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The Dark Knight Rises
After cheating death and enduring injuries that would have broken lesser bands, Finland’s HIM have come back all guns blazing. As front man Ville Valo reveals: “It’s good to be close to cracking.”
It was late afternoon in May 2007 when Ville Valo was informed that he was going to die. An hour earlier his manager Seppo Vesterinen has found the HIM singer lying shirtless and unresponsive in a Los Angeles hotel room. Even by the hard drinking standards of most Finns, it was clear that this was no hangover, and Seppo promptly rushed Valo to the nearest hospital. It was there in the emergency room that the doctors announced he was on the cusp of dehydration-induced heart failure, brought on by countless days and nights spent swimming in a lake of booze.
It was a miracle that Valo had survived that far, given his habit of arriving at interviews with a carrier bag full or Stellas and carrying on downing near vodka into the wee hours. Just a few weeks before his hospitalisation those around the singer had thought he had reached his end when he stumbled through a catastrophic headlining show at London’s Earls Court Arena. He was by his own admission ‘circling the cosmic plughole.’
The incident in Los Angeles had proven to be a wakeup call of sorts. Today inhaling a cigarette outside a Helsinki pool hall with nothing but an Electric Wizard shirt and a vintage leather jacket to fend off his home towns arctic kisses, Valo dismisses the notion that it was all about some misguided desire to burn out rather than fade away.
“For me it was insomnia” he says. “And I used drink and drugs to deal with it, because that’s what you do – you start self-medicating, It takes a lot of strength to ask for help, and Finnish people are pretty introverted. You play down the troubles and keep them hidden until they break you. But in some way it’s good to find out where the edge is.”
An impish grin spreads across his face “In any band there is always someone who’s some trouble.”
Finding that edge was a low point in a career that has reached some dizzying heights, formed in 1992 by Valo and four high school friends, HIM have sold in excess of 8 Million records and – as the first Finnish band to ever achieve gold status in America – they’ve become the living totems of ‘love metal’ a genre of music inspired by their 2003 album of the same name. They’re gothic without being Goth – the singers lyrical croon owes as much to Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond as it does to Andrew Eldritch.
And while Valo does live in a 19th century mock medieval tower and has a taste for antiquarian taxidermy, his articulate self-awareness and droll sense of humour ensure he’s no caricature. He’s an iconic figure to the legion of fans too young to remember Jim Morrison and to old for the endless internet-led procession of here-today-gone-later-today buzz bands. He sometimes catches a glimpse of those fans on the CCTV cameras around his Helsinki home, ghostly figures leaving poetry, love letters and dark confessionals.
“They’ve been fairly tender and their violence verbal” he says of the intrusions, with a bemused dismissiveness he admits once was not there.
As his friend and former Hanoi Rocks guitarist Andy McCoy once told him ‘ Just deal with it with a giggle and you’ll at least be able to deal with it’
Before HIM, Hanoi Rocks were the most successful rock band to come out of Finland. “They’ve got mythical status, haven’t they” Valo says, “They’re hugely influential to a lot of bands anyway, but when you’re from such a small country, you can’t imagine that you’re going to start a band and sell out Hammersmith. So they’re very important for us for that reason too.”
But the connection runs deeper than just shared nationality, HIM’s manager Seppo Vesterinen , also shared Hanoi Rock’s career until their untimely demise in 1984 when their drummer Razzle, was killed in a car crash (The vehicle was being driven by Motley Crue’s Vince Neil). It’s a loss that still haunts Vesterinen, and it made Ville’s brush with death more painful. Vesterinen was relieved when Valo checked into rehab following his hospitalization.
“The thing about Ville ,” He says “Is that he wanted to go to rehab, he knew there was a problem. We all stood by him, which gives you an idea of their internal strength, it would have been easy for things to fall apart.”
Several years on, the aftershocks of Valo’s LA episode can still be felt within HIM, the band’s latest album, the curiously titled Tears On Tape, took more than two years to finish. The reason for that was down to problems drummer Mika Karppinen (aka Gas Lipstick) was having with his right arm. Years of touring, combined with an endless stream of side projects had damaged his arm to the point where he’d been forced to take a long break from drumming in order to recover.
It put a huge strain on the band, but Valo refused to bring in a replacement, Karppinen had stuck by the singer through his own problems, and for Valo, there was a sense of indebtedness to his band mate, instead he put the band on hiatus until the drummer recovered.
“Of course we were thinking the worst. Does this mean our lives as musicians stop?” says Valo, “We had a really heartfelt meeting. We were crying. When you’ve been best friends, the lines become blurred when it comes to doing the right thing.”
Karppinen’s recovery was long and frustrating, but it did bring the band even closer together. You can hear the emotion in Tears On Tape, a coiled spring of an album that’s charged with raw intensity. Valo admits these silver linings on the cloud of the bands production was more time to work on the songs. And for a man who hasn’t taken a break in 21 years, it was something like a holiday.
“it’s good to be close to cracking.” Valo says, a grin spreading across his face, “Finnish people aren’t insecure but they’d rather break through their work. Or as Ozzy once told me, just life your shirt up and the chicks will do the same.”
Original article by: Alexander Milas
Photograph by: John McMurtrie
The Dark Knight Rises
After cheating death and enduring injuries that would have broken lesser bands, Finland’s HIM have come back all guns blazing. As front man Ville Valo reveals: “It’s good to be close to cracking.”
It was late afternoon in May 2007 when Ville Valo was informed that he was going to die. An hour earlier his manager Seppo Vesterinen has found the HIM singer lying shirtless and unresponsive in a Los Angeles hotel room. Even by the hard drinking standards of most Finns, it was clear that this was no hangover, and Seppo promptly rushed Valo to the nearest hospital. It was there in the emergency room that the doctors announced he was on the cusp of dehydration-induced heart failure, brought on by countless days and nights spent swimming in a lake of booze.
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