K: Like a revival.
V: It's kind of like a reminder of why the whole thing started in the first place. At the end of the day, nowadays it seems like the savior of rock n roll is Iggy Pop and the Stooges. You see him live and you think "oh my god, that's what it's all about." Fucking sweat and blood, etc. It doesn't necessarily have to be a new band doing it.
M: It is just something that brings attention to the start of rock n roll.
V: I don't know who's really big at this moment. Nobody's like, super big that may be new. Something that happened to me musically was to fall in love with a band called Interpol. I didn't know that they are not selling a lot of copies.
K: In middle America, no. But on the coast, especially the east, they are more popular.
V: It's all about media. A lot of media is based on the east and west coast, so that's what we get in Europe. Also, acts like Marilyn Manson, he is or actually he used to be hugely popular. Or an act like Eminem. He makes a big budget video and comes to Hamburg and plays to 2,500 people. It's kind of weird to have an illusion that the media creates. But you think that somebody is bigger than life and they aren't necessarily.
M: It's a hype thing, you know.
K: [My ten minutes have come and gone] Is it time?
V: No, no, we've got plenty of time.
K: [Continues] Recently I finished reading Clapton: The Autobiography and in it he says that fly-fishing is the hobby that takes him away from the chaos. What do you guys do to retreat.
V: For me, I have actually been thinking about things I would like to do. I guess, for example, now I'd like to be back home playing acoustic guitar and writing some new songs. That's always a new step for me. You kind of like find yourself with a character you don't know. All the information you've been collecting into your subconscious comes out. In my case it comes through music and I find new aspects and new ways of looking at things, looking at yourself, and your friends through music. So, I consider being on tour, I'm like a sponge in a way. You see so many cities, meet so many people, uh, watch a lot of movies maybe, read a lot of books and get that information and then when you go back home you kind of decompress. All the information starts flowing around, hopefully the good information through the acoustic guitar. That's kind of like what I'm looking for now so I guess my big hobby is writing music.
K: Mige, what about you?
M: I have been wondering actually.
K: Well, you have a family at home which I'm sure takes up all of your free time anyway!
M: Yeah, I guess hobby would not be a good word for that, though to some people I suppose it would be! I don't have a hobby and it's something that is worrying me.
V: He's a thinker, he thinks a lot. He's like a problem solver. [Likening to life] Like mathematical problems with varying results. There's a lot of things in life where A you don't wanna and don't have to and B you can't solve.
M: But you must underline that you try.
V: You also want to do a lot of things but you don't get the chance. [Like a mom talking about a son] He loves gardening.
M: Yeah, I like gardening.
K: I heard you were a gardener in a past life.
M: Yes. In a sense I'm half the man I used to be.
K: Oh now we're quoting Stone Temple Pilots.
M: Actually, it's not that I miss having a hobby. But I keep hearing that people need hobbies.
V: But everyone does have a hobby in one way.
M: Well, I have millions of ways to spend my time.
K: Hobbies develop naturally.
V: Watching T.V. is a hobby! On tour you never get the time to concentrate on a movie or whatever. You're on tour for months and months. So you go back home to do nothing. Um, fart, cook - for yourself, obviously! haha But, finally just getting to watch a movie. That's one way of decompressing. Mine is for now, I stopped drinking so I'm not hanging in bars so what I'm doing is put my house in order. I'm still unpacking my boxes and I moved there like, a year and a half ago. So, basically my hobby is setting my place up to be the perfect place for me to play my acoustic guitar!
K: Speaking of your house... in the VD cd liner notes
V: Booklet.
K: ...booklet, there is a picture of an owl in a window.
V: That's my window sill.
K: A little menacing isn't it?
V: A little? haha We started recording VD and I had a really bad time, nearly a nervous breakdown, I woke up one morning hearing the voice of an owl. I had never seen a live owl before. Well, in the zoo, but never like this. I woke up hearing it and I said "what the fuck is that? Am I hearing voices now?" because I live in the city and we have, like, four owls. And ornithologists know EXACTLY where THEY are at, you know. That particular owl came back twice after that. I borrowed a digital camera from my producer Tim Palmer and left it on the window sill in case I had the chance to see it. We were still partying one morning at 7 AM and he came back and I shot the picture. And he has never been back. This was strange because he wasn't scared of anything, like people moving in the halls or knocking on the window or anything.
K: Ok, switching gears. What's the hardest thing about touring in America?
V: [Thinks] The carpeting. And, uh, all the pillows are filled with feathers.
K: [Laughs and looks knowingly at A.]
A: You know, I have this thing I travel a lot with my job, and it's like, every time you have to ask for the synthetic kind. Good to see someone else has the same issue!
V: That comes from living in a bus, there's not a lot of carpeting because a lot of us guys we smoke and then we have the air conditioning on all the time. That's basically the only thing that makes it hard for me as a singer. Otherwise it's fine. If I was in the rodeo or a drunkard I wouldn't have to worry about it, but I gotta sing every night so...
K: Gotta focus on the job.
V: Hoh, it's not a job- it's a hobby that became a...
K: A labor of love.
V: Yes, a labor of love!
K: What do you miss the most about home?
V: Solitude.
M: No 'me' time.
V: The road is really social, which is great as well. You get to meet a lot of people and play hopefully to a lot of people. It's just when they're a lot of people in a small container like a bus you never have 'me' time. That's the reason we stay in hotels a lot when we're on tour. Would rather stay in a shitty hotel room for a couple of hours in a day just to have your own room, you know, to center yourself, or whatever you call it. That's what I miss.
K: When you are home, do you have a lot of fans stalking you or hanging outside your window?
V: No. Finland is pretty easy. I don't have a doorbell that works so it's pretty hard to get into my fortress. You gotta have my cell phone number or be a friend to get in.
M: Finnish people are more reserved.
K: Not here so much. Stalking is a full on hobby for some!
V: [The Finns] have a respect for privacy. I've had some situations where fans have come up to the door, but normally I don't open up the door you know. It's my home. It's my own private place.
K: Where you're not on the clock.
V: Yep. So, I've been thinking about building a gate. Just imagine if you've got fans that start knocking on the door at 9:00 AM and I've just come off tour and I've got jetlag... even though their intentions might be the best, but you know, I can't be in the mood all the time. It's hard to put a smile on.
M: It is unacceptable.
V: That's the only place in the world I have my own peace. Surrounded by my books and just talk to my mom and my dad and play the acoustic guitar and read books and watch films and bake. That's what I do there.
K: That sounds almost lovely.
V: I may do that two months out of the year. The rest we're working on something so don't [you] think so. If you think about it, an average Joe works and is home five nights in the week. If the family is cool and the wife is a good cook, you know, it's fine to come home and stay in the same spot and then you have your weekends off and maybe have a holiday once a year where you go somewhere else. But we travel all the fucking time. We don't get to see any of our families. At all. And then there's the time difference. I only get maybe two months or a month and a half. Though, I keep on working when I'm home anyway, so... [being home] there's a lot of shit to sort out anyways.
K: How is it when you get home? Hard to decompress?
M: Well, it takes days. I'm not sure that you ever actually decompress. You can always get the most stuff out, but there's the knowledge that there are already future days booked. Because of that I'm not sure if you're able to totally decompress.
V: It's like a normal job when you take that vacation and you know that in a couple of months you have to go back to it.
K: Yes, we are account managers for a software company and we know the feeling when you take vacation.
V: It's not that different. We get things out of this job that you don't if you're staying in one place or whatever. Sometimes you feel that it would be nice to have a job like that rather than have to travel. For example, I'm single, I don't have a relationship, I don't 'need' to go back. You know, I've got my parents, who I care for, and my little bro- that's basically what I like when going back home. So I don't 'mind' touring and the travel. I travel a lot for promotional stuff, but it's been fine.
M: It's an attitude.
V: It's becoming easier now that I'm not hanging out in bars all the time. You really test the limits of your physicality by getting fucked up every night and touring and acting like a brat for months and months on end. Then it's harder to decompress. Even if you have just two weeks off, when you're actually sober you have a lot more time to yourself. The sleep is better. I've spent the last ten years in bars so it's almost like a new drug to be back home watching films I never had time to watch rather than puking in the toilet or waiting to get drunk again.
K: Did you find that changing your lifestyle made some 'friends' disappear?
V: Uh, nah. I can still hang in bars, I just drink coffee instead of beer. It's also been a luxury...the first time you're looking at yourself in the mirror and you're sober, your brain works and you have a lot more energy. I haven't taken that 'me' time for the past 15 years. I've been very social on and off the road. In that sense, the friends haven't gone anywhere, but I decided to not hang out with a lot of people. I've got a lot of friends who are fucking alcoholics. I don't have any problems with that. It's maybe more me making decisions than people running away from me.
K: Switching gears again. Helldone? Is it still on this year?
V: Yes, tickets go on sale next week. It's going to be three days. New Years is on a Monday, so it will be Saturday, Sunday and Monday. On the first day it's going to be, well, we're trying to sort out good A-class Finnish bands so that people can come and see a bit of what's going on in the hard rock music scene. It will be eight bands on the first night so people can get a good vibe of what we have. On the second day we have an international act there, and then a headliner and then we do New Year's Eve.
K: How long have you been doing this?
V: For about 10 or 11 years. We're trying to expand it a bit. Originally it was just a regular gig and then all of sudden we had a lot of people outside of Finland and then northern parts of Finland traveling to Helsinki just to hang with the band. We thought "let's just expand it" over a couple of nights to make it more worthwhile. A lot of people fly in and it's an interesting way to meet people who are outside of your ordinary realm. For example, South America, America, and Japan, even. It's rediculously interesting to see people hooking up with each other and making friends out of it. So, that was the idea of making it a three-day meeting point, kind of festival thing happening. We're still trying to expand it next year to make it bigger, but we're still looking for the right venues. This year it's going to happen in the same club it's always been in, Tavastia.
K: Will Hanoi Rocks be performing?
V: No. They're friends, but I had heard they will be playing a big gig with Motorhead in December and then they will do something right before Helldone in the same venue. You don't want a band who's played the same club the week before. I think that they've booked the gigs already. And, they may be a bit different from what an average HIM fan would like to see. But they are really good live.
K: Not to diminish their popularity, but Hanoi Rocks is most known for the loss of Razzle in the car crash with Vince Neil.
V: They were highly influential, but never sold a lot of records. They are a big cult band, like New York Dolls. They never sold a lot of records and still haven't, but everyone knows them, knows their story, and have fucking Johnny Thunders on their t-shirt.
K: I know all about the New York Dolls, but I could not name one song of theirs.
V: Sam Yaffa from Hanoi Rocks played bass for The New York Dolls.
M: Ah, there you go!
V: Like The Ramones. People know "Hey Ho, Let's Go" and they know the logo.
K: The seal.
V: Yeah. There are a lot of bands like that that changed the scene and were influential for other bands that actually became big.