Interviews

PunkTV.ca: Hello, where are you right now?
Lauri Ylonen: We have a couple of weeks off in Helsinki, and it’s really HELL-SINKI, and we have a lot of forests on fire here, but it looks like hell because there are so much smoke in the air. It’s so dry. The whole world is becoming so dry. In 100 years it's all going to go up!

PunkTV.ca: Are you a conservationist?
Lauri: Yes. We work to protect the sea around Finland, and it starts from there.

PunkTV.ca:  I have a really cliché question. Can you tell us about your name? What does The Rasmus mean?
Lauri: (laughs) It originally came out of two words, thrash and mosh, but we made it more Finland. In Sweden it’s also a boys name, but for us it's also a good sounding name.

PunkTV.ca: It's hard to find a good name these days ( I run through the names of a bunch of CDs on my desk, Bonecock, Escape the Fate, Soul Asylum, Creepshow).
Lauri: Ya, those are very positive names (laughs).

PunkTV.ca: Most kids won’t know that you have been together for 10 years and have released 6 albums. Tell us about some of the highs and lows of your journey getting to where you are now.
Lauri: Well, the beginning was very typical "garage" band scene. We played in the basement of our parents' houses. We started by playing some covers of Metallica, and a funny thing happened: we met Metallica one day. We played 3 shows with them in South Africa, and this was a really really cool thing. James Hettfield himself said that he was trying to buy our album, so I am like, “FUCKKKKKK!” He said that we had a really cool 80’s sorta sound, and that’s true. In the 80’s I was a big fan of Guns and Roses and Skid Row and I think that a lot of the melodioes that we have come from the 80’s.

PunkTV.ca: Okay. Let me ask you something about that. “Shot” is another (after In The Shadows) amazing example of how heavy, yet addictive your melodies and especially the vocals hooks and gang vocals are. Tell us about your approach to writing the music in your songs and how the process works for you?Lauri: Well, it mainly starts with the melody. I always have this dictaphone with me, I am really bad with computers and old-fashioned. So I have this old dictaphone, and some ideas may come to me when I am on top of the mountain or taking a shit, it doesn’t matter. Most tapes are full of shit -- mostly drunken hummings when I listen to them the next days -- but always with every idea hear and there there might be something good; there might be 5 seconds of a melody. So that’s my method! I can never deep down just sit down and start writing music, I need to keep moving all the time. That's where I get my inspiration.

PunkTV.ca:  Tell us about the music scene back home in Finland? We know that the album shipped platinum.
Lauri: We have a real good music scene. It’s mostly hard rock everywhere. Metal like Him of Course, and Nightwish, Stradivarius, Children of Bodom... there are so many bands, but every time someone asks me I can't think of too many. Also, tonight I am going to see this really cool band called Magenta Skycode. It's very dark music, it’s almost Joy Division meets Aha. So it's kind of a melody – desperate music. I like that kind of music, but also I am not too into happy melodies. If it’s about the stuff in your heart when you listen to it, that’s what I am into and that’s very typical to the Finnish type of music. That’s what we listen to. And when my partents listen to music there is a lot of longing and minor keys, so that influences me also. The Finnish market is somehow sad and suicidal. We also have the highest rate of suicide in Finland, and I don't like that, am not proud of it, and I don’t want to be one of those.

PunkTV.ca: Well, you are surrounded by water and Russia…
Lauri: ... and also we have been oppressed. They took over Finland a long time ago and we found our way back to getting our independence back. Perhaps a lot of things make us who we are but that also does. It’s a little bit isolated, we are a Scandanavian country, but still always Sweden and Norway get all the credit for being cool countries and we don’t. So lately Finland gets a lot more fame than anything else, and that is something that we are really proud of. People are very shy in the music here in the past, a little bit too much, so in the rest of the world I feel that it is slowly breaking out and I feel that people are getting a bit more confidence in our metal.

PunkTV.ca: Does that means that you and Him are treated like Gods over there?
Lauri: No (laughs). They invited me to the President’s party in the palace, and I went there and I took a friend with me. They did not like that. And they are like, “You can't bring your friend” and I am like, “Yes, I can. You invited me and so I can!”

PunkTV.ca: And what was it like? Lauri: There was a lot of politicians being really drunk there, and lots of food, and lots of dirty stuff going on…

PunkTV.ca: So, did you have a good time?
Lauri: No, it was one of the worst parties that I have ever been to, but the booze was free…

PunkTV.ca: What’s your poison of choice?Lauri: Fisu – which means fish in Finland.

PunkTV.ca: Does it taste like fish?
Lauri: You know that stuff Fisherman's Friend? It's like a vodka that tastes like candy melted into it. It's very super heavy drink. Of course it’s vodka, but very strong. It's been around for maybe 3 years and it's very deadly. You get pretty loaded in one hour.

PunkTV.ca:  When touring so much what do you miss most about Finland?
Lauri: Well, I miss just being alone. What I usually do is, when I come home, I go to my summer place. I have a tiny house by the lake, in the middle of nowhere, and lots of fresh air, and I call it my rehab. I was just there 5 days now when I came home. I only take my guitar, and I go there to think about things and to clear things up in my head. The nature is very close, so all the scenery  is something that I miss while being on tour. I have a lot of good friends that I know around the world, but the best of my friends are back home in Finland. We are mates from 20 years ago, and those are the ones that always seem to last. Even though I am very happy to be on tour, I am always very happy to get home, and when I get home it takes me 2 days to get back.

PunkTV.ca: Your 5th album, Dead Letters, featured the breakthrough single In The Shadows. Tell us about your approach to writing that song.
Lauri: That was one of those songs that came very spontaneously. We had a soundcheck and I was eating my lunch, and the guys were on the stage playing the bridge. I started humming the melody, then I just jumped on the stage and started singing. That one happened by accident, and I think that’s a great way to start a song. It didn’t sound like a hit song to us, it sounded like a weird song -- sounded even annoying to us -- but like I said, I just can't sit down and start writing. Things need to happen like that for me, somehow.

PunkTV.ca: You are are just about to start touring worldwide in support of Hide from the Sun. Tell us about this album, and what the concept behind it was.
Lauri: The concept for the album is very simple: it is trying to put the different properties together, like the beauty and the beast, like there is the melody that is quite beautiful and very often the music and the melodies are twisted, very dark. So there's a lot of contrast. But also, most of the songs were written on tour with the last album and we didn’t have time to have any breaks, so we were writing all the time on the tour. So when we were finished, we decided that we would try to capture the energy that we had while we were on tour, and I think that we did that.

PunkTV.ca: You have written about not turning back and being turned into a pillar of salt, about “leaving your old shit behind” and about “clearing the table”. Tell us about your personal demons and the fights that you have had.
Lauri: Well, I am not really sure about myself. I am not really knowing where I am heading. But one thing that I have a strong feeling about is that I don’t go backwards any more. I am ashamed that sometimes I have been acting realty selfishly on the road sometimes, and I don’t really like that about me, and I want to change that. I know it is cliché, but I am always looking for tomorrow, and that is pure thinking for me. You don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow, but what the hell? Go there anyways.

PunkTV.ca:  Same questions for your band. After 10 years together, what are some of the hardest obstacles for bands to overcome? What have some of the major challenges been for you?
Lauri: For the band, we had quite rough times after the third album. The drummer left the band, we were out of the record deal, we were supposed to join the army and all that shit.

PunkTV.ca: Join the army?
Lauri: Yeah, but I did some shit so we didn’t have to there. There are a lot of musicians in Finland that really fight against it, and a lot of people have gone to jail just to show that they really mean what they say. We had a lot of trouble in the band at the time, but it was good also. We had 2 years between the third and the fourth album, and after being depressed for some time I woke up and had new powers. Something grew in us, that we would have to do something; if I wanted to play in a band for the rest of my life I would have to do something to get myself together.

PunkTV.ca:  Tell us about the video for Shot. Where did you film that, who directed it, and how did the concept for the “stranded on a desolate planet” visual come about? I know where the sense of isolation came from – you!
Lauri: Yeah. Well that’s a very lonely video, very sad. It's nice looking, but very dark. I think that the video is beautiful and sad. We shot it in the Canary Islands, where they are very poor and don’t do well. It’s a volcanic island; this is a very interesting place, and it looks like Mars. It was so cool and isolated, and it gave us some edge for that video. We had a little thing, we tried to shoot it two times… and the first time we had the cameras up there was this huge sandstorm that came out of nowhere, and it lasted for 3 days. So we had to cancel the first one and the only thing that we got from that shoot was the bass player's haircut. So that new haircut sucked -- it was longer on one side than the other -- but that’s all the footage that we got, so it cost $50,000 for that haircut, but it was way better when we got back. Also, the pace was really weird because it was wicked cold at night and super hot during the days, so there was that contrast, also.

PunkTV.ca:  Tell us about what music is in your CD player right now?
Lauri: Right now… the latest album from Muse. I am a big, big Muse fan, for as long as they have been together. What else? I have been listening to a lot of mellow stuff like Leonard Cohen.

PunkTV.ca: Yeah, I wanted to ask you about him, since he's a Canadian. What do you like most about him and have you read his book Beautiful Loser?
Lauri: I haven’t read the book, but someone said last week that I should read it, so now that you have said it also... that’s a freaky thing, so I will get it right away. I just love his music so much, and I have played classical guitar so much, and I love his songs. They're so beautiful and harmonic, even though he isn’t really singing. It's more like somewhere between talking and singing.

PunkTV.ca; Favorite Leonard song?
Lauri: Must be Avalanche. That’s a song that I would use to introduce him to somebody, I would play that song.

PunkTV.ca:  Here’s a new regular feature question for us at PunkTV.ca. Which of the three following experiences have happened to you: Have you a) seen Jesus or the face of God, b) seen an alien spacecraft or c) had a supernatural experience? Tell us about it.
Lauri: Well, I was talking my sister -- she's a grown up now -- she comes to the end of my bed from time to time. And she is there at my knees praying with her hair hanging over her eyes, and she's not really my sister, anymore. And she is not an adult when she comes, she is a child.

PunkTV.ca:  What would surprise kids most to learn about your bandmates or about the band, or both?
Lauri: Whoa... what would that be (spends some time pondering)? People know too much about me, I have this very naked feeling. It’s just too hard to keep your secrets. I think that if you reveal all your secrets, you will lose your mind.