“I’ve been through a lot of stuff, yes. Haven’t had the best of luck,” Michael Monroe, the iconic former frontman of seminal Finnish hard rock band Hanoi Rocks, shrugs affably, speaking to Yahoo Entertainment/SiriusXM Volume about his cheekily titled 11th solo album, I Live Too Fast to Die Young. “But things could be worse. I’m still healthy. I’m alive. Every day healthy and above ground is a good day. I love doing music and making a living out of that. I don’t need much to be happier, and money doesn’t get you happiness. I’m able to do this and make relevant records, and this latest record really feels special.”
It would be understandable, of course, if Monroe was bitter. After Hanoi Rocks made a splash in Helsinki, Stockholm, and then London, releasing four cult-classic glitter-metal albums in Europe, they finally seemed poised for mainstream success in 1984. They had a major-label U.S. deal with CBS Records and a new album, Two Steps From the Move, produced by Bob Ezrin of Lou Reed/Alice Cooper/KISS fame; they were also embarking on their first U.S. tour, opening for Mötley Crüe. But after only two weeks on the road, on Dec. 8, 1984, Hanoi Rocks drummer Razzle went on a beer run with Crüe singer Vince Neil during a party at Neil’s Redondo Beach home.
Neil, whose blood alcohol content was well over the legal limit at 0.17, crashed his car on the way back from the liquor store; two passengers in another automobile involved in the accident were seriously injured, while Razzle was killed instantly. Neil was charged with vehicular manslaughter and received a light sentence of 30 days in jail (he actually served only 19 days) and five years’ probation, and Mötley Crüe went on to even greater fame. (Their next album, Theatre of Pain, was dedicated to Razzle.) But the tragedy spelled the end for Hanoi Rocks, who split up in 1985 after a brief, ill-fated overseas tour with ex-Clash drummer Terry Chimes filling in.
While Monroe stresses that the departure of bassist Sam Yaffa and his own personal differences with guitarists Andy McCoy and Nasty Suicide factored into Hanoi Rocks’ breakup, he explains, “We weren’t strong enough to keep it together. Maybe if we would’ve taken a break for half a year or a year, if we would’ve been in that position, it might have been able to salvage the situation. I mean, the situation was such that we were very likely to become one of the biggest bands in the world and all that. And Bob Ezrin also was looking forward to producing the next album; he felt the same about us as he did about Alice Cooper. We were looking at it as a long haul. But I didn’t want people to get to know Hanoi in the wrong way, because it wasn’t what it was originally. It wouldn’t have been the same. So, what can you do? It was bad luck, but I don’t look back at it like that. I’m just sorry I lost my best friend Razzle. We had a special chemistry.”
Meanwhile, Mötley Crüe wasn’t the only Hanoi-inspired ‘80s rock band that went on to enjoy the sort of success that eluded Hanoi Rocks themselves. While Monroe relocated New York and started from scratch, living on the streets for a few months just as he had in the hardscrabble early Hanoi days, over in in Los Angeles, Hanoi Rocks’ influence was so strong that seemingly every band was citing them in “musicians wanted” Recycler ads. The L.A. Weekly even ran an article in 2017 arguing that “One Band From Finland-Inspired the Entire Sunset Strip Hair Metal Scene,” and in the Hanoi Rocks autobiography All Those Wasted Years, Foo Fighters guitarist Chris Shiflett stated, “The Hollywood scene changed in just one night after people saw the pictures of Hanoi Rocks. After that everyone was wearing the same…
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