Louvau:Welcome back to the Louvau show on KWSS and KWSS.org. That was HIM with Resurrection. Now I’ve got to be honest with you listeners, when I first heard about the band, HIM, I was totally not into it. I was working at a Hot Topic store and we were forced to play this record over and over again, so if you were working an 8 hour shift, half of the time you were there, you were listening to this band, HIM. And anytime when you are working in an establishment where you’re forced to listen to certain bands or certain music, you automatically want to hate whatever band it is you’re being forced to listen to – and it wasn’t just me, it was anyone I was working with at the time, just hated this band called HIM we were forced to play – or at least we thought we hated it because what had happened is you would eventually learn all of the songs and then you kind of start to sing along, and then you secretly liked it but wouldn’t tell anybody. Then after a while you’re kind of just like, “hey, I really dig this, these songs are really good.” And that was in the Razorblade Romance era, right before Love Metal came out, so by the time Love Metal came out, I had already been a fan. So I guess it’s fair to say that I would have never imagined all these years later that I would be interviewing Ville Valo on the radio. Without further ado, I would like to introduce my guest, the man that has the best logo in the history of music as far as I’m concerned, Mr. Ville Valo, welcome to the Louvau show.

Ville Valo:Splendid.

L:Ville, how are you?

V:Oh, I’m pretty good. How is Arizona this time of the year?

L:It’s actually the best time of the year to be here because it’s usually like 110-120 degrees in the summer and it’s just cooling off. Where are you calling in from?

V:I’m in Helsinki at the moment so it’s ridiculously cold and it’s ridiculously dark. The sun is setting around 4pm, so it’s like the days are getting shorter and shorter. I feel terrible here, I can’t wait to fly over and see a bit of sun.

L:Yeah, do you think that this time of year, especially where you’re from, does it help influence your writing when it’s 4 o’clock outside, it’s dark and you’re sort of miserable?

V:Well, I think everything affects, a couple of times we’ve been writing this time of the year or so, then we start rehearsing through the spring, or from spring to summer, then things really get into the song when the leaves start falling from the trees and it starts getting colder; I’m sure the albums tend to turn out way darker than the albums where you tend to be recording in let’s say, Los Angeles, where it’s always sunny. It’s tough to get into that super melancholy, Scandinavian mood with all the excitement around.

L:Yeah, and plus you don’t want to go outside so you get a sunburn.

V:Well yeah. To do what you need to do, you need to stop going out, basically, it’s funny, we’ve done about 8 albums so far with the band and we’ve recorded all over the world and mixed all over the world – it’s quite interesting because obviously with the surroundings affect and the same point of meeting people and seeing places affect. Everything is inspirational – it just a matter what you take from that inspiration.

L:Yeah, and that’s what I kind of wanted to ask you, when you’ve made so many records and obviously, you’re a completely different person than you were, most likely, from the first couple of records up until now and everyone’s sort of got used to the “melancholy” vibe of what you do musically, I don’t know if you can stay pissed off and miserable forever but I would imagine that one of the ways you kind of keep this fresh is by continuing to go to new places to make records and see new things to sort of channel a vibe and –

V:Well you know, I think for a band that has recorded many many albums, it’s good to keep the band on their toes – whatever it might take. It’s good to not to feel too comfortable when working on new songs or recording new songs. There has to be some sort of elemental danger and there has to be some fear as well. When you’ve become too easy and too same ol’ same ol’ then you’ll definitely do something wrong and that’s when the adrenaline won’t be flowing, you know, and you’re not going to be pumped enough, especially for rock music – it needs to be heavy, loud, and tragic, and there has to be despair, it has to be really extreme, like get into the extremes of different kinds of emotions. It can help though by obviously, picking great people to work with, interesting producers and characters, and studios to be able to make sure that you be challenged which recording an album should always be.

L:You have this limited edition box set coming out and re-mastering a lot of the classic HIM records, when you decided to do that did you go back and kind of go through each one of the releases with a fine tooth comb and go back and try and listen to what you did and see how you felt about it today compared to when you made them?

V:It’s kind of odd in two ways because when I was listening to a lot of the old stuff when I was putting the stuff, I was listening more for the technical point of view, I was trying to make sure they can be the best they will be and so forth – so it wasn’t really an emotional journey when it comes to the actual albums. But what was super fun and exciting and made me giggle and was a trip down memory lane was looking for all the b-sides and varieties, and so forth because I think I got together like, 8 songs for every album that has never been released for in Europe or in the States. It was fun because I founds hundreds and hundreds of CDs – unmarked CDs from different studios and I had to listen through all that stuff and try to figure out what year it was and what kinds of stuff lies within – and that was sort of fun, yeah, that was proper fun; that made me feel ashamed at times, a bit of blushing at times, you know, it was a lot of mixed emotions in a positive way because it’s funny to hear stuff from so many years ago. I think the oldest stuff nearly 20 years old so I haven’t heard it in as long in time. So for me it was like completely new like, who the hell are these kinds of guys playing this kind of music. It was a highly entertaining thing to do but I wouldn’t do it again in let’s say, 10-20 years.

L:Well yeah. You got 20 more years and you can put out another box set and I’m sure the technology would have changed again so you would have to go back revisit the stuff you just put out too.

V:Exactly, that’s the idea.

L:Out of all the records, what’s the record to you that still, after going back and listening to them, is probably still to you, really your proudest moment?

V:Out of the albums we were talking about, the old ones, there’s an album called Love Metal, that’s the one that resonates the most with the guys in the band and there was some things that go with the album – there was a lot of work and we didn’t know where to do after the previous album. We had to kind of re-think the band and find ourselves again as a band and through issues and we did that by listening to a lot of Black Sabbath and Type O Negative and just by being fans of music as opposed as to trying to reinvent the wheel and so forth. That was a great project, recording the albums is so much fun – we went to the States to mix it, we went to a place in Los Angeles called the Scream where they mixed Nevermind by Nirvana as well; it was a cool studio in the Valley that doesn’t exist anymore. There was a lot of firsts – we did our first tour in the States after that album was out and we met a lot of new people and there was a big turning point for our band. Love Metal brings the most memories and good memories in my mind when I listen to that.

L:Love Metal is my favorite HIM record, for sure, so I’m on the same page as you. I remember listening to it for the first time and I totally hear the Sabbath vibe so, again I’m glad I felt the same way you did so that’s really cool. Here in the States, I was actually working at Hot Topic store where you open a box that they send you to put up in the store and there’s a poster of you from Razorblade Romance, and I was like “who is this guy? I’m never seen HIM in my life” and all of a sudden, a couple of more days would go by and there would be more HIM stuff in my shop and then they sent us the Razorblade Romance record and we were forced to play it about 4 hours out of an 8 hour shift.

V:Of course it’s like that! I’m sure it could be worse – I’m sure it’s probably way worse these days in a Hot Topic, I can’t imagine what it is they’re making you listen to, right?

L:Ugh. I haven’t been in a Hot Topic since I’ve worked there – more than 15 years or something.

V:You know. You know it can’t be any better.

L:I just remember having to get really familiar with that record and there wasn’t anything really like it! So I really didn’t know what to do with that record at first, I wanted to hate it because I had to play it all the time then eventually you start learning the songs and all the words to the songs and they really set everything up for Love Metal which, when that came out, I just thought was such a great second helping for me of getting used to what you guys were doing. I thought it was a great record.

V:Cool! That’s how we felt too. It’s so weird for our band because we kind of liked the development or us getting the recognition in the States as a whole, it felt so different. We had already been touring in Europe since about ’96 so we had already had a history for 7 or 8 years before we flew over. It was quite nice to have like, two parallel histories and two parallel realities as well. Some people tend to gravitate to different songs and different albums in the States than in Europe and that made it super exciting for our band too because we didn’t know what to expect.

L:SO over the years, I’ve only seen you play festival shows in the states, I’ve never seen a headlining show. It was only in the day time, it’s not the experience I wanted to have at a HIM show, so I’m really excited you’re coming to the Marquee theatre next month and check out a proper gig.

V:That sounds great, hopefully you can make it to the gig, surely it will be a blast. It’s going to be fun our band too because this is going to be the last tour for a wee bit so we don’t have to think about the future and live in the moment and just you know, scream our lungs out and not think about tomorrow. It’s the best thing it can be when it comes to rock n roll.

L:yeah, so you’re going to take time off after this then?

V:Basically after that we have one show on New Years Eve in Helsinki and that’s going to be it for touring for a while because we’ve been on the road, more-or-less on-and-off for about year and a half. That’s a long time for us, so it would be a nice to sit down for a wee bit before working on the new stuff. That’s the basic idea, so yeah, this isn’t going to be a farewell, per-say, but more like a bye bye for now tour. It will be a fun one.

L:It’s a quick 8 or 9 city run too, right?

V:Yeah, it’s a short trek. Originally, the box set and vinyl thing was suppose to be coming out for the tour but there was some hassle with the manufacturing plant and what not and some of the stuff is going to be available later and blah which is a pain in the butt, but what can you do? So we’re still going to enjoy it. We’re heading over to the rehearsal place at the end of next week and figure out what we are going to play. We are going to try to play stuff that we haven’t played before so it will be fun for the band too – it’s not the same old same old.

L:That’s good. Tell me about some of the lower points that came back to you when you went back to revisited these records.

V:At least for searching, a lot of the low points has happened on a personal level. Most of the guys, we’ve known each other for a very long time, since we were kids. So the bond, the friendship that’s lined there underneath is very strong. I’m sure many many bands would’ve folded under the pressure and maybe the moment of not being so successful and so forth. But um, we always maintained the friendship through ridiculously bad sense of humor and that’s one of the things that keeps us going, I guess. It’s terribly hard to record an album when you’re going through a break-up at the same time and stuff like that, but it happens to everybody. It’s the same thing in whatever you do for a living, all of a sudden there’s a big change in your personal life sort of you know, like your buddy has fallen sick or whatever, it’s confusing. It’s tough when you have to be several places at the same time and try to take care for the people you care for but at the same time you have to get the bread on the table. I think it’s more about those things – in that sense it hasn’t been that low points with the band, it’s always been with individuals. I think it’s always sorted out one way or another.

L:Is there anything else you want to talk about or mention while we have a minute or two left?

V:You know, I’m kind of excited about going back to the rehearsal place with the guys. We have like, more than 20 songs we haven’t played in a long long long long time, some that we never played live so I’m kind of excited. I have to learn all the lyrics to like – we have rehearsal in like a week and we’re going to be playing 39 songs, which for us, is a lot. So we’re trying to figure out what we are going to take along tour and which ones we are going to throw away with the bathwater. I’ve been like a kid in a candy tour with the show and want to get back on the road.

L:Awesome. I’m going to let you go – I don’t want to keep you, I’ll see you when you’re here man. Thanks for joining me.

V:Alright! Fantastic, see you in a few weeks. Take it easy and thank you!