Words: Mark Beaumont Portraits: Will Ireland

T hedoor of Levykauppa Keltainen Jäänsärkijä record shop opens to a crisp Helsinki spring, yet in blows a hurricane. A twitching, motormouthing hurricane in sleeveless red leather, snakeskin boots, mirrored shades and glow-in-thedark nail stars. Jittering into the shop, it flaps itself with a scarlet fan and checks its sunburst blond locks in a handheld mirror, admirers trailing. “Are you from Hanoi Rocks? I can’t believe it!” gasps a passing fan who, as he bags an autograph, says he recently left St Petersburg for Estonia… “Because of… y’know.”

“Yeah, it’s not your fault your leader is a dick,” Michael Monroe says with a grin. “Just have a good time in rock’n’roll, okay?” As ex-Hanoi singer, resurgent Finn-rock hero and judge on The Voice Of Finland, Monroe says he gets that a lot. “Yeah, yeah,” he jabbers, “but it’s nice, it’s part of the deal. That’s why I always carry these cards with me.” He hands me a pre-signed cartoon postcard from an inside pocket. “Autograph cards. If I start signing on a street corner there’d be a line of locals getting autographs. I don’t mind, it’s part of the job. Anyone who complains about being popular is full of shit. Why’d they create a career like that, then?”

Out on the streets here in the Finnish capital – aseamless union of business and bohemia where quaint fishing ships fill the harbour and chic cocktails are worth every cent of their eyewatering price tags – Monroe is a traffic-stopping scandal of brazen rock’n’roll, a walking sliver of Sunset somehow materialised in Europe. But scuttling inside Yellow Submarine (what the record shop’s name translates to) he’s suddenly king of his own glam-rock fiefdom.

“I turn sixty this year, so I can’t die young any more, right? I live my days , Idon’t count my years.”

The shop – heavy on punk, new wave, rock, prog and metal – was only founded in 1989, and was situated next door between 1993 and 2007, but Hanoi Rocks are embedded in these walls. In pride of place in the racks by the door is a copy of Monroe’s celebrated 2011 album Sensory Overdrive, complete with its cover shot of fabulous fingernails holding open a shocked eyeball: “It’s my eye,” he says, “forced to watch the world in ruins and decay, and I cannot shut them.”