Him_cover.jpg

Marc Halupczok

The Authentic Unauthorized Secret Biography of

HIM

First Edition, April 2013

Copyright © 2012, 2013 by Marc Halupczok

Cover: Tina K, Getty Images

 Original German title: Die echte, inoffizielle, geheime

Biografie von HIM – Released by U-Line, Germany

 Translated by Veronica Greenfield

ISBN 978-3-944154-96-1 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication

may be reproduced, in any form or by any means,

without the prior permission in writing of Ubooks-Verlag.

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Inhalt

A Life of Contradiction

If I was a fairy tale figure, I’d probably be…

This is only the beginning.

Twisted Sixters

The show goes on ... and on

Orcs and Elves

The Game of Kings.

Bright Lights, Dark Shadows.

Fighting Demons 


The Eye of the Storm.


Ville Valo Discography.

Picture section

A Life of Contradiction

From being a skateboarding Black Sabbath fan to enjoying cult status as Finland’s biggest rock star of all times took less than fifteen years.

Ville Hermanni Valo, born in Vallila, one of Helsinki’s famous wooden-house neighbourhoods close to the city centre, in 1976, has managed a career that is hard to match.

Saying that all this was one easy, smooth and straightforward journey couldn’t be further from the truth: one time, there was the chain-smoking asthmatic hard-partying alcoholic, another time there was the ascetic reclusive afraid of stepping out of the front door. As usual, talking Ville is, more than anything else, talking extremes and contradictions.

On one hand, his ambition is to become the biggest act in present-day rock music. One the other hand, he’s constantly complaining about the continuous attention by media and fans.

It is he who’s been pushing the idea of making “the number of the beast” part of the title of HIM’s first EP, 666 Ways to Love: Prologue, and part of the title of the follow-up studio album, Greatest Love Songs Vol. 666. And it is he who seems to be totally baffled when media and fans buy into it with a vengeance.

One day, he’s mocking the testosterone-fuelled atmosphere surrounding contemporary Heavy Metal outfits. Another day, he points out that he and his line-up are basically straight descendents of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, names Paradise Lost, Cathedral and Type O Negative as major influences, and admits how much he’d love to get the group’s latest album released by a Doom Metal record label.

He leaves nothing untried when it comes to pushing HIM to the top of the charts but simultaneously demonstrates a complete lack of interest in anything related to album sales or commercial activities. He makes a point of staying in neat and clean first-class hotels while his private accommodation more often than not resembles a landfill site. And the list goes on.

Ville Valo isn’t someone you can figure out easily. His personality is too multi-layered, his views are changing from one second to the next.

He and his future band mates meet at school, making music in various line-ups. Initially, Ville plays bass guitar and drums. Since the band can’t find an appropriate lead singer the teenager finds himself pushed more and more into the position of the front man of the outfit.

It turns out that he is the perfect choice for the job. After all, it’s his music, his lyrics, his vision that account for HIM’s first and modest successes during those days. So, Ville being “in the thick of it” definitely makes sense.

When things get serious, and with the band’s first album about to be released, he has no problems adopting the role of an androgynous teen heartthrob in the wink of an eye despite, and just a couple of weeks earlier, he’d still been one of the nameless street musicians regularly performing in Helsinki City Centre.

His unusually intense eyes, a combined heritage from a Finnish father and a Hungarian mother, propel him to sex symbol status, something he seems to enjoy very much, although he always stresses that being taken seriously as an artist is what really counts for him.

Moreover, he’s got the knack of controlling the creation of his own legend, skilfully using interviews to keep feeding the media new stories about himself, his fellow band mates and his music. His media persona completely overshadows the real Ville, basically a shy and almost introspective guy who’s transforming into this mega rock star as soon as someone points a camera or mike at him. Privately, entirely hidden from the public eye, he’s still trying to figure out who he really is, looking for his place in life. His ironic and sarcastic attitude serves as a means of self-preservation.

Despite the permanent and seemingly omnipresent temptation he’s not interested in getting a quick leg-over. He tries his best to make every relationship work, takes each and every one of them extremely seriously. Sadly, all of them only last for a couple of years at best. Each break-up pushes him to the brink of complete breakdown. He considers himself somewhat of a melancholy romantic and quotes love as the ultimate driving force behind his life.

“I think loving someone, being in a relationship with someone, is the most essential experience available to anyone on this planet,” he says. “You know, this kind of being-completely-overwhelmed-by-someone-else feeling. This whole new microcosm of thoughts that love tends to create around you. It’s like a fairy tale. Every time.” He pauses. “And you never know how things gonna turn out. Which, all in all, is very exciting,” he concludes with a laugh.

When being asked in an interview why his entire song-writing revolves around love, his answer is rather matter-of-factly: “We all know that love does have its downsides. It’s inevitable. By funnelling this melancholy into my song-writing I am able to deal with it. Much better than carrying all this emotional baggage around in your day-to-day life.”

Probably one of the most important factors in Valo’s development is the fact that he writes his first commercial big hitter at the tender age of twenty-one. Join Me (in Death) enters the charts all across the globe and kicks off the entire Ville-mania big time.

However, is it a blessing or a curse? He knows perfectly well that from this point onwards he’ll be measured against this benchmark. People are watching. Has he got what it takes to produce an equally successful follow-up?

Songs like The Funeral of Hearts, Gone with the Sin and Killing Loneliness turn out to be hits, too, and, in 2005, Dark Light is the first Finnish album ever to achieve Gold status in the United States. However, none of them is in the same league as Join Me (in Death).

The pressure is on. And HIM and Ville, in particular, are feeling it. It’s not the fans. It’s the music establishment. Naturally, he’s going defensive. Sometimes using nonchalance and charm. But also being quite outspoken at times, even offensive.

One of Ville’s widely known statements regarding this matter goes as follows: “From our point of view, it’s much better to keep our expectations in perspective. Kinda just riding along, you know? That’s always a good strategy, no matter what happens in the end.” And quoting from another Ville interview: “As long as we keep making good music, people will keep buying all these music magazines because we’ll be featured in them. Means, people will keep liking us and, hopefully, not starting to hate our guts.”

It’s during the recording sessions of Venus Doom when the group’s front man eventually hits his personal all-time low. He checks himself into four weeks of rehab to kick his alcohol addiction. The therapy works. For the first time in years, he’s totally sober onstage. And he is working on his latest project, Screamworks: Love in Theory and Practice.

Ville later voices his deep disappointment with the album’s commercial performance, even going as far as cancelling the album-related tour. After which he decides to stay completely out of the limelight for almost two years. Not writing any new material. No live performances. Almost no interview (one notable exception is talking to Revolver after having been voted “Hottest Dude in Hard Rock and Metal” in the magazine’s 2011 online poll).

In February 2012, he’s back. He announces a new album – “less love and more Metal this time” - although he’s not going too much into detail at that point. In the music business, being totally off the grid for two years means taking a big risk, especially when your fan base are teenagers who tend to find new idols very quickly.

He doesn’t really seem to care about all this. He states, as he did on many previous occasions, that he’s first and foremost a musician, and adds that’s what he will continue to be, no matter if people are going to listen to his music or not. He likes being an outsider, and in this respect, is trying to emulate people like the singer-songwriter Johnny Cash, the actor James Dean and the writer Charles Baudelaire – all of them extraordinarily successful in their respective trade, but all of them less than happy with their achievements. All of them striving for fame without being prepared to compromise in the process.

Which probably is Ville Valo’s life in a nutshell: “Art has always been criticised. And it’s particularly the non-mainstream performers who seem to get a lot of stick.”

Ville isn’t just someone who’s content with writing a song or two, then simply leaning back and waiting to see what happens. Quite on the contrary. He takes charge of things, including himself as a person, as emphasised by his decision to go into alcohol rehab, to quit smoking, and mostly by the views and opinions he’s expressed during various interviews over the past. Falling flat on your face is totally alright – as long as you get up again immediately.

To use Ville’s own words here: “There’s always a reason why you are making mistakes. Making mistakes isn’t a bad thing. Because this ensures that all future mistakes you’re going to make are, at least, going to be different mistakes.”

If I was a fairy tale figure, I’d probably be…

Helsinki. 8.30 A.M. A Star Is Born.

At least this is the case on Monday, November 22, 1976, when Ville Hermanni Valo (anglicized: William Herman Light) opens what will later be termed his “legendary smoky eyes”, looking at his mother Anita for the first time.

Statistically speaking (as anyone involved in product analysis knows), any item rolling off the assembly line on the first working day after a weekend has a tendency of being slightly “off the norm” in places. With hindsight, this applies to Valo too, though it will only become apparent over the years to come. For the time being, Valo, his mum and his dad Kari are a happy family.

The family lives in Vallila, a neighbourhood located not far off Helsinki’s city centre and in those days still a stronghold of Finland’s SDP. One year before Ville was born, the acclaimed Finnish director Risto Jarva had chosen the district as the prime location for his latest movie, Mies, joka ei osannut sanoa ei (The Man Who Couldn’t Say No).

The majority of Vallila consists of wooden accommodation built between 1920 and 1930, at a time when housing conditions were at its worst for Helsinki’s work force. While visitors tend to find these little houses utterly charming, the local tenants consider them sheds and a public disgrace.

Building and interiors are totally out-of-date, wiring and installation, in particular, are far from being fit for purpose. The redevelopment of the area will not start until the late ‘80s when Vallila becomes popular with many of the more affluent members of Helsinki’s art scene and the urban bohemia. In the mid-‘70s, there’s even talk of demolishing the Puu-Vallila (Wooden Vallila) area as a whole, relocating 7,000 people in the process.

Ville having any recollection of his time spent in this part of the capital is very unlikely. A few months into his life, his parents manage to scrape together the money required for a move to Oullunkylä, another one of Helsinki’s legions of suburbs, located about 4 miles north of Vallila.

Oullunkylä is middle class territory. The Valo family moves into a two-bedroom flat that is part of one of the modern apartment complexes characterising the area. After all, the Valos are middle class. Although just. Ville’s dad Kari is a taxi driver and Hungarian-born Anita is a stay-at-home mum, looking after their son. Despite being a devoted Christian herself, Anita chooses to raise Ville in a non-religious way which makes for an interesting outcome.

Many years later, during a series of interviews, Ville traces back his influences to his toddling days. Whenever little Valo has one of his crying fits, Dad puts some vinyl on, playing tracks from all-time-greats like Tapio “Tapsa” Rautavaara and Finnish rock legend Rauli “Badding” Somerjoki, later the lead singer of Agents. Mum takes Ville in her arms and dances up and down the living room.

A charming little story.

However, Jallu, a close friend of the Valo family, might have proven much more influential when it comes to young Valo’s musical development. Jallu delivering Elvis Presley’s Are You Lonesome Tonight during a family gathering makes a lasting impression on Ville. Legend has it that the later HIM-front man-to-be was immediately drawn towards a set of bongo drums, starting to provide the beat.

Anyone who listens to the King performing the song will, a little imagination provided, definitely detect certain similarities between Elvis’s interpretation and Valo’s future vocal style.

At the age of four, and courtesy of the older one of Jallu’s offspring, Ville encounters the music of Iron Maiden, Kiss and Black Sabbath. He remembers that Maiden’s famous mascot Eddie managed to scare the shit out of him. But he says he was very impressed by the sound flooding out of the speakers on that day.

However, the little imp is far from being a genre purist - his musical preferences also include Neil Young, Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison. Anita and Kari, noticing the enthusiasm for music displayed by their little one, fully support him in this respect.

But Ville’s early years aren’t entirely about music. Another passion of his is a mongrel called Sammy (also spelled Sami, according to some sources). All Valos are extremely found of pets, assembling a whole menagerie over the years. Nevertheless, Sammy is what Ville would later call his “first brother”.

“When I was very little, and not able to walk yet, my parents got us a dog. They called it Sammy. Guess Sammy was supposed to act as a living walking aid of some sort until I managed to keep on my feet. Sammy died when I was six. It was a traumatic experience which, in turn, seems to be responsible for me being allergic to pretty much every type of animal.”

This doesn’t prevent him from keeping a turtle called William though. “When William was gone, my GP made it clear that I shouldn’t even consider pets in the form of snakes or any other sort of reptiles,” he remembers. “It’s the scales and waste pellets that trigger the reaction.”

In the course of his pre-teen years, Ville develops a whole range of allergies, predominantly to animal hair, also including horses. Which might account for his uneasiness when it comes to anything equestrian.

“Even today, horses totally freak me out,” he admits. “Don’t know why, but I think they are really depressing buggers. Strange, considering that my mum’s been into horse-riding for almost two decades. Definitely not my cup of tea.”

Years later, at a press conference held at the University of Helsinki, Ville states that one of the reasons for the melancholic undercurrent characterising many HIM songs is the death of his dog. The experience of loss, the intense feeling of helplessness that death brings with it - something he could do nothing about. A child having lost his best friend.

However, while this statement might have made some of his female admirers reaching for a tissue, Ville himself doesn’t seem to be entirely sure whether the trauma of Sammy’s death indeed had the proclaimed effect on his future song-writing: during a follow-up interview, he points out that, after all, Sammy was just a dog, and he’d entirely made up the whole episode. As usual, and taking into account that we are talking Ville here, the truth may lie somewhere in between.

After his first “brother” had been recalled by its maker, a second one arrives. This one is human. His name is Jesse, and he is born in 1984.

When it comes to sports, or, in fact any kind of physical activities, it doesn’t take Jesse too long to surpass his older brother. He’s a talented kick-boxer, competing at an international level, qualifying for European and World Championships. Ville usually travels to these events, too. He likes watching his brother in the ring.

However, the two Valo boys share their enthusiasm for music. Despite being a Muay Thai professional, Jesse plays bass guitar in bands like Iconcrash (whose debut album, Nude, is released by Parole Records in ’05), Brightboy and Vanity Beach.

And like any other younger brother worth his salt, Jesse looks after Ville’s flat in Helsinki during the time his brother is abroad touring with HIM.

Back in 1984, Ville has just started school. School is an institution that seems very strange to him. But maybe it’s he who doesn’t really fit into something so rigidly structured and regulated.

Whatever it is, he’s wild, disruptive, hyperactive. Although a medical examination at the age of seven doesn’t flag up anything unusual. Nowadays, Ville would most likely be diagnosed with something along the lines of ADHD, but this is the mid-‘80s.

His behaviour on the school playground gets him into trouble with his class mates. And Math is something he really struggles with, he’s unable to comprehend the subject, falling behind very quickly.

Not really a great start in terms of his education. Fortunately, one of his teachers eventually comes up with a solution. To prevent Valo from disrupting lesson after lesson, he allows him to draw during class. This not only keeps Ville occupied but also challenges his creativeness, a character trait he’s inherited from his dad. From then onwards the pale boy is glued to his chair, doing sketches while his class mates get on with the lessons.

Luckily, all this turns out to be temporary. In the end, Ville pulls himself together, works hard and even gets to grips with his old enemy, Mathematics. The latter is down to Erkki Falck, the boy’s Math teacher. Again and again, Ville finds himself called to the black board, with Falck pointing out Ville’s numeracy shortcomings in front of the entire class, until the day arrives when the young Finn simply can’t take it anymore. For once, he decides to focus on the subject.

Falck’s approach works. After the first successes, Ville turns into a downright Math aficionado, with the subject becoming one of his favourites alongside Finnish literature, English and, inevitably, Arts. On the other hand, Chemistry and Geography leave him totally cold.

Talking about his school days, Ville describes himself as sort of a daredevil. “I was really struggling a couple of times, but, all in all I did okay, I guess. I liked Math and Arts. History and Biology as well.”

One of his favourite memories: “In year 8 or 9 we had this really funny Swedish teacher. Turns out she’s been a pin-up featuring in a couple of porn magazines during the ‘70s. One of my mates manages to get his hands on some explicit graphic material of hers from back then, and puts it up in school corridors, class rooms, you name it.” He laughs. “Gee, haven’t seen a lady being so pissed off in ages!”

More than anything else, it’s the drawing and the Visual Arts classes at school that leave a permanent mark, leading to Valo designing the “heartagram”, sort of HIM’s equivalent of Maiden’s Eddie, and his major contributions to all of HIM’s album covers of the years to come.

At the age of eight, the budding musician is basically just a boy like any other boy, doing what most boys of his age do.

His dad is fascinated by combat sport and this passion rubs off onto his offspring. Unlike his brother Ville doesn’t fancy boxing, probably feeling a tad too reserved for this kind of sport. He chooses Judo. And sticks with it for almost a decade, with increasing enthusiasm, it seems – as explained by him achieving a Green belt (7th Class) ranking.

Back then, his pastime is either spent in front of the telly – his favourites movies are pretty much everything by Charlie Chaplin and by the Marx Brothers, which, according to Ville, are still of great sentimental value to him –, or with roaming about outdoors, playing Cowboys & Indians with Jesse and his friends. Ville always insists on being one of the Indians. The culture and customs of indigenous people seem to have struck a chord that’s still resonating when Ville reaches adulthood, as indicated by his standard response to the frequently asked question of what he’d have done if his career as a musician wouldn’t have materialised: “I’d probably have become a Mathematician. Or gone tribal.”

His interest in Ethnology shines through in an interview with Metal Heart in ‘05: “Time progressing in a linear fashion is something I always felt hard to believe. And it’s not just me. Take some of the indigenous cultures for example. They think time doesn’t move from a point A to a point B, but sort of in loops. You know, starting off at A, following a large circle, until reaching A again at some point. Which is a very interesting perception, I think.”

Despite the variety of interesst, fads and pastimes during Ville’s early years, music never ever takes the backseat. Despite his musical tastes centre around Hard Rock and Heavy Metal., he starts listening to Reggae – and this style of music really captures him and will even get him into trouble with the police later.

Animalize, the twelfth studio album by Kiss is released in September 1984. It’s also the first record Ville ever buys. However, before investing his pocket allowance in any record, he seeks the advice of Pia, his older cousin, who not only happens to be a huge Kiss fan but also points out other bands in this music genre to Ville.

Years later Valo jokingly claims to have been brain-washed by Pia. “Just imagine what would have happened if she’d been into Mozart or Beethoven. I’d probably be working as a classical pianist today.”

But things don’t stop here. In year 3, when the future teen heartthrob has just reached the age of ten, his school makes music lessons compulsory. Every student has to learn an instrument. Valo, immediately thinking Gene Simmons, chooses the bass guitar. His parents get him a model from the ‘70s, second hand, which Ville still owns and plays today.

Musicians aren’t just born. They also made. Means, anyone with the ambition to become a rock star needs to practise. Although, during those days, Valo’s motivation comes from an rather unusual angle, as he recalls: “The whole me playing bass is Gene Simmons fault, you know? I wanted fire and blood [A/N: Ville refers to Kiss’s iconic pyrotechnically enhanced stage performances, with smoke, spark and fire coming out of guitars and Simmons, in his stage persona “The Demon”, spitting film blood.] I genuinely believed that if I kept playing long enough, the guitar would sort of erupt in fire and blood. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen. But I didn’t give up.”

Fact is that patience, as with all kids at that age, had its limits. The small amplifier isn’t capable of producing anything like an adequate bass sound, hours of picking and tabbing the fret board make fingertips hurt. It’s mainly Ville’s mum who encourages him to keep going. Not an easy task for her, but then, it turns out that Valo isn’t the only one.

There’s another boy at Ville’s school who also opted for bass guitar. He’s about two years Valo’s senior but, just like Ville, totally into Hard Rock, likes skateboarding and Arnold Schwarzenegger in his role as Conan the Barbarian. Both adolescents dig Clint Eastwood. Ville states later that, at the time, he wished that Clint was his father.