Ville Valo

Ville Valo is 22-year-old leader of the band called HIM. He is said to be Finlands Jim Morrison and he looks up to Tapio Rautavaara and Reino Helismaa. One day he want's to stand at MTV Music Awards and thank his mother for everything.

Tony's Deli is divided in smoking and no smoking sections. There is room at the wrong side, but the singer of a band called HIM, the newest playboy of rock'n'roll, Ville Valo want's to light a cigaret. When Deli's host Toni Ilmoni opens a wall-size window, Valo, dressed in long black leather jacket and brown shirt, sucks blue smoke in to his lungs. He has said that smoking makes he closer to the mother he loves very much.

Would you like to order mother's milk?

"No, I don't want to eat anything. I'll just take big cup of black coffee. And an ashtray would be great."

I think that will work out. I'll take a sallad. So, you are a dark "son-of-a-bitch". What kind of a background do you have?

"My father was born in Tampere! But I've got my looks from my mother's side. When my grandmother died, we started to do a genealogy. It turned out that my mother's roots are originally from Hungary. That explains the way I look. My mother looks even more Hungarian. The background is open, 'cause it doesn't intrest me that much."

Well, that creates some exoticness around you. Where you born in Helsinki?

"Yes, when I was little my mom and dad lived in Puuvallila for a couple of months and after that we moved to Oulunkylä, where I've lived my entire childhood. I went to school there. About four years ago I moved to the downtown. Since then I've lived at Eira."

From suburb to the downtown to play lovemetal?

"I've never had any kind of Kallio-syndrome. I got a fairly cheap and comfy flatlet at Eira in the year '94. Windows are to the inner court and it's cool to wake up to see the sunrise at the seventh floor, above the roofs. Very cool, and no-one is tossing stones on my window at Friday night and asking me to go to party. You can be there all by your self. I hate Töölö and Kruunuhaka, not because of their location, but for personal reasons!

Rock'n'Roll doesn't usually get on very well at Eira.

"I'm not a rockstar! During the last four years I've been twice in Kaivopuisto. I don't like the park or the nearness of the ocean."

You don't look much of a nature person, more like a pet.

"One night I borrowed my friends bike and drove around the town. My condition lasted a while, I had to stop. I have asthma, you know.

Sounds like Oscar Wilde. Every poet seems to be having a lung disease. Some kind of a bleeding heart thing.

"That's the whole meaning. I don't read books at all, I can't concentrate. A little while a read the "Book Of Death". It has all kinds of things about dying; suicide notes and all. Portrait of Dorian Gray I've started many times, but never finished it. Books are boring.

Oscar Wilde in a icon, a style. That the thing nowadays; you don't need to know everything when you can put on a certain kind of style by mentioning somethings name. Ville Valo and lovemetal, that opens a certain kind of world.

"Certain kind of a world, certain morale and certain ethic values."

Your norms doesn't fit to the engage-marriage-children-house package. Did you get these things from home?

"Masculinity is to find the feminine side in you. Dick up outlook is kind of boring. At home I've always been able to be my own self and I was never asked to be masculine. When I was a kid I looked just like a girl and then I had to speculate what that thing was. I was a troublemaker. I was moved from class to class and I hit everybody in the face.

King of the hill?

I have pictures of me when I'm five and my hair is combed back with water. On those pictures I have dark blue shirt with white stripes and jeans on, no shoes, just socks and lips stick out. I have acoustic guitar and wide standing astride. I'm not even interested in music, but all the other things involved in it. I started the music when Gene Simmons from KISS spit fire and blood."

Entertainment?

"I don't consider myself as an artist, but an entertainer. My father drowe a taxi for 20 years, so pressure to continue in my fathers footsteps was quite insignificant. For 14 years I've played different instruments, jazz, soul, funk and fusion. I'm not just a straight metal guy. HIM is my first heavyer and metallic band. The first band I actually sing in. I started by playing bass, because of this Gene Simmons thing you know. After that I've studied drums, keyboards and some guitar. In HIM Tapsa Rautavaara-Repe Helismaa thing combines to rollingstones-like feeling. My music is open. You can listen to it and drink beer, read, fuck, dance or do whatever you feel like. Different kinds of people find different kinds of elements in it. That's why it has worked this well."

HIM's Greatest Lovesongs vol. 666 is one of the best selling debutes in English languege in Finnish rock history. Language is not anymore the thing.

I just try to make up as good oneliners as possible. Best songs are put up from best slogans.

Are you someday gonna write songs in Finnish?

To be honest, I don't think I can. I'm so self-critical about Finnish language that I don't think I could write in Finnish. I'll just try to write "Sininen uni" and "Päivänsäde ja menninkäinen" all over again. When you try to write as well as Reino Helismaa did, that is impossible. I don't value Finnish lyric poets too high. Ismo Alanko has did some great stuff. Lyric poets should be so perfect that every sentence should be able to write as a record's, band's or even bigger project's name. Phrases should work jut by themselves. From Tuomari Nurmio's stuff I get the taste of mother's milk to my mouth. When I was just a kid I sat in my fathers taxi when he drove it. "Taksin katolla vilkkuu, yön ainoa valopilkku" (a phrase from Tuomari Nurmio's song "Valo yössä").

Fascinating that you like Rautavaara and Helismaa, big rough guys.

"Ugly and bighanded men, workers. It fascinates me that big rough guys make sweet and lovely songs. Contrast is effective."

You have a heart tattooed to your wrist. Do you make specially lovesongs?

Yes, they are always somehow connected to love, but for me it is more important to make big feelings out of little things. Fon instance when you're in a store buying a jogurt and you see a beautyful girl so that the jogurt drops to the ground and when you lift up your head you see her jacket there somewhere. From that kind of little things the story builds up and swells eventually to a struggle of life and death, to Romeo and Juliet.

Writing songs is a mystery, a secret. Are you in that way superstitious?

Yes I am. The songs live in those little boxes in you mind. Everyone has their own systems to get outside themselves to find the mystery. You've got to lose yourself to find yourself.

That's the same thing like in sex, you've got to forget yourself to find yourself. To songs you can get by little deaths, sex or drugs. You don't tell stories?

I never do it that way that someones does this and blaa blaa. Some girl tears my heart apart, it doesn't work that way. Making songs is like spiritual masturbation, there are such things you wouldn't tell anyone. Such things you wouldn't even dare to admit to yourself. Then when the crowd sings those songs you've made, it makes you feel fantastic.

Performing makes you fell great, don't it?

Actually, I don't like to perform, but it is really sadistic to see the crown singing your own things. I like more making albums. I also don't like going to conserts. Well, there is Depeche Mode that brakes the rule, that I most definitely want to see. I went also to the Sisters of Mercy consert and that was great. Conserts are in that way unpleasent that you are half a meter above everyone. I like to perform on the same level.

What do you want to say to your fans?

Finnish discussion in bars is on that level that you have to be drunk before you dare to come to talk. Usually you can't call that even a discussion. Of course I'm impressed if my stage precense works. I don't want to be bad.

Are there any stars that you look up to?

Few actors today are big characters. There is not anymore JackNicolsons of MarlonBrandos. Of the singers I like Marilyn Manson although I hate his music. His character and style is what I like.

You are an entertainer. The playboy of rock'n'roll. What is that tattoo you have on your belly?

It's a heartagram and it hurt like hell to get it.

A heart on your belly. Well, how are things for HIM in Germany. There is a rumour that GUN record label is about to take you to Germany?

Well, I've been there and I'm going again. Yes, Someday I want to stand up in MTV Music Awards and thank my mother for everything.

text by: Jaana Rinne
translation by: Teemu Harju