Tagged: interview
MIKE MONROE – straight in your face
Time for another look in The Rearview Mirror.
Back in 2003 I did a phone interview with Hanoi Rocks-frontman Mike Monroe. I wish every rock star was as honest, openhearted and totally in your face as Mike was. At least THAT evening, he was a journalist’s dream.
When my photographer friend and I met him (and Hanoi-guitarist Andy McCoy) in Malmo a few years later, he was everybody’s nightmare. But that story is too long to tell here, so I’ll save that for another day. Let’s just say that he owes us about 100 bucks for Indian food!
Anyhooo…. In this interview, he talked about everything and anything: Drugs, alcohol and groupies. Overcoming personal tragedies. Religion. Movies and actors. Computers and TV. Fear. Cooking. Biographies. Marilyn Manson…and a bunch of other things.
Still editing some of those clips, phone interviews tend to be a bit “scratchy” so, I’ll add them one by one. If you like Mike Monroe – keep checking back. Enjoy!
MIKE MONROE ON MÖTLEY CRÜE & “THE DIRT”:
“That’s a bunch of horseshit!”
MIKE MONROE ON THE ROCKSTAR-MYTH:
“They cheat on their wives and then they go onstage and sing about how their baby left them….
What the fuck do you expect when you’re screwing around like banshees!”
MIKE ON COPING WITH PERSONAL TRAGEDIES:
“If you can find one friend, one person who you can totally trust, who knows you as well as anybody can know you – then you’re really lucky.”
MIKE’S BEST BEAUTY-TIP! ;-)
…last but not least – Mike (and Axl) kicking some ass in Dead, Jail or Rock’n’roll!
Aerosmith’s Joe Perry talks about the monkey on his back…
As mentioned in last night’s blog, I was digging through a whole bag full of old cassettes – recordings from interviews that go all the way back to 1988.
THIS particular interview from 1989 was one of the more….unusual ones. Aerosmith had just released their album Pump, and I got an interview with guitarist Joe Perry (who has been my “drool object” for years, by the way!).
The thing was, that I had a dayjob at the time, at a bindery and the interview could only take place at some point during the day. I had no idea how to solve that – but I accepted the interview-time that the record company gave me, and figured that I would have to find a solution when the time came.
I was not allowed to leave my “work station” just as I pleased – we had our specific breaks at specific times. If you had to do something outside of those times…you simply didn’t.
So…In the middle of work, I told my colleagues that I had to go to the bathroom and left. When I knew that nobody could see me, I sneaked quickly around the corner to a payphone that was sort of hidden. I attached my recorder to the phone and quickly called the record company that was supposed to put me through to Joe.
The whole time I was scared to death that one of the bosses would walk by and find me there. Would have been pretty hard to explain why I was talking to Aerosmith’s guitarist during working hours…
In parts of the interview you can even hear the machines in the background, but not in this particular segment. :-)
The audio quality sucks, but so did the circumstances. :-) Yet, it was an interview to remember!
Here’s Joe first talking a little bit about “the new album” Pump – and then explaining why it’s so easy to get addicted to drugs and alcohol when you’re in the music business.
Enjoy.
1992 Donington Monsters of Rock and Skid Row press conference
Found an old press conference with SKID ROW from when they played the Donington Monsters of Rock-festival back in 1992.
It’s probably been on my show at Radio MCB since there’s music in there too (don’t remember anymore, feels ages ago).
A very short clip from this press conference is in the “Roadkill“-video, for you old Skids-fans and collectors. :-)) The reporter who sat right next to me was from Spain or something and had a funny accent, so when she asked Sebastian “Have you calmed down?” she said it in such a strange way that he thought she said “Have you got a condom?”. Not that I’m surprised he interpreted it his own Baz-way! :-)
This was such a crazy day. The bands were staying all over the place and there were press conferences here and there around the Donington Park area – not to mention individual interviews, so it was hell getting from one place to another.
I was scheduled to do an interview with Blackie Lawless in… I don’t remember exactly, might have been Milton Keynes. Skid Row were about to kick off this press conference at the same time – in Nottingham. At the time – I was more interested in hanging with the skids than with Blackie, so I rushed off to Nottingham and asked my friend Ozzie to do the interview with Blackie for me. It was damn brave of her to do that, she had never done that before, and on top of all, she was a big W.A.S.P-fan and was dead nervous. Her interview turned out great. :-)
In the meantime, I was in Nottingham, attending this circus. Cause it was usually a circus when Skid Row were involved. :-)
However….it got late, people didn’t want to go even long after the press conference had finished.
It was just like that with Skid Row – there was always something happening, always some kind of party going on. And if there wasn’t, they could turn any boring joint into a Party-Central.
My hotel was in London and well…. I didn’t know back then that trains don’t run late in the evenings in England, so I was stuck. I ended up paying a CAB to take me from Nottingham to London – and then when I got back to Sweden just slid the bill to my editor…. He never said anything, just paid it, no questions asked. Pure luck!
Donington rocked, great memories from there, I remember how everybody was there in the backstage area. K K Downing (Judas Priest) was walking around, the Magnum-guys, the dudes from Venom, the bands, other familiar faces… If I only knew where I have those backstage-photos right now. I’ll post them as soon as I rememember where they are. :-)
But for now – enjoy the press conference from August 1992. Here is what the press/backstage/artist itinerary looked like…..Funny with the actual names of the artists in there, to clarify things for the backstage crew.
Talks with Rob “Metal God” Halford
I wonder how long it would take to actually organize every single interview I’ve ever done since 1988.
Not to mention everything else: Photos, tickets, all kinds of memorabilia…. I’ve tried several times and I’m still nowhere close to getting any kind of overview of all this stuff. My home looks like a messy version of Hard Rock Café, people are joking about how I should start charging visitors and call it a rock-museum. Maybe I will, so I can finance all my trips! :)
I’ll be posting stuff like this from time to time – and it hasn’t been posted anywhere else ever before, so I hope other fans will enjoy these as much as I do. :-)
(I did about three 1-hour long interviews with Rob, and also with Glenn and K.K for this Judas Priest cover-story for Sweden Rock Magazine. I think this one was one of them, but I can’t swear on it. Its just very likely. :) )
Last conversations with K.K Downing
Now that K.K Downing has “OFFICIALLY” left the building, I went back to my latest interviews with him, trying to find clues…Did he say something, imply something, was there even a way to know that it would come to this?
I can’t find anything. I’m horribly angry and disappointed by the way Judas Priest and their management have handled this, but I won’t get into that. I guess it doesn’t even matter anymore. It’s all about money and business. Ideals don’t exist anymore, nothing matters but the mighty $$$$.
I suppose people are ok with that, I’m just a dinosaur who expected so much more from people I have loved my whole life. Judging from the comments on the judaspriest.com message board, people don’t care about being tricked into buying tickets under false pretenses.I’m a fan, not an idiot. I can’t imagine how I will ever be able to look at that band feeling that they are genuine.
Anyway…. The sound quality of this interview is pretty bad – because I pushed the “Long Play”-button by mistake. Very very annoying when you’re talking to one of the Metal Gods, but nothing you can do about it unfortunately. :-(
“I live and breathe Priest” – was one of the quotes in this interview.
He also wanted these words to be on his tombstone: “The sinner rider has ridden into the storm”. How very true.
And this interview (below) was made just a few months before the one above.
This is from Sweden Rock Festival, I remember how it was like a Fort Knox to even get to the area where Priest were. You had to pass one security gate after another, have people escorting you, it was like going to meet the president or something.
When I stepped into the portakabin where K.K was, it was like entering a SAUNA. For some reason he was freezing and had heated the place up and seemed to think the temperature was perfect. Ugh! :)
Didn’t have much time, other people were waiting to talk to K.K and the others, just a short hello-and-see-ya. Just another interview to add to my “rearview mirror”….:
IN THE REARVIEW MIRROR 