Motley Crue's Nikki Sixx has launched an attack on Facebook after the site removed some controversial photos from his profile.

The bassist, who is about to release his new photography book 'This Is Gonna Hurt: Music, Photography and Life Through the Distorted Lens of Nikki Sixx', posted pictures on the social network site.

"I started by posting one of the photos from my book, it was actually an outtake -- a way to give fans something that won't be in the book. I was looking for a woman that would pose nude that was extremely overweight -- there's a bunch of messages behind that," Sixx told Spinner.

He added: "So I posted this nude picture of her and it was deleted by Facebook. And I went, 'Oh, you can't put art on Facebook?' So then I posted another photo that I shot of a guy who's transgender[ed]. So he had breasts, but he's still a guy."

"I looked around Facebook and I see half-naked teenagers, and stuff way worse than my stuff, so I posted what they said to me about the 'Rules and Regulations' and immediately 250,000 people changed their profile picture to that photo. So everyone's going, 'Why don't you change yours?' and I was worried they were going to delete my account, but finally I just posted it."

(by Holly Frith)