The school of men [Finland]

Finnrocks childstars have been grown to international stars. Lauri Ylönen of The Rasmus opened up to Suosikki about his Gala-allergy and guyenergy.
Success brings strange side phenomenons. For example you can make a biothythm comparison in the Internet with Lauri Ylönen. I type my birthdate to the machine and the results come on screen: physical and emotional matches are fair, but intellectual match is only four percents! Damnit!
On the next day the rockstar sits down across me. I tell him the bad news. Four percents! If you believe the numbers, this interview will be a catastrophe. Lauri laughs. Numbers are not everything, allthough all magazine stories about The Rasmus are full of numbers. How many records are being sold in how many countries? How many people fits in a concert hall? In fact stories have started to remind listed companies’ [osavuosikatsaus].
- Sometimes it feels that you don’t get any respect until you can show some numbers. It feels cruel, but that way you get a certain acceptance, Lauri sighs. During their career The Rasmus has broken hearts and received several gold records. But only a year go released Dead Letters album made the band Finland’s export product. Since then the press has followed closely how our boys are succeeding globally.
Are the members of the band becoming great ambassadors of Finland?
- I think that’s happened more to HIM. Such stories have been written about Ville Valo. They write that kind of stuff about us too, but it doesn’t fool me. After all we’re not the whole nation’s pet like some Kimi Räikkönen.
Not Yet.
- I don’t think we will be. You can’t make us that perfect. Kimi is a clean role model. I believe tht most of the parents wants their son to be rather a car driver than a musician, the singer thoughts.
Yep. We have been sitting on the table for a minute when a 50-year-old woman comes to ask for Lauri’s autograph. There’s a happy hum of conversation going on in the restaurant but most of the people knows that there’s a celebrity around.
Wherever Lauri goes he is being watched. Sometimes it gets on his nerves to be the centre of attention, but it could be worse. In the middle Europe the gossip magazines are writing stories without even interviewing the target of the news. In Finland celebrities are being treated nicely.
- Finnish gossip press is still in it’s infancy and that’s good. And you can walk on the streets freely. The Finns are shy, they won’t come to rip your hair off. Maybe they are whispering something on the backseat of the bus, Lauri analyzes.

Sunglasses on and flee
Lauri took part of the middle European mediacircus recently in Germany, where he visited with Aki increasing their award collection.
At first Viva-tv and Bravo magazine choosed The Rasmus to be the rockband of the year. One week later Rasmus won the Newcomer of the year award at the Echo Awards (german Emma).
- You can’t even compare them to Emma awards. There was 15.000 people there and they spread red carpets for the guests, Lauri says.
Despite the great settings the experience wasn’t as great.
- Actually we were wrecked. We came with Aki with a limousine and the cameras started to shoot. Someone showed the photographers her new dress but we went away as fast as we could. Sunglasses on and flee.
- I don’t enjoy that kind of stuff. It feels that award shows are full of trivial people. The more trivial celebrity the more they’re showing off themselves. The real guys like Rammstein and others won’t stay a hang around in the spotlight. They get their awards and leave.
Lauri looks at me seriously and his speak sounds honest. I think it would be a bit too much to claim that the awards night was full of suffering. After all there was pretty impressive setting of global rock cream.
- There was clearly that part of the people who escaped from the trivial celebrity party to their own worlds. I met Fred Durst and talked with him for a while. It was interesting because Fred is a big star to me. It was pretty exciting to go talking to him. But I remembered that we play on the 1st day of April at the same gig in Dubai. The next night I went to see Limp Bizkit’s gig, the singer tells.

The bubble of ten
It’s easy to predict that in the future The Rasmus’ tours will be longer and a long way from home. Usually the program is so thick that you can’t remember much more.
Than the stage and the ceiling of a hotel room from the present city.
- It sounds pretty glamorous to say that we were in Paris or Milan, but you can’t see much of the cities. You can film some building with a videocamera from a taxi window.
It’s like travelling in some kind of a bubble, you live in a unfamiliar city in your own reality.
In The Rasmus’ bubble travels the band and the tour crew, 10 people. They are also Lauri’s best friends.
- Many of them have belonged to this group since school times. I played with Eero at third grade in elementary school, Pauli joined us in secondary school. We have the same kind of sense of humor and taste in music. The music and crazy hairstyles brought us together.
From close relationships tells the fact that Lauri was on Christmas holiday in Hawaii with The Rasmus’ light man and drum technician. During the month the friends drowned the hurry into the Pacific ocean’s waves and learned to surf.
The fast tour life has caused a restlessness in the singer that makes him move even when he’s on vacation.
- These days it’s hard to stop and relax. Immediately when I got some extra time I want to travel somewhere.
Lauri thinks the best and safest place on earth is the tour bus.
- Sometimes I sleep in the tour bus that is parked infront of the hotel, because I can’t sleep in the hotel. On our last tour in Germany we had two busses. After the concert the band went to sleep in to some hotel and the techicians travelled the following night to the next city. Pretty often I travelled with the techicians. Bus’ cradle-like rocking calms me down.

Man energy
Until these days Lauri has been able to avoid the great sins of a rockstar. In the public he has given a clean, even kind picture of himself. That’s why it was big suprise when Lauri told to City magazine that he had gotten mad at overexcited fans who had parked themselves infront of his front door.
- I have a really long fuse, but people seem to presume that we are some kind of puppets. The line is at my home door. My home is a sacred place where I can be by myself, the man grumbles.
Many people have interpreted his acting the way that Lauri has become a toughface who doesn’t care about his fans.
- I haven’t turned tough, but during the last ten years I have gotten more self-confidence and life experience. I have always been in charge of what I’m doing. I have so much in stake that I have to be selfish.
- Along the popularity many quarters want me to do many different things. In that kind of a situation you got to have a strong will and clear goals.
The last year of The Rasmus has been so wild that sometimes everyones heads has gone through tough time. Not until this spring the band has been able to calm things down. During the last weeks Lauri, Pauli, Eero and Aki have been gathering to their training place to make new songs.
- The moment every morning at the training place feels so pure. It calms your mind down even though we’re not releasing a new record for a long time. Making music together keeps our heads together.
For the musicians own suprise the new songs have been pretty aggressive.
- Maybe there’s some things coming out that have been in your mind for a long time. There is a lot of energy in the new songs. We are going to heavier and darker way, Lauri predicts.
- Just recently we went and recorded new song. We were wondering who man-like it became. It’s some kind of a mixture of grunge and Iron Maiden.
Actually there’s nothing suprising with new man-like line. Lauri who turns 25 in April admits that Dead Letters was a kind of a release from their boyband past.
- We’re not teenagers anymore. Still we have kind of a “who cares?” feeling, when it comes to that you should be so damn credible and serious. We really live in a bubble where the inside humor blooms. I wish that it doesn’t disappear anywhere. Even though we do things seriously there have been a small grin along straight from the beginning.

Stadium’s fluffyheads
When Lauri was a little boy his sister took him to the hockey arena to watch foreign bands.
- We saw Mötley Crue, Guns N’ Roses, Alice Cooper…I was about 12 years old, probably the youngest guy in the arena.
When Lauri was in secondary school he hung out with his sister in the city and realized that life was waiting for him there. From his home Suutarila was a long way there. He moved at the age of 16 with Eero to Sörnäinen in to a 20 square meter apartment that didn’t even have a toilet.
Rasmus was already then a stadium band.
- We had a training place in a hallway at the Olympic Stadium. We went to train early in the morning. They were great moments when we ate breakfast together at the lawn in the middle of the Stadium.
Lauri, Pauli and Eero spent most of their time at the Oranssi ry’s coffee house.
- We were working there for a nominal consideration, but actually Oranssi’s coffee house was our living room. For three years it was our base where we could develop our band thing. The best thing was that you got approved there. All fluffyheads sat there in their sweaters.
- The best thing about Oranssi was the feeling of doing something. The youth had all kinds of things how to develop themselves. Not everyone finished their schools but chose the bohemian way of life at the early stage in their lifes. But there was kind of a ambition and athmosphere that there was a goal.
Lauri also dropped out of school.
- It wasn’t because of I was bad. I was pretty good in the subjects that I liked. But we stayed up late in the nights and played some ideas to each other with Pauli. The next day we were too tired to go to school. We quit school almost at same time. Me first and Pauli right after. Since those years Lauri has been working hard to become a good singer and songwriter. But one thing has made it all possible.
He has dared to dream.
- It feels like dreaming is somehow forbidden in Finland. I would like that people would dream a lot more, whatever it was about. Too many people satisfies in too little.
When you listen to the lyrics of Dead Letters it feels like the more desperate The Rasmus sounds the more popular they are. In the future Lauri has to make sad songs to be successful and happy. How much more anguish can The Rasmus be before Lauri’s looses his mind?
- It might be a bit twisted but when I’m depressed I use the music. I listen to a depressive song or album and I get even more depressed. When you can absorbe in those feelings you suddenly feel alive.
- The lyrics in Dead Letters are so close to me that when I sing them on a gig I feel like I would be telling my problems to someone. It makes me feel better.
For example Time To Burn sounds like a really depressive song.
- It tells about longing the past. Sometimes I feel like I’m losing my grip of the important things. I can’t return back to that life that was valuable to me. I try my best to keep contact with my old friends, but it feels that we’re drifting apart more and more.
Lauri has said the the lyrics on Dead Letters are cries of help and letters to different persons. Many of the stories are based on experiences that have become a hell on earth to the singer.
There is so many songs about relationships that it is a wonder that Lauri has been able to appear single in the public.
- It’s easy to say I’m single. I don’t want that the band activity strains relationships. I want to keep my own secrets, the singer says mysteriously.

THE RASMUS – 5 steps to the top
1. December 1995
Releases their first single 1st through Teja G. Records. “We collected the monely ourselves and got the song to play in a radio. That’s where it all started.”
2. October 1999
Is Red Hot Chili Peppers’ supporting act on two nights at Hartwall Arena in Helsinki. “It was a big thing. The played later at the night with Pelle Miljoona at Lepakko. I saw Chad Smith. I said to him we were their supporting act. He said that have a good gig, bye bye.”
3. 2000
“These were the difficult times. We were big in Finland, but we couldn’t get to other countries. Our third album started to flop. We thought ‘Is this it now?’. Then Aki joined the band. He has previously been selling our shirts. He played then in Killer and Kwan. Through Aki the feelings inside the band changed a lot.”
4. May 2000
Into -album is being recorded in Stockholm. “We went to Stockholm, made a contract with Playground Music. Band got its name The Rasmus. We got lots of new ideas for songs.”
5. June 2004
The Rasmus is playing on the main stage at German Rock am Ring/Rock im Park festival.

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