Interview with Lauri [Germany]

“I wanted people to pay attention to me, and to be member of a band and thus be part of something, made me proud and stronger”.
Since the beginning of The Rasmus, Lauri Ylönen has already seen his share – during the last years, concert trips have led the quartet into about any corner of Europe and even Japan and lately South America and India. Still, the 27-year-old doesn’t only spend his breaks in homey Finland. At least once a year the singer spontaneously books a last-minute flight, for to ‘recharge the batteries’ in exotic countries, far away from touring stress.
For Christmas 2005 the beautiful Island Tahiti was on top of the wish list…

Orkus: Are those trips a possibility for you to escape the dark and awfully cold Finnish winter?
Lauri Ylönen: Actually, I don’t have a problem with that. The contrary is the case. In a certain way, the winter is very nice, and those who’ve been born here have developed a thick skin against it. But I can imagine that it’s much harder for people to survive the winter, who immigrate to Finland. They might feel quite lonely, because Finns don’t make friends quickly.

Orkus: Could you imagine to live in another country?
Lauri Ylönen: I love to live in Finland. Maybe I’ll move out of Helsinki some day – to a smaller and quieter town. We watched a few Finnish films on the tourbus where you could see beautiful Finnish landscapes. It would be great to have a house in Helsinki and another somewhere in the woods.

Orkus: There are for sure many childhood memories connected with your home country. Would you describe your childhood as happy?
Lauri Ylönen (hesitates for a moment): Not unexceptionally. Some really tragic things happened which I don’t want to really talk about. But we had a summer house, idyllically located by a lake, which we still own and where I can hide away any time. I spent my childhood there and connect lovely memories with it. For example going fishing with my grandpa. It’s those little things especially, that you like to recall.

Orkus: Can you remember your favourite toy?
Lauri Ylönen: I had a skeleton that you could tinker yourself, it glowed in the dark. So I spent a lot of time in a dark room playing with that glowing skeleton and its spine. Very weird. (laughs)

Orkus: A few years later, during your school years and in your teens, everything already started with The Rasmus. What got you into setting up a band?
Lauri Ylönen: To be honest I wanted to get some attention with that. I wanted others to notice me, and to be a member of a band and therefore part of something, filled me with pride and strength. At school we were a group of about 20 kids who shared the same music taste and lifestyle. I still count those people as some of my best friends, even though some of them have stopped making music in the meantime. Moreover, we wanted to score with the girls (grins), but they preferred the ice hockey players, so we felt a bit like losers. Today it’s the complete opposite – and that feels really good.

Orkus: Did that plan already work back then?
Lauri Ylönen: Somehow, but most people thought we were crazy, and were a bit shocked by our appearance and behaviour. When we were 17, Eero and I shared a 20-qm crappy flat where there wasn’t even a toilet, and we had a plush doggie we used to take to school on a leash, which most people of course just shook their heads over. What we did was just too much for many. But on the other hand there were people just like us and who didn’t take things so very seriously. Normally, young people are extremely sensitive when it comes to being accepted by others and get bullied when they have no friends. But you don’t have to be friends with everyone.

Orkus: If you say it was about attention for you – did you feel like an outcast?
Lauri Ylönen: No, because I had some really good friends. We felt like standing against the rest of the world, because at the beginning everyone laughed at us and forecasted that we wouldn’t ever get around to anything with the band. No one really believed in us, and so our small circle of friends also had something rebellious to it.

Orkus: You even quit school for The Rasmus.
Lauri Ylönen: Yeah, I wanted to wake up in the mornings and play the guitar, instead of doing maths. (laughs) I wasn’t even really bad at school – for instance I really liked Finnish and English or also History. But I was simply never interested in subjects like Maths or Chemistry. Maybe I was just too young at that time, but I was convinced that I wouldn’t need any of this anyway and would be able to go to school again if the music thing didn’t work. Which is true, because with a band you maybe just get this once in a lifetime chance, whereas you can always go to school if that is what you want.

Orkus: So you don’t regret your decision?
Lauri Ylönen: No, and I think that I have learned and seen more through the band than most other people do. I think that I walk around with my eyes more open than those who are stuck in their jobs and lead a so-called ‘normal’ life. I’m also grateful that I understand much more because I have experienced it by myself and not just read about it. Of course you also miss some things, but you can’t have it all. If you want to achieve something, you need to sacrifice for it.

Orkus: Your parents probably weren’t amused about your decision?
Lauri Ylönen: They didn’t really like it, but since I had been a very independent child, I didn’t discuss it very intensively with them, and so they probably felt that they couldn’t do much about it. They just said it was my life and my decision. And somehow they probably believed in me. Well, and I was definitely confident about it.

Orkus: And how is their position to it nowadays?
Lauri Ylönen: They’ve begun a kind of new life or second youth and visit concerts. No only ours – my Dad calls me from the Tavastia (club in Helsinki – author’s note) to tell me he’s watching Apocalyptica at the moment and that he likes them a lot. (laughs) He proudly wears his Rasmus-jacket, whereas of course that isn’t the same as if a father is dreaming that his kid is becoming an ice hockey player and is supporting him in his training. Principally the most Finnish parents are hoping that their sons become Formula 1 pilots or ice hockey players.

Orkus: Can you remember your first performances?
Lauri Ylönen: Of course. Pauli, Eero and I were jobbing at a youth hostel where we could also stay overnight, and nearly every evening there was a band playing. We performed every two weeks – at first in front of 20 people, then 40, 100 and sometime 150. Via mouth-to-mouth propaganda it got known that we had our own kind of show. Every gig had its own motto,and so there was also this ironical little American performance where we hung up a little US-flag and appeared with Go-go dancers, covered our teeth with white paint and I had a chest toupet. Back then we had a really good time.

Orkus: Why on earth Amerika – did your youth idols come from the USA?
Lauri Ylönen: Actually it was just a joke because we had exactly nothing American. Years ago I listened mostly to Hard Rock, and my first concert was Mötley Crue and Skid Row in Helsinki. My big sister took me there with here when I was 13.

Orkus: It was here also that made you sing after you’d only played guitar and drums before.
Lauri Ylönen: Exactly, she influenced me in many things, and through her I discovered many bands for myself. She is four years older than I am and she thought I should sing. I personally didn’t like the sound of my voice at all when I’d taped something.

Orkus: Did that make you feel insecure on stage?
Lauri Ylönen: I even felt very secure because it definitely is something different to be nervous doing something you love doing or having to present something in school in front of the class. I absolutely hated that. Being on stage with your best friends and playing your own music rather makes you feel positively excited.

Orkus: How was it with the screaming fans and the sudden media interest – could you handle it?
Lauri Ylönen: No, none of us. Too many things happened to fast back then; also the first time we got our fingers on alcohol. At the beginning the time after each gig was quite wild, and it didn’t do us much good to test our borders. Whereas grown-ups often react just as bad when they suddenly become famous over night. If you want a bit of attention and then all of a sudden everybody is looking at you, that simply is too much to cope with it in a sensible way. Anyway it is fact that apart from the big mass of followers there is an equal mass of people that hate you. And it is quite hard to notice that you actually only wanted to make music, but there is a heap of mad people who would love to punch you just because they don’t like your face.

Orkus: What was your worst experience in that respect?
Lauri Ylönen: As our second album was released about 8 years ago there were a lot of people who disliked my wearing feathers in my hair. As we were sitting in a restaurant in a little Finnish city a few guys were standing in front of it and waiting to wallop us. That happened a few times. (laughs bitterly) Those were quite difficile and threatening situations, and teenagers can be very foolish in that respect, because they don’t know their borders and don’t have a clue how easily they could kill somebody with one wrong punch. Unfortunately many don’t even think before they do something. Just to be caught in fights because I’m the singer of a band was very disappointing for me. And as somebody threw his cigarette at my forehead the resulting scar reminded me how many assholes live in this world who don’t have anything and resulting in that envy others. But thankfully every medal has two sides and the positive experiences weigh far more.

Orkus: What would you call your probably nicest experience hitherto?
Lauri Ylönen: Of course it was a great honour to support groups like Rancid or the Red Hot Chili Peppers, even though that wasn’t “our” audience then. On top of that we had some of our best shows in a club in Helsinki where we had our practice room in the cellar. Pityingly it doesn’t exist any more, because Nokia pulled up a building there. And instead of the youth hostel we used to job in, there is a park house now, and that is really bad, because for young people it was a place to meet and find new friends. Now only stupid cars are standing around there.

Orkus: If you look back onto your career so far – are there things you would do differently, seen from your position today?
Lauri Ylönen: No, because I think that everything we did was important in some kind of way, and every step led to the next. One can grow by taking wrong choices as well. I just think we’re still on the way somewhere, even if we don’t know our exact goal yet.

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