Reading Is Fundamental: Sami Yaffa explains which way The Road Bends
English translation of the Hanoi Rocks/New York Dolls/Michael Monroe bassist’s 2016 autobiography might be the clearest literary peek inside the creative process yet.
Sami Yaffa and his white Thunderbird with MIchael Monroe sometime in Hanoi Rocks’ early ‘80s heyday.
Hanoi Rocks may be the most influential ‘80s rock ‘n’ roll band that has somehow remained sorely underappreciated in the grand scheme. ‘Tis an epic shame. It doesn’t help that the musical movement over which these Finnish exports held the most sway, the Sunset Strip hairspray metal scene of the ‘80s, learned all the wrong lessons from them. But all those bands also got the New York Dolls completely wrong, as well. C’est la whatever.
Beneath the Dolls hand-me-downs draping the Hanois’ lank frames beat a musical imagination whose sophistication left every ‘80s band, rock or otherwise, eating their dust. True, the sonic attack was pure Dolls/Mott The Hoople/Alice Cooper/Clash blitzkrieg, with a pop heart and a dirty soul. Andy McCoy wrote widescreen rock ‘n’ roll symphonies in Technicolor, besides playing slash-n-burn lead guitar that eschewed every r’n’r cliché written since 1955, while possibly creating a few new ones. His six string partner Nasty Suicide owned the steadiest right hand this side of Keith Richards or Malcolm Young, while token Brit Razzle played extroverted-yet-solid drums to match his outsized personality. But no one’s charisma outshone frontman Michael Monroe, whose pipes and musicianship (he was a fine saxophonist and harmonica player, and could ably handle Razzle’s kit as the sticksmen fronted the occasional encore of “Blitzkrieg Bop”) were never masked by his stage presence.
But that filthy, supple low-end? That was all Sami Yaffa, a bass player born to be a New York Doll, which he in fact became once they reformed in the ‘00s. After walking away from Hanoi Rocks following Razzle’s mid-’80s vehicular homicide (for which Vince Neil got off scot free), Yaffa drove many a fine band with his well-thumbed Fender Jazz Bass, many of which were fronted by Monroe. There are also the gypsy/Spanish/dub soundscapes of Mad Juana, equally as good if surprising if all you know of the man are either the Hanois or the Dolls.
Which may be the key to understanding Sami Yaffa: He loves rock ‘n’ roll. But he explores every music but rock ‘n’ roll.
“I put a record on in the bus, and David (Johansen) was surprised,” he recalls in the midst of recounting his Dolls recruitment in The Road Bends: The Autobiography (367pp, Rare Bird, Los Angeles, $27 hardback), the newly published English translation of his 2016 life story. “‘Oh! You don’t just listen to rock?’ I answered that I rarely listened to rock. David for his part listened to whatever, from Emil Zrihan to Nurmidian wedding polka. He burned me a mixed CD full of obscure blues from the Thirties: ‘It’s Cold in China,’ ‘I Live in the Alley,’ etc. Still a treasure of mine.”
But Yaffa grew up in a household with an accomplished artist for a father. His older brother Jone Takamäki is a respected European jazz saxophonist. He carried these things with him through life, even as he indulged his love of the Stones, Dolls, Alice Cooper, AC/DC. Cheap Trick and first-wave punk. His ethno-roots music explorations have taken him to every corner of the world. Along with a wide open mind, it’s made him a citizen of the world, traits which served him well as he hosted Sami Yaffa: Sound Tracker, a series for Finnish TV that resembles a more music-oriented take on Anthony Bourdain’s various shows. But it also deepened his musicianship, and informs every aspect of his life.
Sami Yaffa in more recent times.
Anyone picking up The Road Bends expecting a trashy tell-all, full of tales of rock ‘n’ roll dissipation, will be deeply disappointed. True, there’s a few anecdotes along the lines of, “So, Hanoi Rocks showed up for this festival, and we had this sheet of blotter acid and a big ol’ baggie of coke….” But not enough to script a Behind The Music episode. Furthermore, neither the Hanois nor any of his future bands left a trail of shagged groupies in their wake, or at least Sami didn’t. He indicates at one point that was never his motivation to play music. Making music was. It continues to be.
Rare is the document illuminating the creative process in action like this one, or at least how the muse takes Yaffa and his many bands. The best passages discuss his various ethnic roots musical explorations and how they deepen his rock ‘n’ roll, or feed into the unclassifiable joy that is Mad Juana. The best parts are where he talks about songwriting. For instance, this about “Love’s An Injection”:
“In Finland, they wrote a lot about drinking and it was glorified, but it’s taboo to talk about drugs. Andy had this kind of junkie romanticism. And a huge imagination. Andy created his own storybook, a kind of comic book world. Some people write about what they see and some about what they imagine….Good lines, lyrical hooks are important. Andy always understood that.” He goes on to explain how McCoy listened to REO Speedwagon and Foreigner, because he felt they wrote good songs, and hoped he might break some compositional code. (Funny, I listened to Hanoi Rocks because I thought Andy McCoy wrote songs that pissed all over Foreigner and REO Shitwagon and their fast food version of rock. But that’s just me.) He is quick to add that McCoy preceded his study of American AOR juggernauts with intense examinations of T. Rex, Sex Pistols, The Clash, Stooges, Rolling Stones, and others. Later in the book, he writes of McCoy becoming enamored of flamenco guitar, filling his room with literature on the art. He also tells a tale of Stiv Bators demonstrating how to take an obscure ‘60s garage record and make a new song out of it: “You just turn it around and do it exactly the same length as they do it,” he quotes Bators. “And when the vocals come in, do exactly what they do. Just change the melody a bit, get some new lyrics, and you have a whole song. And it’s yours’!”
Offered alongside signed copies of the book in a special package is “A Rare Bird Vinyl Audiobook” edition of The Road Bends: Yaffa reading excerpts over ambient soundscapes by himself and Janne Haavisto. His narration lends his prose a tone somewhere between Beat poetry and Raymond Chandler not entirely evident in your mind merely reading the book. This gorgeous pink vinyl biscuit definitely deepens the experience, changing the atmosphere a bit.
Chapter Five, Part Two of The Austin Punk Chronicles is up now at The Austin Chronicle.
The original lineup of The Skunks: (l-r) Jesse Sublett, Billy Blackmon, and Eddie Muñoz.
Austin’s first homegrown punk bill, The Violators and The Skunks (pictured above), establishes Raul’s, a Tejano bar across the street from the University Of Texas campus, as our local analog to CBGB/The Roxy/The Masque. Next comes the Bodysnatchers and a trickle of bands that became a flood: "I liked the fact that (punk) was simple and it was back to the roots of rock & roll, stuff that kids could play,” Skunks drummer Billy Blackmon states in the piece. “None of us were great musicians. We weren't Eric Johnson or somebody like that. We weren't on that level, and we had no pretensions of playing like that. We were very hard, we were very fast, and we were very unapologetic." Read more about how the punk virus gripped Texas’ state capitol in the latest installment of my ongoing Austin punk history series at https://www.austinchronicle.com.
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