In 1984, shortly after Hanoi Rocks moved from Stockholm (where they’d already resettled from their hometown of Helsinki) to London, Sami Yaffa, Nasty Suicide, and Razzle recorded with Knox, singer/songwriter of the Vibrators, as Fallen Angels. Mike Monroe and Andy McCoy also guested on the record, credited as Cosmic Ted and the Psychedelic Kid.
Knox, who shared management with Hanoi Rocks, had a lot of material he hadn’t recorded with the Vibrators, and the managers, doing what they do, thought “hey, why don’t we have ‘im do it with these lads then?”
The band recorded the single ‘Amphetamine Blue’ and an album at Alaska Studios under the Waterloo arches in London, but never toured with this line-up.
The Vibrators had been kicking around the UK since 1976, recording sessions for John Peel and moving rapidly toward the front of Brit-punk scene, releasing their debut on Epic in 1977. But even early on they gravitated toward the riffs of what would later become glam-punk, supporting Iggy Pop in 1977 and backing a post-Mott the Hoople Ian Hunter in 1978.
And Stiff Little Fingers? Well, aside from lifting their name from a Vibrators’ song of the same title, their riffs were also not a million miles away from what lay just 5 or 6 years ahead. They did, after all begin life in Belfast as a rock cover band named after a Deep Purple song (‘Highway Star’).
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