Sailing into the blue and into the innermost in one’s mind [Germany]

Snuggled up into a thick jacket, collar folded up and forgetting everything around. No stress, only peace. His steps are leading him along a white sandy beach, and from the deep blue ocean a cool wind is blowing inland. Hardly anyone else, alone the rustling and the air of the sea are his companions.
Exactly that is what Lauri Ylönen loves. And the people that were in the Latvian capital Riga about two months ago could have maybe seen him like this. It was a bit of a different video shoot for the current single Sail Away. “Usually it all means a lot of stress and hectic. The filming location was so nice though, and I was at the water in every free minute, looked at the sea and thought…” When Lauri tells about it, he seems to be back at that place in his mind. But in reality he is far away at the moment – and the backstage room he is sitting in has nothing to do with this dreamy atmosphere in Riga at all. The tour has begun – The Rasmus are all over Europe again. Of course the four Finns are playing the new single live too. With the words “Love-runs-out” Lauri describes exactly this song. A painful experience. “Yes, but what do you want to do?”, he answers heart-rending and adds: “It’s positive though, definitely, to have many different emotions and feelings in yourself. There’s also something like positive sadness.” He himself doesn’t appear sad at all, but rather in good spirits and talkative. “Yes, I’m happy with my life at the moment”, he confirms. And even if it might be different on tour at some point, maybe the memories of the walks in Riga will help to soothe the mind.
He didn’t really care about the cold there – “we grew up with that in Finland, you know”. But the cold and in Scandinavia quite dark winter is not his favourite season though. “I like all four of them. The colours in autumn are unbelieveably beautiful, and in winter we really have a lot of snow, compared to central Europe”, Lauri says. He wouldn’t like to live in a place that has only one season. He liked L.A., but he couldn’t imagine it as a home. “That must be so boring: Every day is like the other. It feels as if nothing was happening, as if nothing could go on.” Now he is looking forward to the winter and the short days. And he has made up his mind to do one thing: explore the sky in the dark with a telescope in an observatorium. “When it is really cold, you can see the stars and the northern lights very clearly. It’s amazingly beautiful, and from Lappland in the north of Finland it is best to watch them”, he explains enthusiastically.
But for now they are far away from home, and such wishes will have to wait. Even if Sail Away is to be understood as a metaphor, the words themselves fit so well to The Rasmus at the moment, Lauri thinks. “We left everything back and hit the road to play concerts, and we’re staying away from home for a long time.” Altogether the group will be on the road for 8 weeks, before their plane lands in Helsinki again. When “sailing away” Lauri often remembers his grandfather, who did exactly that. He was a sailor and was on the sea with mighty tanker ships, often far away from home and family. Lauri listened to his grandpa’s stories with eyes wide open as a little boy and was amazed. “He was a great man, one of my heroes. Of course he invented some of the stories, but I believed him. He was somehow surrounded by a great myth”, the grandchild raves. And in some way Lauri is still fascinated even today by the awareness of life that his grandfather brought to him. An own boat, for instance, is one of his dreams. And also the idea of living in a lighthouse he considers as “rather attractive”. And he really found an inhabitable tower with four storeys in a quiet area when he was looking for a house in Helsinki; but Lauri didn’t move in in the end.
Peace is what he needs every now and again, and enjoyed that in the week before the tour began. The band had time off, and Lauri simply did nothing but relax. “I was, amongst other places, in the national park near Helsinki and walked around all day, collecting mushrooms”, he reveals. After this scooping of energy the batteries were charged enough to see into the eye of tour life and to cope with the hysteria too. But he has never felt fear when Dead Letters caused the uproar, it’s just sometimes to much for him to be in the middle of attention all the time. But he doesn’t want to complain in any way, because: “We chose this ourselves! If we wanted more privacy we could take a break for two years. No, one shouldn’t complain at all there!”
In order to present something special to their fans, The Rasmus have built in a real treat into their program: In the middle of the show they play three of four songs in an acoustic set. These don’t always have to be their own songs, and the bass player Eero grabs the microphone every now and again. To be able to present the best possible gig to the audience – and to ensure that the tiredness is not too bad afterwards -, all alcoholic drinks are not touched during the whole tour. The musicians and their crew with them had already decided that for the Dead Letters Tour. Lauri: “It’s quite radical, I know. I hate admitting it, but it’s either the full lot or none at all.” Then a wide grin appears on his face, and he is gleaming: “At the end of the tour the reward will be awaiting us: We collect all bottles that are given to us as presents. At the end the bus is fully packed with alcohol.”
But Lauri is also looking forward to other things after the tour, especially the new studio that was only finished a short time ago – it is the first own studio of the quartet and not only a place to do some creative experiments, but most of all as a meeting place. “We made it very comfortable. There is a great Lounge with sofas and TV – we’ve been missing a place like that until now. We can also just go there in the middle of the night after a party and make music.” When they were having a little party in their studio with friends, exactly that happened. Jaska Raatikainen, the drummer of Children of Bodom, was there too, and Lauri had an idea that might appear queer to some: “Hey, Jaska, come on, let’s play Black Metal together and record it!” And the two of them teamed up. “It sounded really bad”, The Rasmus’ frontman judges the spontaneous jam. But Black Metal – no, Lauri doesn’t feel into that very much: “I’m no big fan of this music style. I like Children of Bodom quite a lot, but then, that is not Black Metal.” The band calls their studio “our castle”, by the way.
At the moment their castle is the tour bus, as the Finns are spending most time in their home on wheels. When the home sickness gets too bad there is still the flight to the world of thoughts. Lauri tends to dream in the daytime anyway. “I like to ponder about things I have experienced. I carry many memories and informations around with me that I haven’t processed yet. Whenever there is time, when I’m at a quiet place – that includes the tour bus -, I just stare into nothing as if I was stoned, look onto the road, think and wake up sometime, although my eyes were open all the time.”
Maybe he is at the bright sandy beach directly at the sea and letting the fresh breeze blow around his nose then.

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