Could Hanoi Rocks have been bigger than Guns 'n' Roses?

[WizWalt]

I'm asking all of you people in TL;DR who listen to rock music. If this is a bad place to ask, I hope the mods move this topic, I sure don't want to get banned right away when I join. Anyway, Axl Rose himself has said that G'n'R wouldn't exist without Hanoi Rocks. And imo the only thing that prevented the big breakthrough was Hanois drummer Razzle dying in the car crash with Vince Neil when they were starting to make it big. So, what do you guys think? Here is IMO one of their best songs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bFkUjBYSPo
All the guys in the band were 20 or so years old at the time, before 1985. Maybe Hanoi Rocks was the icebreaker for the other Finnish bands you may have heard of, like HIM. but you give me the insights of the american rock music lover!

gogogogo

[hanimal]

Sorry, just listened to that song, no others, but that song was cheesy as hell.
GN'R is legendary. One of the greatest rock bands to ever grace the earth.

p.s. I've heard some people call GN'R a "hairband" and lumping them in with that group is just plain wrong. They transcend all that jive by a magnitude of order.


edit: so I just got leveled?

[WizWalt]

No leveling going on here.
And yes, I think G'nR is one of the all time greatest rock bands, make no mistake. Those of you familiar to Hanoi Rocks prior to this know what I'm saying, and I realize the song I linked can't probably be compared to the GnR music, but Hanoi had such a big influence on those guys that you can't copletely ignore them.

[dcasper70]

I remember them, not well, but still...

hanimal, you have to remember when this stuff came out. Sure it sounds cheesy now, but back in the early 80's this was an emerging sound. Go find Motley Crue's 'Too Fast For Love' or Def Leppard's 'On Through the Night' and you know what I mean. Hanoi Rocks had a similar raw sound that was gaining ground at that time.
HR still had a kind of punk sound to them. You can even feel a little new-waveish in that clip (maybe just hindsight). And back then, this was the sh!t.

To the OP, hard to predict what could have happened, but this child of the 80's says no. They came & went in the very early days of hair bands, before it really took off.
They could have been successful, if they caught the wave, but I don't think they would have been anywhere near the GnR level. That's just being way too optimistic.

[killsadie]

man that band sounds ultra bad

[Dominic]

not sure how losing your drummer would affect anything...

bu no, Hanoi Rocks was never going to be bigger than GNR.

Ratt, maybe.

[JackWilson]

GnR is legendary.

[TomE.]

It's weird, I never cared for GNR, but I certainly think they were light years better than this band based on the song you've linked and 3-4 others I watched at youtube.

The opening riff to this song, "Oriental Beat" is a direct lift of "I Wanna Be Sedated" by the Ramones. Then we get hit with "I wanna rock till I drop, and never stop". Really moving stuff there.

Based on the songs I heard there is no way they were going to be bigger than GNR, and I don't see how GNR could have been influenced by them, but perhaps they shared the same record company or manager or hair stylists, maybe that's why Axel said that.

[daveT]

The question is:

"Could Hanoi Rocks have been bigger than Guns'n'Roses?

They are not. So obv, they couldn't be bigger than GNR, because GNR is bigger.

Did this band die in an airplane crash or something.

[prohornblower]

I listened for 40 seconds and determined "no". Frontman just doesn't have the aura or voice of Axl. I can see where they might have been influential, though.

tighty whities