Ok, here's my special memory, which in part has made Hanoi Rocks one of the strongest influences on my life so far.

It was the Summer of 1984 when I got into Hanoi Rocks, I was 16. I had just finished school that year and was enjoying the summer holiday when I rented the Video "All Those Wasted Years". Wow! I was completely bowled over by the performance, energy and quality of the music. I read various articles from different music publications about the band and I was hooked. At a time when I was making up my mind about what to do in my life, traveling the world playing in a Rock' n' Roll band had to be the number 1 job in the world!.

Anyhow summer ended and college beckoned. I introduced a few friends to the music of Hanoi at college and found a group of friends in the common room that shared the taste of the post-punk rock n roll bands like Hanoi , Thunders and the Lords of the New Church.

Eventually in October 1984 I finally had a chance to see the Band at the Lyceum Ballroom London. Wow what a show, I was completely exhausted afterwards - Hanoi were absolutely awesome and as good as the performance in "All Those Wasted Years". After the show waiting for the 3.00am Paper Train back to Portsmouth me and my friend Stuart decided we had to convince some of the others from the Common Room to see the fantastic Hanoi Rocks at some time in the near future.

Our chance to prove to our friends back in the common room that Hanoi were definitely worth checking out, came when Hanoi announced that they would play Portsmouth Guildhall in December '84 - Perfect, we would all get tickets.

One day in mid-December that year I walked in to the common room and one of my friends there was reading either Sounds or Melody Maker and he read the article about the terrible accident in which Razzle had been killed. I was in shock. It was announced a few days later that the date at Portsmouth Guildhall was canceled.

Roughly on about the 18th December' 84, there was an Xmas shopping trip to London, so myself and Stuart, who went to the Lyceum with me, decided we would go. As we walked down Oxford Street that day we noticed what we thought to be a Michael Monroe lookalike propped up against a shop window. As I walked past the penny dropped this guy was wearing exactly the same clothes in Oxford St, in the middle of the day, as Michael had been wearing live on stage at the Lyceum in October. I span around realising this was Mr Monroe and walked up and said "Mike I'm really sorry to hear about Razzle" and we talked for about 20 minutes about what had happened, with Michael blaming himself for having busted his ankle & starting the dreadful chain of events. He was very difficult to understand because of his accent and he spoke so softly ( like he was trying to preserve his voice ) and was obviously still upset by what had happened. We said our goodbyes and Michael wished me "good luck kid".

We carried on walking down Oxford St and turned into Regent Street and were confronted with Mr Nasty Suicide walking towards us with his girlfriend. We all walked past and agreed with each other that Nasty looked too mean to approach to say hello to.

And that is my true memory of Hanoi Rocks from 1984. I would never of believed that I would have to wait until the year 2002 to see them perform again at Camden Palace. The wait was worth it though, Hanoi were still fantastic 18 years later. Keep on Rocking!!!!!!

In between these years I had been in a couple of bands myself including the "Scarlet Tarts" ( We used to cover 'Tragedy' ) and "The Ghosts of Lovers". There is now a website about the band out there - click here to see it! ( I'm the one wearing the hat )

Love

'Scamps'

xxxxx