAM butter spray") were a big inspiration to me, so I'm like, what's the worst that could happen?" Initially his boss turned him down on the spot, but three days later he reconsidered and requested a few sketches. DJ spent all night drawing a stack of cartoons that he named, Beyond Hope, featuring everyday "funny shit that happened to everyone. Wife swings open the fridge and it smacks husband in the face as he's saying, 'Good Morning, sweetie,'" DJ explains. His boss was sold. As the new cartoonist, DJ was given an office on the second floor with massive windows overlooking the town. "I had a phone and I was like, Fuck yeah!" He laughs. "Everybody in that small town loved it," he beams about Beyond Hope, which he sketched throughout the duration of high school. "I would go to the grocery store and they would be like, Ohmygod!" [His mom still has every cartoon.] This opened the door to other jobs. The local supermarket enlisted him to design their ads, and soon after, DJ was pulled out of his classes to co-teach his school's advanced art classes (since he aced it in 9 th grade) and paid to paint all the logos and mascots on the gym floors and weight room. "I'd design all the backdrops for prom, yearbook covers. I was like the 'Art Kid.' Because I had a comic in the newspaper, I was kinda like a little celebrity." He smiles. All these experiences prepared him for the fame and Virgin Entertainment job that would come years later. While art took up a significant amount of DJ's time, the love and desire to play music was still there. At 15, DJ moved in with his brother, Shane. "We had a two-story house overlooking some park, but it was always empty. I put my tiny amp on the roof, climbed out my window and would crank it up and play. Even though the park was empty, in my mind it was packed and I would rock out." His concerts did not sit well with his neighbors, who called the one cop in town on him. Playing rock 'n' roll was not allowed, so DJ was given two choices, they take his guitar away or he moves to the outskirts of town if he wants to keep playing. DJ chose the latter, and relocated to an old trailer surrounded by corn fields. "It's funny — I came back after I wrote a #1 hit, and now they sell guitar picks 'cause of me in the little gas stations. All the parents that never believed in me were bringing their kids over to meet me when I started getting successful. Going back home is a trip…" he muses, "but everybody back home is awesome." When DJ was 20, he moved to Los Angeles. He played in a cover band at as many places he could for the exposure, and made a demo that landed him his first instrumental album, Addiction to the Friction. "It was my first taste of what I thought was success." Years later, Joe Lesté (Bang Tango frontman) knocked on his door, and asked him if he wanted to start a band with him. Their first show was opening for Kiss. "For that first show we were called, Ego Star. I was like, 'You pick a word. I'll pick a word. Ego. I said, star. Great!' Biggest show of our career and we come up with some lame name that we never used after." They finally agreed on the band name Beautiful Creatures after seeing it on a business card. "We played Ozzfest and did a bunch of stuff after that —that's when I met Axl [Rose] for the first time. Sharon Osbourne actually introduced me to him." Eventually, Beautiful Creatures was dropped from the label, and DJ was offered his own record deal, but out of loyalty to Joe, he turned it down. He tried to make it on his own for awhile but nothing materialized, until Mötley Crüe's Nikki Sixx, an acquaintance he'd run into here and there, called him up out of the blue. DJ was on his way to rehearsal when Nikki asked if he could stop by. "I'm like, Why would Nikki Sixx want to come to my rehearsal?" After rehearsal, Nikki invited him back to his house, where they sat down at the piano and wrote four songs in one day. DJ was on the verge of signing a deal with Interscope, when Nikki asked him not to, and instead collaborate with him as a songwriting-producing partner at his studio, Funny Farm. "I blew off the Interscope deal, and sat out there for a year writing songs. He'd come in and out of tour with Mötley Crüe. A lot of those songs turned into the first album of Sixx:A.M. later on." Sixx:A.M. (comprised of James Michael, Nikki Sixx and DJ) came to fruition unexpectedly. "We were literally putting together an album for fun to tell the story of Nikki's diaries —the thought of being a band was never in the picture… The label, somehow, released one of our songs to the radio, and we got a call that our song went number #1. They're like, 'You need a band name!' We had nothing. Why don't we call it our last names?' [DJ suggested.] 'Let's just call it Sixx, Ashba, Michaels, so that's how," DJ explains, "Sixx:A.M." Right before Sixx:A.M. materialized, DJ established his company, Ashba Media. He credits James Michael for giving him the push to start the company, loaning him the capital to do it, and tipping him off on Virgin Entertainment looking for a new Agency of Record. Coming off a really bad break-up, DJ was broke and needed to move immediately. Not someone who asks to borrow money, ever, DJ accepted a $4,000 loan from James, which he used for a new apartment and "to incorporate the name Ashba Media." DJ then recruited three graphic artists that he knew to execute his vision for Virgin. On pitch day, DJ nervously presented his team's work to a boardroom filled with twenty "suit-and-ties." "I didn't know a lot, but I knew the quality of our work was undeniable. I am such a perfectionist when it comes to the art… I took the cover off our ad banners, and the whole room gasped," he says with a smile. "It was a cool feeling." He immediately received a call from Virgin's Head of Marketing, who tells him, "'Out of the 15-20 [a guesstimate] years I've been here, I've never heard our board meeting gasp. What do you guys want? We want you,'" DJ recalls. They beat out "106 professional agencies," and would rake in about $20,000 a month as Virgin's Agency of Record. DJ was able to pay James back in full two weeks later. While touring with Sixx:A.M., DJ juggled working for Virgin from out of his hotel rooms. "At that time, it was that whole thing of painting that we were this bigger than life corporation to them [Virgin]. I remember getting an 800 number that literally got forwarded to my cell phone. It was all perception at that point… They're like, 'You guys are the best agency we've ever had,'" he tells me. Ashba Media worked on marketing and branding for every Virgin Megastore worldwide till the economy left them no choice but to shut their doors five years later. Leading brands continued to reach out to Ashba Media for their expertise, but DJ decided to put his company on the back burner to focus on Sixx:A.M. "I got off the first tour for Sixx:A.M., the song was #1 and I got a call from Guns N' Roses' management." They wanted him to audition for the lead guitarist spot. "I didn't think much of it. I was like, 'I'd love to come down and say hi and meet everybody.'" The night before the audition, DJ began to get "cold feet" and almost talked himself out of it. What DJ didn't know was that when Axl heard he was coming in, he told them to just give DJ the gig when he shows up. "When I walked in I didn't know all this. As soon as I got in my car and left, I got a call, 'Axl wants you in the band!'… It's the best decision I ever made. I've had the best time playing. I'm going on my sixth year now. Toured the world six times over and it's just been awesome." Guns N' Roses recently released their DVD, Appetite for Democracy 3D, filmed live at Hard Rock in Las Vegas. In the background, Ashba Media continued to simmer, so in 2008, DJ moved his sister, Kari, from Illinois to L.A. to be his "right-hand person" and pick up some of the slack at Ashba Media and jump start his clothing company. "She really helped me turn Ashba Clothing around –done a 180 with it. It just started making tons of money," he says. As Kari got