We ain’t finnished yet… [UK]

They’ve topped our charts, taken over our radios and hijacked our magazine covers. But still they remain the most controversial act to emerge this year. So why does the UK hate The Rasmus? Rock sound travelled to Russia to compare notes.
“Fuck you,” spits Lauri Ylönen. “It’s as simple as that. We’re going to play it next year.” Judging from the smile that accompanies this message to The Rasmus’ UK haters, Lauri’s comment is made in good humor. But if there were a touch of bitterness in his words, it would be easy to understand why.
Earlier this year as The Rasmus launched into their set on the main stage at Reading Festival, they caught the hostility of the ever-critical UK audience in full force. It should have been the show that crowned a year of phenomenal success here. Instead, much like Daphne and Celeste and Good Charlotte before them, the band became victims of an infamous bottle-throwing attack. When one well-aimed missile cut the sound on Pauli Rantasalmi’s guitar and another hit bassist Eero Heinonen in the eye, they were forced to quit the stage. They had managed just one song. “It felt stupid to stay there if we were about to get hit,” explains Eero. What made the attack even more upsetting was that it had been pre-organised over the internet by a handful of festival-goers who decided that, rather than concentrate on the bands they did like, thay would ruin eveybody else’s fun. “There were people who had bought a ticket just to come and see us,” continues Eero. “I saw many of our fans before we went onstage and I’m very sorry for those people because they went there for nothing. Afterwards I thought I should have gone into the audience, picked out one of the guys doing it and asked what was going on there. It would have been an example to the rest of them.” Of course, there is a pattern to all this. Both Daphne and Celeste and Good Charlotte were attacked during their Reading apperances because, according to certain members of the audience, they lacked credibility. They were pop acts masquerading as rock stars, and that just wasn’t acceptable. Maybe if they had found themselves playing the more eclectic Glastonbury or a commercialised V Festival it would have been different for The Rasmus. Speaking from experience however, the band are sceptical. “It was a very typical UK reaction,” says Eero. “It’s so competitive there. People are so particular about music styles and even more particular about music styles and even more particular about band’s images. Someone who wears Korn T-shirt is making a statement. They’re saying, ‘I listen to this kind of band and I’m this kind of person,’ even though they maybe can’t play any music.” Just their fellows targets, The Rasmus’ main downfall in the UK has been the rock crowd’s refusal to accept them as a genuine alternative act. And while they were probably correct to write off Daphne and Celeste, Good Charlotte have since exceeded all expectations with their new album. What, in that case, should we make of The Rasmus?

Patience is a virtue
Love them or hate them, The Rasmus’ prominence in the UK right now is undeniable. Rock sound has received more letters about the band over the past few months than any other subject. Which means that wheter you’re defending them or criticising them, you’ve made them one of the hottest topics in the music world. Not that it’s anything new. At the start of their 10-year career, they divided opinion in their native Finland for a long time before finally being accepted, and they believe the UK will follow suit. Indeed, by the time you read this they will have completed their first full UK tour in spite of any bad feeling. “When we released our first album (“Peep”) in Finland it became a success straight away and went Gold,” says Eero. “People were interested to see what we were about. There were a lot of big fans but also a lot of people who were criticising us. Now we’ve been around for such a long time people know who we are and the criticism has stopped because we’ve established our name. I think the same will happen in the UK if we just continue releasing albums.” You would expect it to act in The Rasmus’ favour that they’ve been around for so long. Seldom has a novelty pop act lasted in the same way. “When we started we were 14 and we practised in Pauli’s basement, just listening to rock bands and trying to play the same. I think we still live by the same rules,” stresses Eero. After years of steady success in Scandinavia, it wasn’t until they released fifth album “Dead Letters” in the whole of Europe that The Rasmus’ fame went stratospheric. “When “In The Shadows” started to work in Germany that was it,” recalls Eero. “It had a snowball effect. It went to number one in the singles chart, then the album went to number one too, and then it started happening in other countries like Italy, France, Belgium and Great Britain.” But while the UK has split into those who are obsessively in favour of the band and those who are strongly against them, other parts of the world have been more straightforward. Since promotion began for “Dead Letters” in March 03, The Rasmus have received MTV awards nominations in Latin America, topped radio play list in New Zealand and been presented with discs for sales of “Dead Letters” in countries that include Hungary (Gold) and Switzerland (Platinum). Eero calculates that they’ve visited 36 countries on their travels to date and they’re still counting, with the US and Canada next to conquer. Sitting in one of Moscow’s most impressive hotels the day after attending Russia’s first ever MTV awards, the foursome are happy to announce another victory. Last night they won the category of Russia’s Best International Artist, despite being up against big name acts like Linkin Park and Madonna. Tonight they’ll play their first show in Moscow at the Gorbunova Theatre. It’s not many bands that get to play here, and as Lauri quite rightly recognises, it’s a sign of The Rasmus’ growing status that the places they visit are becoming more and more obscure. “There’s lots of new stuff coming up for us, places like Monaco and Mexico City, really weird places,” he muses, still trying to come to terms with it himself. “Maybe there are too many bands in Britain,” adds Eero in an attempt to explain our country’s comparative hostility. “People aren’t interested because you have so many pop stars. But here if they haven’t had a band play for two months it’s a great delight for people. There’s more glamour to being a rock star here. In Russia the fans are good old-style fans and if you give them an autograph they go crazy. Maybe it’s because the contrast is bigger here. Their common life is so boring that it’s their chance to have a big party. It’s refreshing for us.” For all the stunning architecture and cultural experiences it offers, Moscow still feels like a solemm and repressed city at times. Where Western ways have made an impact here it’s in the least desirable forms; the inevitable fast food franchises or the gaudy neon signs that light up roadsides like a mini Las Vegas. Everywhere else the city still seems shell-shocked by its volatile history, and poverty remains a serious problem. That makes The Rasmus’ arrival here big news, something that’s demonstrated by the gang of fans who’ve waited patiently outside the band’s hotel on this cold Sunday morning. Contrary to what you might think, they aren’t all that comfortable with the attention either. Rushing past the endless bunches of flowers and requests for photos, Lauri feels a twinge of guilt inside the hotel and vows to go back and talk to people before he leaves. It’s more the behaviour of a man who’s unsure how to deal with such intense adulation than that of a bona fide pop star.

Pop will eat itself
Which brings us to that all-important debate. Are The Rasmus a cunningly marketed pop act or just a misinterpreted rock band? A listen to UK debut “Dead Letters” will leave you none the wiser.
Songs like “First Day Of My Life” and “Guilty” are almost offensively catchy, while the Euro pop feel of “In The Shadows” makes it the least convincing rock track since Busted sang about what they go to school for. Can they understand why people dismiss them as a pop band? While Lauri points to the song’ abundance of melodies over riffs, Eero puts it down to timing. “The trend has been garage rock, just riffs and yelling, and I think we’re quite a contrast with that. But I think that trend will change. Even Nirvana has quite a lot of melody, even though it’s very dirty.” If there’s less blatant opposition to The Rasmus elsewhere in the world, that could be down to our country’s own unique hang-ups. The UK has always been precious about its rock bands, greeting their transition from unknown newcomers to chart-topping stars with mixed feelings of pride and dismay. In its most extreme form, you’d probably call it elitism. Perhaps the current attitude has got something to do with the aftermath of grunge and all it taught us in its rebellion against the ostentatious stadium rock of the 80s. Or maybe it’s just that we want to keep rock where we think it belongs – underground, on the edge and well away from mass consumption. Either way, there’s little to explain why UK music fans can applaud Muse for penning a modern pop-rock hit like “Time Is Running Out” while simultaneously disowning Lostprophets for being a so-called boy band. The Rasmus’ predicament is initially no easier to understand. During our conversation today, they’ll name-check Green Day and Counting Crows as their influences, HIM as their contemporaries and friends, and Finnish bands Kwan and Apocalyptica as their collaborators. There’s no question they possess a strong rock pedigree. Which makes it all the more confusing when, arriving at the Russian MTV studios later that afternoon, Lauri and co are greeted by a horde of screaming female fans. They’re here to be interviewed for a low-budget version of TRL, and to their credit they look thoroughly uncomfortable throughout. Perched on a sofa in front of yet more teenage girls, who this time are taught to scream on cue for the cameras, the experience sums up everything those who disapprove of The Rasmus have come to associate them with. The interviewer’s most probing questions include, “Which of you is most loved by the girls?” and, “Some people compare you to Ville Valo. What do you think abut that?” Meanwhile, the band find themselves slotted between the latest video by Robbie Williams and a feature in which a teenager gets her belly-button pierced in front of the studio audience. Asked if he likes Robbie’s new single, Lauri’s answer is a decisive, “No”. Did they take any girls back to the hotel with them last night? Lauri quips that he took back five. It doesn’t take long to realise they’d rather not be here. And it’s then that part of The Rasmus’ problem becomes clear. Maybe it’s not that they’re a cunningly marketed pop act at all. Maybe it’s that they’re a rock band who’ve been sold to us in the wrong way. “I think what happened at Reading might have been a good thing for us,” agrees Eero. “It made me stop and think, “Hey, what are we doing? Where is our target audience?” Maybe we’ve been giving the band too much exposure and not in the right media.” As drummer Aki Hakala puts it, “Being on MTV and radio too much is sometimes irritating to people,” and if, as Pauli stresses, they want to be accepted as a Reading-friendly band rather than a pop band, they’re going to have to re-think their game plan. “We want to play Reading because it’s about people like us who really listen to music and respect music,” he emphasises. “If you’re only on MTV then you have teenage fans who just go with the new trend. We’re real people who like good music and we’re a real band, so we want the kind of press where people will find you out more about us. That’s the main problem. People don’t know who we are.”

Privates on parade
It’s a problem that will again be apparent at the show tonight. Onstage at the Gorbunova -Theatre, a place that combines faded glamour and imposing scale to suggest a dilapidated Shepherd’s Bush Empire, Pauli leads the band as an accomplished rock guitarist. At the back of the venue there are enough restrained adults nodding their heads approvingly to make this feel like an authentic rock gig. Move towards the front however, and there’s a clear divide where the more serious gig-goers have separated themselves from a mass of hysterical young girls fighting their way to the stage with red roses and banners. Equally, the band’s decision to cover Pet Shop Boys track “It’s A Sin” is hardly the ideal mission statement. On reflection, the dichotomy that haunts The Rasmus is one they can only blame themselves for. “We’ve been played on the radio a lot and that’s a good thing for us because it’s the second best way to spread the world, the first being to play shows,” Lauri says. “But it also has its down-sides because you can get played too much and that can kill a song.” They’ve now taken steps to limit their exposure and to ensure the press they do get comes from desirable quarters. “We try to avoid pop magazines now,” Lauri reveals. “If you do an interview they don’t ask serious questions. The first thing they ask is about girlfriends. What they want to know has nothing to do with the music so we stopped and thought, ‘Why the hell are we doing this?’ We’ve separated our private lives from this band.” But refusing to talk about your love life could be confused with the kind of tactic pop bands use to avoid disappointing their female fans, couldn’t it? Lauri insist their decision is legitimate. “It’s just to maintain our sanity,” he defends. “It can go too far if you star to talk about your private life. Even though it comes out in the lyrics, that’s all we want to say about it.” Lauri for one has good reasons for maintaining his privacy. In fact, rock sound finds its most evidence that The Rasmus are more than a simple pop band in talking to the singer, who remains honest and also realistic about his band’s fortune, despite currently tucking into a plate of caviar. “I don’t want this band thing to destroy my real life in any way,” he admits. “It’s very important to me to stay in touch with m friends and my youth because sometimes this can all be quite fake. It could take you somewhere else and control your mind in a bad way. So when it’s time to go back home one day I want there to be something left after these so-called ‘real times’.” Instead of hiring an elite crew to boost their egos, The Rasmus have employed friends from home as their roadies in the hope that it will keep them grounded. “We’d find ourselves complaining about small things that would have been nothing five years ago,” he explains. “When you don’t know aobut something better you’re very pleased with what you have, just like we were before we broke out of Finland. But when you get something bigger, you start to lose it. It makes it harder to respect the small things and that’s something I hate about myself.” Which means that even now, Lauri hasn’t forgotten his loyalties to his old friends. “I just got some messages from some of my Finnish friends I was supposed to meet last time we were back there. I didn’t meet them because it takes me at least one day to get back home and settle. So they were like, “Fuck you”. It’s hard because my time and powers are limited. Now I feel that I’m a bad person.” It’s also worth nothing that The Rasmus felt no embarrassment in re-releasing their previous albums here. The music and publicity shots back then may have been in Lauri’s words “so funny”, but they also show a band with nothing to hide. Despite that same back catalogue displaying a significant image change for Lauri, he maintains there’s no agenda to what they’re doing. The Rasmus, apparently, had never heard of “goth rock” when they recorded “Dead Letters”. Whether you choose to believe them or not, there’s only one thing that will decide if The Rasmus go down in history as pop or rock, or indeed if they go down in history at all. That’s the next album, due to be recorded in the spring. With several demos of “more aggressive, moody, melancholic” music already in the bag and an increasingly media-savvy band behind them, it shouldn’t be long before we get our answer either. “I think we’re going to be in a better position because we won’t be the new thing anymore in the UK,” considers Lauri. “It will be the music that speaks instead of all there categories. We’ll look the same so people won’t talk about that anymore either. They’ll just listen to the album and say whether it’s good or bad.” And if it’s bad? “Even if we are a one-hit wonder in the UK I won’t care,” he shrugs. “I’ve had a really good time these past ten years – that’s a whole career of one-hit wonders. One day it’s going to end. But while we’re still young and kicking, why not carry on?” The next year should be an interesting one.

Both Lauri and Pauli have been boosting their rock credentials with side projects recently. Here’s what they had to say.
Lauri Ylönen, Ville Valo and Apocalyptica on “Bittersweet”
Says Lauri: Three bands came together for this – The Rasmus, HIM and Apocalyptica. I co-wrote the cong with Ville and I sing it with him as a duet. Apocalyptica’s music is normally metal played on cellos and this song’s really beautiful. I think it’s a good thing to do because there have been so many questions about Ville and I. It shows that it’s possible for us to work together.

Pauli Rantasalmi and Kwan
Says Pauli: I’ve co-produced all their albums and I just finished working on their third one. The music is a mix between Portishead and Björk – weird, magical music. Producing is one of my big passions and I have a small studio at home. People ask how I fit it around The Rasmus but it’s very inspiring because it means I can do something totallly different and then come back to The Rasmus and rock.

Victoria Durham
Photos: Nigel Crane

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