Energetic to the brink of hyperactivity, Michael Monroe, the artist formerly known as Matti Antero Kristian Fagerholm, was born on June 17, 1962. An appropriate juncture for one who’s come to inhabit, if not define, a place where rock’n’roll and glamour intersect. Monroe, a blond who’s clearly still having way more fun than is strictly decent: all Bambi-in-the-headlights eyes, rapid-fire wit, wardrobe set to ‘stun’ and instinctive charisma marks out his time of birth as “the same year that the Rolling Stones were born and two months before Marilyn Monroe died”.
A Swedish-speaking Finn whose anecdote-spattered, mid-Atlantic chat is laced with more than a little gor-blimey-guvnor Tooting Bec wreckage, Monroe grew up as the youngest of three brothers to parents entrenched in the Scandinavian media. No stranger to celebrity, his childhood was comfortable and, as with many of his generation, relatively monochrome and unremarkable until a televisual encounter with an irresistible emissary of rock’n’roll. After setting his eyes upon Ozzy Osbourne, nothing would ever be quite the same for him again.
