In the middle of his ongoing tour in Finland, Hanoi Rocks’ Michael Monroe sat down for a chat with Classic Rock and talked about his career. At one point during the interview, he delved into his collaboration with Axl Rose on a Guns N’ Roses cover and defended his ‘humble request’ from the GN’R frontman, saying:
“I didn’t ask for money for doing ‘Ain’t It Fun.’ So many people saw dollar signs and got greedy when it came to Guns N’ Roses, which I found quite obnoxious. All I asked was to have ‘In memory of Stiv Bators’ in the album credits and to spell my name right. Axl replied: ‘Yes, of course!'”
Commenting on Bators’ memory, he went on:
“I was so happy that I was able to do this for my late, dear friend and to raise awareness of Stiv Bators and the Dead Boys. Now millions of their fans could see Stiv’s name and hopefully find out more about him.”
Monroe also gave details about the recording process of the song during the interview:
“The recording of the song was magical. Stiv was definitely there in spirit. When Stiv and me used to record vocals in the studio, Stiv had this ritual in which he placed a bunch of burning candles in a circle around me and had me sing the vocal inside the ‘protective’ circle.”
He explained how they recreated the scene by adding:
“So me and Axl collected all the candles we could find in the studio and made a circle of them around us. We were placed facing each other. Then we lit up the candles and sang the song face to face. In some parts, Axl even sounds just like Stiv. I remember thinking that they had the same kind of voodoo.”
The singer also took part in Guns N’ Roses’ 1991 song ‘Bad Obsession.’ During the same interview, he explained how he ended up playing the harp in this record and said:
“They sent me a rough mix of the song and asked me if I would play the harp and the Saxophone on it. I dug the song and said yes, so they flew me to LA for the recording session. When I arrived in the studio, they played me some of the new stuff they had recorded, like ‘Live And Let Die,’ which sounded really impressive blasting out of the big speakers.”
You can read his full interview here.