Axl Rose v Michael Monroe

apex-twin

MICHAEL MONROE
HORNS AND HALOS

Written by Ali P

Let’s start, not with an intro to Michael Monroe and his new album, but with a moment of silence for Guns and Roses.

At their best, Guns and Roses were the greatest band in the world. I can prove it with charts and graphs. There is apparently a band with that name still in existence, filled with musicians you won’t recognise. That band is fronted by a guy that sort of might remind you of Axl Rose, but it’s difficult to tell if it’s really him.

What if Axl Rose, instead of trying to capture past glories while forgetting everything that made him great, had kept his shit together? What if you could go one better than that and find the guy that Axl wanted to be, the one who really bled the soul of punk into rock’n’roll and then into the veins of G’n’R and all the bands that followed? The guy that they all idolized and copied? What if he still had his shit together and was still making great music and looking like a candy-floss haired, tight trousered, piece of rawking street trash?

That’s Michael Monroe.

And although it’s a disservice to the fact that his band Hanoi Rocks were there first, if you too miss ‘proper Guns and Roses’, you owe it to yourself to give Horns and Halos a listen. Hanoi Rocks – despite being from Finland – were the origin of the sleazy LA glam-metal style and sound that took chunks of punk, Bowie, T-Rex, Iggy and had them bone Aerosmith and Led Zep blues rock to produce the eyeliner-humbucker-heroin-in-a-vein-in-your-cock-rock that blew through the 80’s and left behind a whole load of awesome tunes and washed up messes of musicians and prolapsed groupies, which Kurt Cobain had to save everyone from.

BlackVeil-Arse-Felching-Brides have probably never even heard of Mike Monroe despite stealing all his tricks secondhand, but he’s not just showing a young crowd how it should be done, but also all those that came after him that floundered along the way.

So don’t just sigh and put on Appetite for Destruction again; get this – as well as some old Hanoi Rocks stuff too.

Despite a few callbacks to the 80’s and glory days of Hanoi Rocks, Horns and Halos isn’t retro; it’s Monroe doing what he does and making it look easy. I generally want to hear new bands and new sounds, but this is just so damn good and musically spot on without it ever sounding clichéd, that there’s no issue of ‘old fart trying to recapture past glories’ here.

This is the pure essence of spandex-sausage-rock, not a warmed over rehash of it.

Let’s talk about some highlights from the songs themselves then:

TNT Diet’ blasts off the album with a familiar staccato riff style borrowed from the New York Dolls and a fast build of a vocal. The lyrics are so obvious that they should be a massive cliché, but they’re somehow filled with a sense of rightness that’s hard to explain. This sounds like a stripped back punk track, until you pay attention and notice the sneaky key change and middle section are actually pretty complex. A master-class in how to apply some clever tricks to a basic song, the more I think about this the more impressed I am.

‘Ballad of the Lower East Side’ is a love song to the ‘junkies, pimps and whores’ Monroe used to know and how he’s bemoaning his old neighbourhood is ‘squeaky clean and there’s no place left to stay’. The delivery of the line ‘rats and roaches in my kitchen – oh fucking hell’ is just beautiful and the guitar line that comes after is just so right that when Monroe comes back with his elegy for ‘that Apple in decay’, that there’s a kind of wrecked poem hiding in here. This song gets in and out in the perfect three minutes and it’s a fucking choon. If you don’t like this, you deserve One Direction and Justin Beiber for the rest of your life.

‘Eighteen Angels’ has a kind of lazy strut and sense of tension that gets released in a sleazy chorus that I think is all about the sorts of wrong kinds of sex that get you interesting wing patches from motorcycle gangs. As they say in jazz clubs -nice.

‘Child of the Revolution’ is a slightly wistful callback to the day, taking a 60’s style protest song and doing something relevant with it. Poppy and punchy, this actually has a message about standing up to The Man that’s cleverer than most – ‘Better well-read than dead’ – is a great line. The final track on the album, ‘Hands are Tied’ is a Stonesey blues-rock stomp that’s better than anything the Stones have done in years, that brings the sleaze with some sexy sax.

To make an overall summing up of Horns and Halos? Well, I’m not sure if Michael Monroe ever really went away, and sure, underneath the bleached locks and hairspray he’s a wrinkly old rocker, but this is a far better record than anyone like Aerosmith or the Rolling Stones have released in decades. Whilst it’s hardly original it’s showing all of the newer bands who look back to the 80’s rock era how it really should be done, without ever sounding dated.

10 out of 10 – I might be a bit ashamed to put on a guilty pleasure Poison record these days, but I’ll stand up and fight anyone that’s got a problem with Michael Monroe.

http://www.punkprospect.com/michael-mon … 4578920412

A little-known curiosity is that while Hanoi Rocks preceded and inspired Guns, Michael Monroe is actually some months younger than Axl.

misterID

My niece saw Michael Monroe on TV a few months back and she asked "what was wrong with that old lady?"

Don't be throwing stones at Axl's looks when comparing him to Monroe.

And that song sucks. Big time.

And The Rolling Stone's just released a very kick ass album, recently.

Sky Dog

gotta say I kinda like the song...

polluxlm

Song is alright, but starting the article with several paragraphs on Axl Rose is a bit spurious. Even Adler managed to make an authentic album with some good tunes, that doesn't mean Axl Rose should call up the top hat and make AFD 2.0.

tejastech08

So Monroe influenced Axl. Big deal. Axl was a hell of a lot more talented and put out a lot better music.

Axlin16

This story brings me back to that age old argument post-AFD of "what should GN'R have done", which has been debated to death not just by fans but by anyone who was a GN'R fan, specifically in reference to Axl's overwhelming dominate direction of the future of Guns by the late 80's.

First off, the biggest topic among debate was ALWAYS "GN'R was a punk band during AFD". I have never, ever thought GN'R was a punk band. Granted I was way too young to fully grasp that Strip '86 band vs. the Ritz '88 band at that point, but I was old enough by the 1991 reboot of GN'R kicking off at Rio II to understand even as a small child who mixed in GN'R videos in-between airings of Ducktales, that by 1991 GN'R FIRMLY was NOT a punk band, and if they were it was long gone.

Duff has argued it. Slash has argued it. Hell even Tommy Stinson has argued it. I may not be a band member, but I just don't see it. I think these guys like Duff (Ramones), Tommy (Clash), and Slash (T-Rex) and all of these punk acts that were a huge influence on them were never in making GN'R a punk band.

Axl, who from punk nerds frankly, got all this street cred from these people (at least in his 1986-1988 version) was the next punk superstar. I respond to this with a resounding...

HUH?

What the fuck are you people on? I felt that way then, in high school, now, and for-fucking-ever. What are you seeing? Even if Axl talked about loving UK Subs, or calling Never Mind The Bollocks one of his favorite albums, and saw Hanoi Rocks as an influence, Axl never struck me as the kind of guy that loved punk beyond popping in an occasional Sex Pistols or Stooges tape and pretending for an hour he understood aggression. Something tells me W.A.S.P and Motley Crue had a far greater affect on Axl's perception.

Oh and btw, the Hanoi Rocks influence on GN'R has been WAYYYYYYYYYYYY overstated by all involved over the years. GN'R were not influenced by Hanoi Rocks, they were influenced by The New York Dolls, no different than Hanoi Rocks. The only thing that Axl took from Michael Monroe during that period was "his look". The similarites ended there.

Even when Axl was wearing leather chaps, and dressing on rainbow-colored silk bandanas that would make Bret Michaels cry "gayness" as well as Axl wearing eye-liner, Axl still was an obvious redneck from the mid-west with influences so crazy it would be the equivalent of Elton John becoming the lead vocalist/pianist of Lynyrd Skynyrd if one could imagine.

Axl's influences were firmly Freddie Mercury's music with a Gregg Allman presentation. Even then.

Even by the time the band rolled out The Spaghetti Incident in 1993 in an effort to re-capture their "punk ethos", most reacted to that album with a resounding.... HUH?

Only industry people, and long-haired virgins in black-rimmed glasses with Ramones t-shirts that enjoyed sniffing their own farts and claiming the Mats were the best band that never was, ever saw GN'R as a punk band.

The world didn't see it that way. Period. Regardless of what Axl did, or didn't do.

I for one, as a fan, as critical as I am of what Axl's doing, commend him for doing something Michael Monroe never had the balls to do... something everyone doesn't want you to do. Axl did that. Not Mike. Axl. Not Slash. Axl. Not Izzy. Axl. Not Duff. Axl. Etc. Fucking Axl.

Axl never gets that kind of credit, because Chinese is seen as an utter failure. Only by those hung up on what GN'R is or was. This is a classic argument, that still shows no signs of dying out. "Yada yada yada, GN'R was a punk band, or a metal band, or a hard rock band, or a southern rock band, or...etc." GN'R, other we can all agree is a 'rock' band, never pigeonholed itself into a category like that.

I commend Axl for shaking it up each album. Although he looks stranged in a lawman hat, fu manchu mustache, and a cane in his 50s in 2013 touring a revised nostaglia, he still has remained remarkably current.

I would be utterly embarassed EVEN FURTHER to be an Axl Rose fan had he been the same age in an alternate universe still working leather outfits, with fried dyed 80's glam hair (extensions) and fashion, recording songs outdated in 1989, trying to be the same exact thing he was 25 years ago. That's lame to me. That's why many have always seen rock as a young man's game.

Bloodflower

All one needs to do is simply listen to AFD and Lies to know Guns N' Roses at their core WERE a punk band. It's blatantly obvious in the music. You can hear it without even looking for it. Not only that Gn'R were in so many ways the very essence of punk rock. To disagree with that is one thing, to scoff at the idea and suggest anyone who thinks it so are high on something is just refusing to see what's crystal clear and staring us all right in the face. Gn'R were a punk band who had virtuoso talent. Who cares what they became they WERE punk rock.

That song is pretty cool. I like it.

Axlin16

GN'R were NOT at their core a punk band. GN'R at their core were a bunch of rock enthusiasts paying homage to OTHER BANDS that WERE punk like the Sex Pistols, but with an Aerosmith/AC-DC presentation.

That is NOT the same thing. That's how i've always seen it. That's not a punk band. It's a tribute to a punk band. That is GN'R.

In other words, the only true punk member in GNR's history was Tommy Stinson, even slighting Duff.

Bloodflower

Shadow of Your Love
Heartbreak Hotel cover
It's So Easy
Think About You
Anything Goes
You're Crazy - AFD version
Reckless Life
Nice Boys
Perfect Crime
Garden of Eden
Double Talkin Jive
Shotgun Blues

Add into it their attitude and what they represented and yes they were very much a punk band. It's undeniably in the music.

apex-twin

For the record, I'm with Axlin on this one. Can't see Guns as a punk band, even if their music may have contained punk influences. Hell, Live Like a Suicide was a Geffen release, masqueraded as a DIY product, in order for the record company to create them some nebulous street cred.

The one thing that really stands out with Mike Monroe as opposed to Axl is his shape. The dude's still up there with Axl and Baz as an energetic stage performer, and still has the build of a 90s Axl. In comparison, Ax really let himself go physically after 2007 and has since secluded to coasting.

My biggest gripe would be relatively easy to fix. Fine, play your greatest hits on tour to ensure attendance. Fine, stick by your pooped-upon vanity project and ram choice cuts down the punters' throats. But where's the desire to write music? Part of me applauds Axl for telling the nay-sayers to piss off and for gaining some new respect for this lineup by excessive touring.

But at the same time, telling everyone how he's moving forward - while merely rotating additional CD songs in the set - got old a few years back.

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