MICHAEL MONROE: AXL ROSE Is 'A True Rocker

LasVegasWeekly.com recently conducted an interview with former HANOI ROCKS frontman Michael Monroe. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

On his stage costumes:

Monroe: "With HANOI ROCKS I was doing the more glittery kind of thing, but for now I've kind of toned down. It's more simple. I think of what's more easy to move in; I try not to wear stuff that gets in the way too much. I got to be able to do the splits without splitting the pants!"

On splitting his pants on stage from the splits:

Monroe: "That happened once with HANOI ROCKS at The Marquee in London in the '80s. I remember I had these silver-colored pants and they were PVC or vinyl — almost the same color as graphic tape. I was graphic-taping them and the more I taped them the more they split. It became part of the show, me taping my crotch on stage. At first I was distressed, but then I thought, 'Well, that's something different for this show.' I went to the roadies and said, 'Help! Get me some graphic tape now!' I would have been screwed without graphic tape."

On the big-name collaborations:

Monroe: "Slash is one of my favorite guitar players. He's a great guitar player, and he plays the right kind of guitar. He was a great pleasure to work with. The GUNS 'N ROSES sessions were great fun. With Axl [Rose] we had some magical moments, doing that cover of the DEAD BOYS song 'Ain't It Fun', and Little Steven. I think the best songs I've written for my solo stuff have been with [him], like 'Dead, Jail or Rock 'n' Roll' [featuring Axl Rose]. He's a true rocker."

On glam rock and hair metal:

Monroe: "Somebody said I'm the guy who brought the punk into glam. To me, a lot of the hair-metal bands that came after [HANOI ROCKS]. People say [we] inspired a lot of that stuff, but I think we were more into the music. To us, the music and the songs and the attitude were more important than the big hair and the posing. ... A lot of the bands in L.A. and the hair-metal scene seemed to play their hair dryers better than they played their instruments. So I didn't really feel like I was any big part of that."

On the crazy days of HANOI ROCKS:

Monroe: "There was one incident in Israel where we almost got arrested. [Instead] we got deported because the guys threw a table out the window, and it landed on a taxicab and almost killed the driver. It could have hit [him], but luckily it didn't. The hotel manager came into the room — he opened the door with his own key — and there was broken glass all over the floor. He stepped on the glass and was jumping on one foot, [and] Nasty [the guitarist] hit the hotel manager over the head with his crutch. ... He had broken his leg in London falling down stairs at some club. There was a steep staircase at the club and they decided to see what happens when you jump headfirst with your hands behind your back — that's the kind of madness..."

On bringing rock 'n' roll to Finland:

Monroe: "In Finland back [in the HANOI ROCKS days], even if you had long hair they would kill you. Us wearing makeup and jewelry, the way we looked, it was like, 'Forget it.' When we started there were some fights with audiences, like groups of rednecks coming after us. They demolished a bus once with crowbars and baseball bats. There were like 10 guys and I woke up — I was taking a nap in the back of the bus — with the window just falling on top of me. ... We got out of there just in the nick of time. ... I think HANOI had a lot to do with the attitude changing. In the later years we became the biggest band in Finland, and that forced the people to be more open-minded about looks and stuff. We opened a lot of doors even for bands that are coming out of there now."

From:LasVegasWeekly.com