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Qualität des Beitrags: Beteiligte Poster: varishiiri Forum: http://www.finplace.net.ms Forenbeschreibung: Suomenmusiikki aus dem Unterforum: The Rasmus Antworten: 1 Forum gestartet am: Mittwoch 08.02.2006 Sprache: englisch Link zum Originaltopic: Metal Edge magazine (March 2007 issue) Letzte Antwort: vor 16 Jahren, 11 Monaten, 28 Tagen, 19 Stunden, 24 Minuten
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varishiiri - 30.04.07Metal Edge magazine (March 2007 issue)
Metal Edge Interview
March 2007 Issue
By Francesco Paciocco
THE RASMUS
"I feel bad, I don't want to throw them out", goes the reaction of Lauri Ylönen in a story about all of the crow stuffed-animals he gets from fans around the world, piling up in the back of the tour bus like a miniature FAO Schwartz on wheels. On a more serious note, however, something must be in the glaciers of Finland that has gotten into the drinking water. Music owes a lot to this small country nestled in the northern hemisphere and its debt increases by the day. Being most well-known for churning out H.I.M. and Children of Bodom, quality music is naught a problem for our friends up north.
Forming in 1994 in Helsinki, the nation's capital, The Rasmus started out as a mere cover band. Teenagers at the time, they quit school and turned their focus to music, netting a deal with Warner Music Finland and releasing Peep, their debut album. Abandoning their garages and packing their gear, the band embarked on a nationwide tour that spanned over a hundred shows and you thought sixteen-year-olds were better off working newspaper routes and Dairy Queens. Peep became a Gold record, igniting a searing fire that would continue to drive The Rasmus forward.
Playboys followed a year later, again bestowing The Rasmus with Gold status and a Finnish Grammy Award for "Best New Artist." The accompanying tour would include performances alongside Rancid, Dog Eat Dog, and a gig at the Helsinki Olympic Stadium in front of thousands. Continuing to release hit albums and breaking into the UK market with 2003's Dead Letters, The Rasmus created their own self-proclaimed genre, "death-pop", a blend of sing-song choruses, thick chords, and morbid themes. Their sound explores various musical textures using strings, pianos, and synths to create dark atmospheres dripping with melody and harmony.
Their latest album, Hide From the Sun, continues to chart new territory and is easily the tightest offering of the band yet. Although Hide From the Sun was released a year ago overseas, its widespread success has produced a whirlpool effect on fans of edgier music, warranting a stab State-side. Now after ten years of hard work, numerous prestigious accolades, and dozens of bottles of eyeliner, The Rasmus, comprised of Lauri Ylönen on vocals, Pauli Rantasalmi on guitar, Aki Hakala on drums, and Eero Heinonen on bass, are aiming to spread the good word here in America. Metal Edge thought it would be a good to chat with vocalist Lauri Ylönen on the finer points of ceramic pottery and Namibian sculptures. Declining, Lauri chose to discuss The Rasmus' career in music instead.
METAL EDGE: How did all you meet each other?
Lauri Ylönen: We met in school, way before we put the band together. We formed The Rasmus in 1994 for a Christmas party in our school. We did cover songs from Metallica and The Red Hot Chili Peppers. We were all into the same kind of music that's what really brought us together.
ME: Was American music popular at the time in Finland?
LY: Yes, very much so. Guns'n'Roses was big. I was also a fan of Skid Row and all those types of bands. People would tell me, "You can't like Skid Row" and I was like "Hell yeah I do! They have good melodies, shut up!"
ME: What does 'The Rasmus' mean in Finnish?
LY: It has no meaning really. It's just a Scandinavian sounding word. I wanted it to have energy when people spoke it.
ME: You used to be called 'Rasmus' but then changed the name to 'The Rasmus', How come?
LY: Our fans would complain because they went to London and thought they were going to see us performing but instead there was this DJ performing under the same name. They were really pissed off. So we thought it would be better to add the 'The' than have no fans coming to our shows. A lot of our fans think it's the stupidest name for a band, ever [laughs].
ME: What was the music scene like in Finland when you were first starting out?
LY: It was very different. We didn't have any of our bands that were known abroad. It was pretty much only band called Hanoi Rocks, like, they were living in America for a couple a years. We were all like, "We wanna go to America too!". It was very naïve but also very self confident. We wanted to take over the world and thought we would be bigger than...The Beatles [laughs].
ME: So did you all plan to become professional recording artists or did you all just want to hang out and play music?
LY: We started very young. I felt really...insecure. My self-esteem wasn't right. When we came closer together it got better, and it kept us playing. You suddenly felt like a somebody. I've never been the best singer, none of us are the best musicians at all, but it's the feeling between the guys in the band that makes us better. You get on stage to show people what you can do--it never really went wrong because of the energy and chemistry that was there.
ME: Sixteen-years-old, a Gold record, and being on tour. Any time to breathe?
LY: Yeah...it was an amazing feeling. It all happened so fast. You try to do some school and be on the road at the same time, doing the photoshoots and stuff. It was really weird. And, it was really difficult to control. I totally flipped, which was very surprising. Suddenly there's alcohol, girls, all the things you've never had before. And you're like 'Oh yeah!' and you start to enjoy it.
ME: Do you think you missed out on being teenager?
LY: I've lived the different life of a teenager. I always felt that I was a bit older, mentally. My friends, at the time, were also older. i think I was being a more of a serious kid. Sometimes, I would still get a little scared.
ME: How were you able to move from being successful in Finland, Sweden, Germany, and Estonia and then translate that success into the UK?
LY: It took a long, long, time. Like, you know, the first eight or so years, we only played Finland. We went to London to play one show which was bullshit. After eight years, we finally moved and has a chance to play in Sweden and Norway. Then, it happened big-time in Germany. And then, maybe two years after that, in UK. I just don't know how it happened, though. We really count on touring, we always spent all the money generated from touring into playing our shows. And on doing these shows on the side, like the one we recently played in America, you have to pay out of your ass, that's the truth. It's like, we really believe in touring. That's how the word gets out.
ME: How would Finnish fans compare to European fans?
LY: Well, uh, Finnish people are quite...shy. And they drink more to get over this shyness. I have the same habit. If we would go to Italy for example, people are not so reserved. They come really close and try to touch you--your hair, everything...they want a piece of you. But if we would go to Finland, they would walk on the other side of the street. It's like that. Like, I'm not really good with talking to strangers.
ME: Anything worth mentioning to your grandkids from touring?
LY: We're really into doing practical jokes on each other. One time, the bass player [laughs], he peed in the pint of the beer that the guitar player was supposed to drink on his amplifier. The bass player switched them [laughs], this kind of stuff. He drank it but then he poured it on the bass player's hair. They both got to taste it. Stuff like that, it's pretty childish but it keeps you awake, though.
ME: Were The Chili Peppers fun to tour with?
LY: That was really great. I was really, really nervous, of course. We didn't really get to hang out with them, though. I did get to chat with Chad Smith a bit, he asked if we were the opening band, that was it. It was great to play in front of their audience, they had something like 14,000 people- we never really had the chance to play that kind of audience before. It was some challenge to play when people are waiting to hear The Chili Peppers. You learn a lot. I love to watch them on stage, you can really feel that they are having fun together. There are so many bands around the world at the moment that the singer and the guitarist have to travel in different tour buses because they hate each other. They go on stage and bail out right after. But, they [The Chili Peppers] are fun to watch when they're doing their thing.
ME: Anything between you and Ville Valo that you want to come clean about?
LY: Well, the last time we played together, we had a double headlining tour in Russia. That was really great, because we didn't fly, we always took trains. We had train cars and three of them were reserved for the band and the crew. There were overnight train trips with lot, lots of drinks. They [local authorities] wanted to arrest us all the time. These Russian military cops, they really hated us. They would show us their handcuffs all the time and dare us to go to sleep. It was almost hypnotizing when they would dangle them in front of my face. We are all musicians, we don't have much to say when the musclemen show up to put us to bed.
ME: What happened at the Reading Festival in 2004? Why were bottles thrown at you?
LY: Yeah, that was the most unfortunate thing to happen in our lives. I was waiting and waiting to get a chance to play at that festival, I've been there many times as a tourist, [sarcastically] 'Yes, finally! We get to play the main stage!'. We played in the middle of two hardcore bands. It was totally the wrong place for our kind of music. We are more, you know, melodic rock...death-pop, what we call our music. It was the wrong place at the wrong time, people started throwing bottles. The bass player got hit really bad. It was so stupid, he really got hurt.
ME: Tell us about the three-band allegiance (KIller, Kwan, The Rasmus) you belong to called Dynasty.
LY: Me and the guitarist Pauli, we have been producing the music. Aki, the drummer, he's also played in those bands. Once we all got the 'Dynasty' tattoos, for one week on the charts. The Rasmus was number one, Kwan number two, and Killer number three. It was total domination of the Finnish music industry for that one week [laughs]. It was a really good reason to get a tattoo for the memory of all that. Those people were my first real friends. They are still around after all this time. It's a very, very important thin gin my life.
ME: Is Hide From the Sun a record going in a new direction for The Rasmus?
LY: Yeah, pretty much. I mean, our music is very melody-driven, perhaps even more this time. We wanted to have songs that we could play with acoustic guitars. You know, by the campfire. [We wanted] Songs that would work in all different arrangements. We keep it simple but try to have a lot of energy.
ME: Do you think a lot of people will think you're emulating H.I.M.?
LY: I wouldn't be surprised; it already has happened. But, I think, that if H.I.M. was to be from another country than us then that wouldn't happen. I think the reason people start to think like that in the first place is because we're both from Finland. We have some similarities in our music. It's kind of romantic from time-to-time. It has that Scandinavian sound, pretty melancholic. But still, we're two different bands. Also, I think people compare us [to H.I.M.] because when we played America for the first time we had a lot of people in the audience wearing H.I.M. shirts.
ME: What's up with the crow feathers you wear in your hair?
LY: I've had this nickname for as long as I can remember: lintu. It means bird. I used to have white hair six years ago and white feathers for some reason. They stand for freedom [laughs]!
ME: Do you take them out when you take a shower or go to bed?
LY: If I remember. If I'm not too drunk [laughs]. Usually the fans take them when they try to grab me.
ME: What's the best place for you to write songs?
LY: First of all, I don't like to sit down in front of a desk to write a song. I could never do that, actually. You can get the idea of a song anywhere: on a romantic beach drinking red wine or you can be taking a shit to get the best melody. That's why I always carry this little recorder with me so I can record whatever comes to mind. That's what I've been doing for the past ten years and I have so many of those little cassettes. It's unbelievable.
ME: What helps you to write songs?
LY: It's just the moods you're in. For example you can be really tired, after a long tour or a great show, and be really happy. That's one of the best moods I think, being really tired but really happy. Or, you could be afraid of your own thoughts going crazy while trying to fall asleep. Get up and write a song about it! Usually it's on unfortunate terms, you know, when something's wrong. That's when the creativity comes best.
ME: How do you think Americans are reacting to Hide From the Sun?
LY: I sure hope that people would hear about it. Right now it looks like we don't have any radio-friendly songs but I don't even know how that works in America. We need to do touring [in America] but time is limited and it's really far away. I hope that people will come out and listen to the album. I think that we are so different from a lot of other bands.
ME: Would you ever do a headlining U.S. tour?
LY: Of course! I think, at this point, it would be better to find another band to tour with. We're just getting started in AMerica and taking our first steps. We've done a few shows with LostProphets and Kill Hannah, a Chicago band. It really opened my mind, to be someplace in Arizona seeing this huge storm coming in front of a clear sky.
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