Metal, Hardcore, Indie, Rock
Former Hanoi Rocks singer Michael Monroe recently spoke with FaceCulture about the band’s dissolution after drummer Nicholas “Razzle” Dingley passed away in December 1984, as per Blabbermouth.
The band was so tight and so close that Sami Yaffa, the bass player, he left. After that, he decided, ‘Okay, that’s it.’ He’s gonna leave. And we were all devastated. And then the band broke up. And, actually, I thought we couldn’t replace Razzle, and Sami had left too. That situation was such that Hanoi was such a cool band and I couldn’t imagine anybody replacing them, so it was better to just call it quits. And I’d rather have the world know Hanoi as it was, as opposed to making it big with what it wasn’t.
Michael responded as follows when asked what he believes would have happened to Hanoi if Razzle had not passed away.
Well, we knew that we were the best band in the world, and we were gonna make it the biggest band in the world. [Laughs] And all the possibilities. We had what it takes. We could have become one of the biggest bands in the world, had we been luckier. But fate had other plans, so that’s what happened.
When asked if it was “hard” for him to let go of Hanoi Rocks, given the band’s immense potential before Razzle’s death, Michael responded as follows.
Only that I lost my best friend. That was the worst thing about it. Losing Razzle, he was such a great guy and such a nice, great personality. And just losing him, we were all devastated, losing our best friend. And, of course, the band was my life. So it was a big, big adjustment. But I knew that rather than having somebody replace Razzle and Sami — I mean, we tried a couple of people auditioning and it just felt really weird; I was, like, ‘Huh, this is not right.’ So I decided, rather than have the band, even if we could have become one of the biggest bands in the world, still it wouldn’t have been right. That would’ve been even worse, ’cause it wouldn’t have been the same band. So I decided it was best to break up the band and just call it quits. And that’s the end of it.
