TOO MUCH AIN'T EVER ENOUGH
A Hanoi Rocks Retrospective, by Dave Dickson

JR notes: This is the final draft of Dave Dickson's celebrated Hanoi Rocks retrospective that was published in the January 2001 edition of Classic Rock Magazine.

"I saw rock & roll's future and its name is Bruce Springsteen."

In 1974 critic Jon Landau wrote those words after seeing Springsteen play. We may disagree with his judgement but the phrase, not to mention The Boss himself, soon became part of rock legend. Landau, of course, went on to become Springsteen's manager and earn a fortune.

We don't all get that lucky but, deep within us, we all want to be the ones to discover THE NEXT BIG THING. On the night of June 14, 1982, I thought I had. That night I saw Hanoi Rocks.

I'd only been working at Kerrang! a few months at the time but already I'd established something of a reputation. I admit it – I lied to get the job, I told them I liked Heavy Metal. I admired the spectacle of HM and loved bands like Judas Priest, AC/DC and Motorhead but most HM acts left me cold. Instead I hankered after the likes of Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Alice Cooper, David Bowie and The Doors - all rock & roll acts, all guitar-based but not Heavy Metal. And if that wasn't crime enough around Kerrang!, I also freely admitted to liking pop and, most heinous of all, punk.

Punk sought to destroy everything that HM stood for and there was I, a viper in the nest, working for the bible of HM and actually professing veneration for bands like the Pistols, Damned, Stranglers and Generation X. But they were all rock & roll acts and that was all I needed to know. So when anything a little off-the-wall floated into the office it would generally be passed on to me.

Then one day a bizarre little album arrived. It was entitled ‘Oriental Beat' and no one had ever heard of the band. The cover showed five figures pressed against a sheet of polythene. Sure, they had tattoos but they looked, well, effeminate. The offending disc was hurriedly dumped in my lap.

Some years before I had come across a group called Japan led by David Sylvian. He had written two inspired albums that were raucous, caustic and decadent, an exhilarating combination of androgyny, cabaret and punk. I loved them to death. I had already begun wearing make-up by this stage and took both Sylvian and Bowie as my inspirations, both musically and culturally. I met Sylvian, briefly, backstage after a show in London and we spoke for several minutes about make-up. Japan changed labels and went on to produce what I would consider one of the greatest albums ever made, ‘Gentlemen Take Polaroids', a tone poem of musical and lyrical brilliance.

Sylvian was once voted the most beautiful man in the world. And he probably was. But now he seemed to have serious competition.

The lead singer of this band was blonde and even more beautiful than he. He went by the unlikely name of Mike Monroe. Around the singer were four urchins who looked as if they'd slash your throat as soon as look at you. It all seemed highly promising.

And the vinyl didn't disappoint. Here was a band that played spiky, punky rock & roll like Generation X and looked like Japan, to my mind the perfect combination. But the ultimate test still lay ahead: Could they actually play live?

So, bristling with expectation I ventured to the Fulham Greyhound that night. It was to change my life.

There were maybe 100 people there. I'd gone along with Dante Bonutto, then Staff Writer on Kerrang!. What we witnessed was a display of rock & roll fury, a spellbinding, intoxicating frenzy of destructive beauty. This was what it was supposed to be all about. It was raw, it was vibrant, but most of all it was dangerous. Hanoi Rocks had arrived and brought with them an intensity that was almost feral.

I only ever saw it on a handful of occasions: with The Gun Club; the Sisters of Mercy; Iggy. Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story about it called ‘The Imp of the Perverse'. It's that craving, perverse as it may be, for the forbidden, that electric element of decadence, a carefree casting aside of any semblance of morbidity. Hanoi Rocks were dancing on a tightrope and the abyss lay yawning and slavering beneath them. They invited us all to follow and, caught in their slipstream, I couldn't resist.

They were young, they were beautiful, they were talented and etched onto their faces was an attitude that screamed: We-Don't-Give-A-Fuck! I'd already missed the beginnings of the Stones, Alice Cooper, Iggy and the New York Dolls, all of whom I saw in this Finnish quintet, but I sure as hell wasn't going to miss out on this one.

People have told me that I discovered Hanoi Rocks. This simply isn't true. Rather, Dave Roberts, who was working for the now defunct Sounds, truly discovered the band for those outside of Finland. He stumbled across them one night in a club. He interviewed them and wrote a feature. Then I came along. And only after that did the rest of the world really start to take notice.

That night I set up an interview and they scored a deal with Phonogram Records in Japan. It began a love affair that lasted for two-and-a-half years, a love affair that came crashing, literally, to a close on Redondo Beach, California, in a mangled heap of twisted metal and broken dreams. But it was worth it.

Back at the office and I secured a copy of the band's first album, ‘Bangkok Shocks, Saigon Shakes, Hanoi Rocks', and also their video. It contained three tracks: ‘Tragedy', ‘Motorvatin'' and ‘Oriental Beat'. It was a rough and ready collection that looked as if it had been shot in someone's garage but it amply identified what Hanoi Rocks were all about. It was brash, brazen and delicious. I was told there were just three copies of this tape in the country. The other two went to the managements of Twisted Sister and Joan Jett, both of whom were looking for a support slot on their UK tours. They passed. As guitarist Andy McCoy put it to me later: "Joan Jett's manager saw the video and they wouldn't take us. We offered £15,000 more than any other band but they wouldn't take us because they knew we'd play her off-stage every night."

So I turn up at the Julius Caesar Hotel in Bayswater, west London, for my first encounter over a microphone with Hanoi Rocks. It is to set the tone for all our future rendezvous: ramshackle, disorganised and drug-fuelled.

Naturally the band are not where they are supposed to be when I arrive, their rooms are empty and no one seems to know what the hell is going on. Eventually I get directed to what the hotel calls the ‘Tepidarium', a drained swimming pool. The band are there being photographed for some Japanese publication but, even when it comes to being made to look beautiful, their attention-spans are slight and they soon get bored.

The only person who seems to have any semblance of control over them is their manager and former jazz promoter, Seppo Vesterinen. He found them early in their career, liked what he saw and effectively cast aside a secure profession to take on a bunch of rock & roll wastrels. He later forms a partnership with Richard Bishop and the train starts a'rollin'. Vesterinen directs ‘The Muddy Twins' - Andy and Mike, as they are credited on the first album - to go and do the interview. So we leave the rhythm section of guitarist Nasty Suicide, bassist Sam Yaffa and drummer Gyp Casino, and ascend to Andy's bedroom to begin this first meeting of minds.

Along for the ride comes Andy's girlfriend, Anna, who is, quite simply, one of the most beautiful women I have ever met. During the course of our discussion I discover that the paint-splattered torso adorning the rear of the ‘Oriental Beat' album belongs to her.

Also pleading for attention is the TV because England are playing France at the World Cup finals in Spain. However, the greatest distraction comes from the other visitor that afternoon. I never find out his name but he is much disapproved of by Vesterinen. He is a small-time drug dealer and, like a moth-to-the-flame, has latched onto Hanoi Rocks. So we four watch as this guy rolls his sleeve and jacks up in front of us. He unfastens the strap around his bicep and blood runs down his arm. I decline to mention this when I come to write the feature.

But drugs and Hanoi became indivisible commodities. That afternoon we talked, we watched football, we played Hanoi Rocks tracks on the cassette-player, and we did drugs. And that's pretty much the way it always was, except for the football. There is a large cross-over in our respective musical tastes, we each share a penchant for make-up and beautiful women, and none of us are afraid to push the narcotic envelope. It's a heady mix. At the end they play me some unreleased material including ‘Taxi Driver’ and ‘Beer And A Cigarette’, which later appear on the prophetically titled ‘Self Destruction Blues’ album. I leave the hotel grinning broadly more convinced than ever that I have found the future.

Back at the Kerrang! office I move into major rave mode. I harangue and badger the staff into seeing the band at The Venue in London's Victoria the following week. Reluctantly they agree, if only to shut me up, and I gear myself up for a major triumph. But . . .

Hanoi Rocks were, undoubtedly, one of the greatest live acts I have ever experienced. When they were good, as at the Greyhound, they were truly awesome, but when they were bad they were truly dire. Which the Jekyll and which the Hyde is a matter of conjecture but whichever it is comes out onstage that night. The collected Kerrang! hacks, who even before this night, had begun to wonder whether I was made of quite the right stuff, now looked on me with barely disguised contempt. Worse than not being a proper HM fan, I clearly have no taste at all. The band I have so loudly and lovingly trumpeted as the new rock & roll gods instead provide a lacklustre, insipid display that even a mother would find hard to appreciate. Something has gone very seriously wrong.

Which was Hanoi engaging in a serious three-day Triple-D bender: Drink, Drugs and Debauchery. Mike remembers asking for a pick-me-up before showtime. He is told:

"‘Oh no, sorry, couldn't get it’. ‘What the fuck, didn't you understand what I fucking said to you? I can't make it through the fucking show!’ That's why, after that, I can't be dependent on somebody to bring me something, that's all bullshit."

The show, unsurprisingly, is a disaster.

"It was the worst gig we ever did and all the record companies were there too. That was the showcase everybody came to see."

But I still knew I was right and wasn't prepared to give up, not without a fight.

Hanoi disappear homeward and shortly after dispense with the services of Gyp Casino. He finally loses it during a gig when he stops drumming, emerges from behind his kit, punches Andy in the face and storms off.

The way Andy tells it curiously refrains from mentioning the fist-meeting-face part:

"Well, he got fucked up in the end. In fact, his nerves got so messed up he would actually leave the stage in the middle of a set, and once he jumped on me - that was too much. We didn't want to sack him but the band would have split up otherwise."

His replacement is Isle of Wight exile Nicholas ‘Razzle' Dingley ("A loud mouth") who used to drum for a band called The Dark ("Useless"). Razzle, though no great technician of the drums, becomes the glue that binds the band into a collective whole. He gives them a kind of earthy credibility they have hitherto lacked and now the serious business of world domination can begin.

And this means leaving home. They had already left Finland for Sweden - a return for the expatriate McCoy - but now upped-sticks again and relocated to Tooting Bec, south London, most renowned as a hang out for prostitutes driven from Soho. This makes sense since, as Mike put it: "It's dangerous for us to walk around in Finland, people are very narrow-minded there."

Tooting Bec, though, is not a place of which rock & roll dreams are made; the house they occupy still less so. They move into a condemned squat in Louisville Road. The Muddy Twins rapidly depart for more sanitary climes. Andy shifts to Pimlico and Mike to a hotel in Notting Hill where he can hook up with fellow-singer, Stiv Bator of the Lords of the New Church.

Which leaves the rhythm section mired in squalor. Nasty, Sam and Razzle eke out a precarious existence. Money is tight and with no gigs to perform they do a lot of waiting around. The next album, ‘Back To Mystery City’, will not be recorded till early in the new year, 1983, so they are left to their own devices. Christmas approaches and Razzle has done his best to brighten up the hovel but it is an almost hopeless task. What little money they have is spent on food, alcohol and drugs. The food is nothing more than takeaways - mostly Kentucky Fried Chicken, the nearest ready source - and the alcohol tends not to last much longer. I decide to play Santa Claus.

I turn up on Christmas Eve clutching a box filled with food, wine and whisky. I also dispense a tape of the Hollywood Brats album, itself one of the least known but most influential progenitors of Hanoi Rocks. They beam like small children, their presents have arrived early. By the time I get there they have been reduced to virtually nothing: one practically empty bottle of Southern Comfort and a small vial of amyl nitrate which takes pride of place on the mantelpiece. The kitchen, by this stage, is nothing more than a collecting place for discarded KFC cartons and even the rats have moved out in protest at the conditions. But now they will make it through until the shops open again.

Sometime during the course of this year Andy and I are talking at the Kerrang! office. Who do I think they should get to produce the next Hanoi album? he asks. Unhesitatingly I tell him to employ Ian Hunter. The former Mott the Hoople singer had produced Generation X's finest album, ‘Valley of the Dolls’, back in 1979. It was a masterpiece, and both in terms of sound and image the two bands had an enormous overlap. Whether this advice registers with him I have no idea. None the less, ‘BtMC’ is produced not by Hunter but rather his former Hoople colleagues, Dale Griffin and Overend Watts. Hanoi's collaboration with Hunter will have to wait until ‘Two Steps From The Move’ in 1984.

During its recording I venture down to the studio near Battle, on the south coast, where William the Conqueror slew King Harold 1000 years earlier. Hanoi are not much interested in the historical significance of the place but are happy enough to see anyone from the outside world. I take along a friend who knows the band. He also brings a friend of his whom I know only vaguely. This guy makes a beeline for Andy.

Andy gives us a tour of the studio and introduces us to his guitar collection - he has about a dozen there including his prized Gibson Les Paul. He and this friend-of-a-friend then disappear off somewhere while the rest of us sit around and chat and I get played some new songs. Only later do I discover that he has a sideline in heroin dealing. A few years later he ends up in prison. Heroin is not a particularly pleasant drug as both Andy and Nasty discover. The later loss of Andy's teeth may or may not be a result of this indulgence.

Before the album emerges in May I take a trip to Amsterdam with Hanoi. I have never been to the city that is synonymous with sex, drugs and depravity but it seems an appropriate setting for the band’s first jaunt outside of Scandinavia and Britain. I pack my passport and we all assemble at Hanoi HQ, just off Regent Street. The crew having already departed with the equipment, there are just seven of us travelling: the band, sound engineer Mick Staplehurst and myself. The hack from the NME pulls out at the last moment for reasons unknown.

Cabs are called to take us to the boat-train, but as the others hurry excitedly out onto the street I am pulled aside by Vesterinen. He opens a desk drawer and takes out some documents. He presses them into my hand and tells me these are the band's work permits for the gig. Finland, at this stage, is not part of the EU so without the permits there will be no show. Since the management are flying out while we are commuting cheap and cheerful, no one else, it seems, can be trusted to ensure they do not get lost.

On the boat we have two cabins of four-bunks each. The split becomes simple enough: the smokers - Andy, Nasty, Sam and Razzle - occupy one while the abstainers - Mike, Mick and myself - take up the other.

After some drinking the band retire while Mick and I grab some dinner. It turns out he comes from a village just outside my hometown. Small world.

Next morning I am treated to one of the most terminally depressing sights I am ever to encounter around Hanoi. As usual I am a disaster area on first waking. Mike, however, swings his long legs from the bunk, goes to the basin and washes, teases his hair a little, puckers his lips and brushes his teeth . . . and that's it. He is perfect. I decide to hate him. It takes me a minimum of 45 minutes to apply the make-up and become even vaguely presentable. Mike Monroe just splashes a little water and runs his fingers through his hair to look as though he's just stepped out of Vogue.

We check into the hotel and then decide to explore the city. We traipse off to a collection of bars but the group starts to split asunder. Sam and I decide we want to explore the Red Light district while the others seem more interested in catching up on lost sleep. So we trawl around the sleazier areas of the city making frequent stops at bars and downing inordinate quantities of alcohol.

One story he tells me sticks. Finland still retained the draft and, come their 18th birthdays, they each got their call-up papers. These guys were not built to march around parade grounds carrying rifles. They need to get exempted and fast. Sam has an arm riddled with gnat-bites that look, to the medics, suspiciously like track-marks.

This is how Andy tells the story:

"He was getting worried. He was so itchy and bites were coming everywhere. He would have to shave his hair off. I heard a scream from the bathroom . . . and millions of these little fucking crawling animals came out of his scalp. It was fucking gross.

"I don't think it was planned, it was an accident, but the timing was great."

Nasty didn't even get as far as the medical. He arrived at the draft-board with a driver. They assumed it was the driver who had come to enlist but he merely pointed them in the direction of his charge.

"This General-type guy took one look at Nasty and said: ‘There's no way he's going to come here!' It was very easy for Nasty."

The utterly believable excuses of homosexuality or drug-addiction spare Hanoi the indignity of military service.

Back in London and with a live album and video, ‘All Those Wasted Years’, released CBS A&R man Muff Winwood finally takes the plunge and signs them to a deal. Hanoi came close to signing with Chrysalis but when Andy tells chairman Chris Wright that his beloved Jethro Tull are a "fucking awful band", they think better of it.

The deal brings them money and Andy decides to spend it on buying himself a suede suit to wear at their London Lyceum show. Suede is not a particularly mobile material and, drenched in sweat, it simply goes rigid. The guitarist is virtually inert all night. For the first and only time Hanoi Rocks are simply tedious onstage. Richard Bishop drags me backstage and I confront Andy. The inevitable question arises: "What did you think of the show?" I tell him. He scowls at me and empties the remains of a beer glass over my head. I leave. Sometime later I remind him of this and he looks a little sheepish. He knew the show was crap and I told him I'd never lie to him. Sometimes the truth hurts.

The atmosphere around the band is changing. The last of the old Hanoi can be seen at the Reading Festival that year. They are superb, cocksure, arrogant. They're only fifth on the bill but the performance is superlative.

Come Christmas and they play a couple of nights at the Marquee before setting off for Canada to record ‘Two Steps From The Move’ with producer Bob Ezrin. I call up the CBS press office and request a name on the door. The guy handling Hanoi first asks who I am and who I work for as tickets are in short supply. Patiently I explain. Then he asks which night I want to go. Both, I say. He tells me that's impossible. I put the phone down on him. I call the management and get a name on the door for both nights. This does not bode well.

Early 1984 and I am offered a trip to the frozen wastelands of Toronto to cover the band at Ezrin's Phase One studios. I assure CBS press that, short of Deep Purple reforming - long touted, never realised - Hanoi Rocks will definitely get the cover of Kerrang!. Deep Purple, of course, then promptly reform but Hanoi still get the cover.

I interview the Muddy Twins and Ezrin and then watch, spellbound, as Andy unleashes five mind-numbing solos. These are eventually melded into one on the wonderful ‘Underwater World’. The album comes out in September and is a massive step up from everything that preceded it. They embark on a lengthy UK tour before jetting off for the States. The last time I see them is on October 13 when they play the Aylesbury Maxwell Hall with Johnny Thunders guesting. It is a magical night.

Having conquered both Japan and the UK, America lays before them like uncharted territory ready to be pillaged. But America seems reluctant to be taken. Perhaps it is the name - Hanoi, after all, has serious connotations of America's greatest military failure. Audiences may be enthusiastic but they are small and the band are back to playing clubs again.

Mike has always been a highly mobile frontman and time and again I watched him clamber over the stacks of speakers before leaping to the stage or into the audience. It was a perilous activity and, while in Syracuse, New York, he finally falls from the tightrope, inflicting a hairline fracture on his ankle. But he is told by medics, who misdiagnose the condition, that he can continue and struggles through another three gigs on crutches. But the pain becomes too great and finally, in Atlanta, Georgia, the fracture is identified and he has to pull out. Gigs are cancelled and with precisely nothing to do they head off to Los Angeles to generate some press until Mike is fit to return.

With the singer laid up in his hotel room the others collude with Motley Crue. The two bands had met during the summer when Crue were in Britain to open the Castle Donington Monsters of Rock festival. Hanoi receive an invitation to visit and now they accept.

They meet up at singer Vince Neil's house on Redondo Beach. Razzle has just celebrated his 24th birthday the weekend before and there is much partying. Neil is anxious to show off his 1972 Ford Pantera sports car. However, his reckless driving has already caused the rest of the Crue to refuse to motor with him. Razzle, though, himself a lover of fast cars and bikes, has no such qualms and climbs aboard.

Moments later they are speeding south along the beachfront Esplanade. A fire engine is parked on a bend in the road and Neil swerves to avoid it, loses control of his car and hurtles into the on-coming traffic. He strikes two cars before coming to a stop. Ambulances are called and Razzle and the two occupants of the first car, Daniel Smithers and Lisa Hogan, are all taken to hospital. Less than an hour later Razzle is pronounced dead and the other two have severe injuries. Neil escapes without a scratch.

POST MORTEM

Vince Neil posted $2500 bail and was freed after being charged with vehicular manslaughter and drunk driving. He finally comes to trial in September 1985 and pleads guilty to the charges. He is facing a possible 8 year prison sentence but the judge, instead, sentences him to just one month in jail, five years probation and the payment in restitution of $2.5 million. Neil spends his time there serving food to inmates and washing police cars. Such is the price of a life in California.

Hanoi Rocks stumble on for a handful more gigs but the soul has been ripped from the band. They break up early in 1985.

What would have become of Hanoi Rocks had the dream not been so resolutely shattered? Who knows? Maybe they would have become as huge as Guns N'Roses, the band that so successfully picked up their mantle. Or maybe not. Their album ‘Self Destruction Blues’ with its chillingly prescient final track, ‘Dead By Christmas’, may hold the key. They were the James Dean of rock & roll. Dean was similarly destroyed on a Californian highway just as he looked destined to career into the bigtime. Only after his death did the world come to acknowledge his greatness. So too with Hanoi Rocks.

Both Andy and Mike have continued their careers, Andy with his band Live Ammo and Mike as a solo artist. Nasty hooked up with Andy in the Cherry Bombz, formed his own band Cheap & Nasty and then joined Mike in Demolition 23. He has since returned home where he is studying chemistry at university. Sam joined Jetboy and later teamed up with Mike and Nasty in Demolition 23. He has since seemingly disappeared.

But Hanoi Rocks died that night on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. There was always an element of self-immolation about them. They burned brightly but briefly. They could have, should have, gone all the way and become major stars. Instead all that remains is a searing memory scorched into the brains of those of us lucky enough to see them at their peak, and a legacy of critical import in the continuing evolution of rock & roll. They lived by the phrase Too Much Ain’t Ever Enough and died by it too.

But the final word should go to Andy McCoy from his 1995 album, ‘Building On Tradition’:

‘Vince Neil (you pussy you're not man enough to even apologize after 10 years, you know what we mean.)’

Dave Dickson

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