Classic Rock
“The Complete Collection 1981-1984” comes out on 13 November through BMG as a six-LP and six-CD set. It gathers the first five Hanoi Rocks albums and adds a rarities record titled “Motorvatin’!!!”, with BBC live sessions and demos that have never been released. As a preview, the band have released the BBC recording of “Underwater World” this week.
The set holds “Bangkok Shocks, Saigon Shakes, Hanoi Rocks” (1981), “Self Destruction Blues” (1982), “Back To Mystery City” (1983) and “Two Steps From The Move” (1984). For “Oriental Beat”, from 1982, it uses not the original mix but “The RE(AL)MIX” of 2022.
“The BBC Session was recorded by Dale Griffin (‘Buffin’) who was the drummer of Mott The Hoople, one of our absolute favourite bands of all time,” recalls Michael Monroe. Griffin and Overend “Pete” Watts had produced “Back To Mystery City” because the band could not get Ian Hunter, whom they had asked first. Hunter turned up later, during the Bob Ezrin sessions for “Two Steps From The Move”: “Bob knew that we were huge Ian Hunter fans” and brought him in to write lyrics. Hunter co-wrote three songs — “I Can’t Get It”, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “Underwater World” — and said he would come back with the words in about a week. “However, he was so inspired by the songs that he wrote them all the same night when he got back home,” says Monroe.
He has a concrete explanation for the tempo of the BBC take. “At the time of the BBC session, the band was in a good place in many ways,” he says. “However, the substance abuse had increased quite a bit among the band and this surely has to do with the tempo of this version of ‘Underwater World’ since it’s incredibly slow!” He says he wishes they had sped it up a little in the mastering, but chose to leave it as it was: “I guess it’s best to present the band just as it was – perfectly flawed at times.”
The physical edition comes with a 36-page photobook of previously unseen shots and art cards of the five album sleeves.
Text by Enric Vilaplana