On the Official Forum of The Rasmus there have been posted some new HQ pictures by Vicente. Here is one from a photosession from the old times containing pictures from the ages 1997 and 2001 taken by A. Lendet, and there is one package of photos from the The Dome 47 performance which Lauri did the last fall with Anette Olzon in Graz, Austria.
Tag Archives: anette olzon
Interview with Lauri on pitcam.tv
Russia '09, Monsters of Rock Tour
After a long silence from the guys here comes a not so old interview made with Lauri in Germany in November during his visit in Berlin. The interview was made by the German TV, Pitcam TV and you can see the interview made with Lauri on the YouTube Channel of the TV here. The interview is in English.
Lauri was talking about the Best Of, about the reason he became singer, about past plans with Apocalyptica, about the duet, and at the end of the interview about the Birthday Gig they had in Suutarila High School.
Aki @ NRJ Iltapäivä 09.12.2009
We could get used with not having announcements of the guys visiting NRJ Finland radio. So did this happen in case of Aki when he have visited the radio program called Iltapäivä of the Finnish NRJ Radio on Wednesday, 09.12. You can watch the video here.
Sonic Seducer December 2009/January 2010
Big thanks to Jessica who have translated to us the article that have appeared in the new issue of Sonic Seducer in Germany. Scans will come soon for the recent articles from Orkus, Rockoon and this one too.
The Rasmus
School’s not out
What do you do in Singapore?
Well, we’re sitting here together and write new songs. Our guitarist is living here for 2 years. A nice place to live, very different to Finland. Pauli likes the beach and at the same time he has the advantages of a large city. It always takes a long time to write new songs, you can’t do it over night. In the future we’d like to release albums faster and more often so that everything’s a bit more recent. Just as my favourite band Weezer that somehow manages to release a new album every year. We have so many songs, why shouldn’t we release them faster and more often. Especially today as the multimedia world has changed so much, people buy more songs or singles than albums.
By your standards you didn’t tour so much for this disc, why?
That’s true, earlier there often have been 6 gigs per week. But this year we took some days off in summer. We just wanted to spend time with our families, with our children.
15 years of The Rasmus – to celebrate that, there will be a Best Of, a new single and…
… a very special concert, that is to say in a gym of our old school Suutarila in Helsinki, where we had our first gig in 1994 at Christmas. Unfortunately you can’t buy tickets, only 300 people fit into the hall and that will mainly be friends and old class mates. Hopefully there will also be someone who hated us back then and still doesn’t like us today – that would be fun! It was also fun when I spoke to the principal of the school. I found the number on the internet, so I called him and said: hello, here is Lauri Ylönen, we would like to play a concert in the school. He answered: Is that a joke? And I had to convince him for a long while that it’s really me.
What would you also want The Rasmus to happen in the next 15 years? Do you think that you’re still here in 2024?
The last days we talked more about the future and the past, about what and where we want to be, than wrote songs. I can’t see any reason why we shouldn’t still be there in 15 years. We just noticed that we want to make an album that is very much back to basic again. The experience to work with Desmond Child was right and important for us, also very informative, but now we just want to get started without much planning and so much money, and look what we will get out of it. Today you can also make a good album on the computer at home.
Do you think that the next album will have a poppy sound like “Black Roses”?
Every time I said something about that we got an absolutely different one out of it. We wrote a song that has heavy 80s disco vibes but also that can change and suddenly be totally different. We try to take the song as it is and to not think about any style. You just look what the song needs and try to make an individual out of it. Later we think about how everything fits together. I don’t want to have a theme for this album, I try to avoid that. Last time everything was planned very detailed, I don’t want to repeat that.
Also the feathers are there again, on the cover of the Best Of and the cover of the single “October & April” (release 13 Nov) that you have recorded with Nightwish’s Anette Olzon.
We wanted to have a cover that represents the last decade. I think this image especially reminds of this time. But I also have my feathers here in Singapore and had them long before “In The Shadows”, they just were white back then. Actually, the song is 12 years old. We drank much wine and had fun to write a parody of all of these boy band songs. We imagined this picture of us, like in the pouring rain, the shirts wet and open, on our knees and looking up to the sky – it was much fun! I didn’t know Anette before, I never met her personally. So I called the keyboarder of Nightwish and asked whether I could ask Anette to sing a duet with me. That felt very weird, as if you’d call the father of a girl (giggles). But he was very enthusiastic and immediately contacted her, she possibly is a fan of The Rasmus and even sang songs of us with her cover band earlier. I only saw her at the video shooting in Helsinki. But we phoned very much and she is this type of person with which you can easily get along and about whom you believe you know her for a long time.
Such a Best Of often has the bitter aftertaste of the expiration of the contract…
Yes, that’s true; “Black Roses” was the last disc for Playground/Universal. And with that, this chapter is completed. I hope that we will soon open a new, interesting chapter. But I want to take my time concerning new contracts and new bondings. First I’ll write new songs and then I’ll think about the deals.
Eero as a hard-core Paramore Fan and article from Orkus,Germany
Here‘s a video YleX uploaded with Eero doing an interview with two members of Paramore before their gig in Helsinki. Below the video the text says that Eero is a kind of hard-core fan of the american band. The interview is in English.
Furthermore thanks to Jessica here comes an article from Orkus no.12/01 December 2009/ January 2010. Pictures and translation was made by Jessica. Picture 1 and Picture 2. Please if you take the pictures and the translation don’t forget to credit the person who have done the work to us. 
Thank You!
„First, I called Tuomas Holopainen as if he was the father and me the guy who wants to ask for his daughter’s hand.”
Then they say something about In The Shadows etc., there’s nothing that we don’t already know.
Lauri Ylönen: Hi, right now I’m in Singapore at the airport and have to kill two hours until my flight to Helsinki will arrive.
Orkus: What did you do in Singapore?
LY: I visited our guitarist to work at new songs for the new album. He’s living there for over a year and has a family by now. It was a wonderful creative time, first of all because we did very much with his native friends and have learnt very much about the culture. But now I really look forward to Finland – these trips open my mind for the beauty of my home country.
O: Is it actually something special for you to visit foreign countries? After all, you have already visited over 60 countries with The Rasmus.
LY: Again and again it’s an adventure. Not least because I absolutely dislike flying! (laughs) No, I really don’t like these “iron birds”. Apart from that I love to travel, especially when I can visit places again of which I know that I liked them. For example, I always look forward to being in Milan. I already know then where I’ll drink a coffee.
O: Which country or which city appealed you the most? Was it something such exotic as India?
LY: India absolutely left its mark, that’s clear. However, I can’t say that I felt really comfortable there. For any reason, I couldn’t relax. I think that was because of the wide difference we encountered. We lived in an unbelievably luxurious seven-star hotel, but when we left it, there was an unimaginable poverty. Indeed, our concert in India was very emotional but I prefer the more calm places. I found Iceland, e. g., breathtaking beautiful.
O: You became 30 years old this year. In which way did this age change your point of view concerning The Rasmus?
LY: Of course very much, I’m not the same person anymore which I was when I was 20. I lived absolutely different when The Rasmus started off internationally, and although I dislike this word, I definitely became more mature, which is for sure also related to the fact that I have a son by now. But in many things I’m still a child, otherwise I wouldn’t play in a rock band. You just have to look at me now: I’m wearing an expensive suit which could be of a business man, but I have this really weird haircut. (laughs)
O: The international success mentioned earlier began 2003 with In The Shadows on a grand scale. Many bands develop something like a love-hate relationship to their most successful track. Is it the same with you?
LY: Well, I never hated this track. Of course sometimes it’s getting on my nerves that people are imitating me with the beginning of the song on the street but you have to live with it. The way I see it is like that: without this song I wouldn’t be in Singapore now, without this song many things wouldn’t have happened.
O: It’s only right that this track is the first on your Best Of 2001 – 2009. Which thoughts crossed your mind when you did this look back at your music?
LY: I instinctively had to think about how many video clips we made in all these years. I remembered all the exhausting and funny shots which we did in Cuba, in the USA, Sweden or Finland. These were really exhausting years! So many unbelievable things happened that we couldn’t do everything some offered us. E. g. at that time, we couldn’t fly to New Zealand although In The Shadows was also there number one in the charts. On the one hand it’s a pity but on the other hand we can still catch it up.
O: With October & April there’s also a new song – a wintry melancholic duet with the Nightwish vocalist Anette Olzon. Why did you choose her?
LY: At any rate I wanted to have a singer of a Finnish band and as right now, Nightwish is Finland’s biggest band, the choice was easy. First, I called Tuomas Holopainen as if he was the father and me the guy who wants to ask for his daughter’s hand. (laughs)
O: There haven’t been other candidates?
LY: Well, actually yes. You have to know that the song already existed a few years ago and that time I wanted to have Tarja Turunen for that duet. But at that time her problems with Nightwish possibly began, so she turned me down. I was rather disappointed, so the song was put off for quite a while. It’s really weird that it now worked out with the next Nightwish singer but also quite funny.
O: Perhaps Tarja would have been a bit too much for this song.
LY: By now I think the same and am very happy about the fact that I worked with Anette. (sings just like a proof some shrill Nightwish beats) No, Tarja’s voice would definitely have been too bombastic for this song (laughs).
O: Was it difficult to get into a romantic atmosphere which is required for this sad love song?
LY: Absolutely no problem! This song has an unbelievable beautiful atmosphere into which you can delve immediately. The story of October who is eternally in love with April but cannot have her is a popular lullaby for children in Finland. We absolutely wanted to keep this magical, dreamy character and because of that we set value on this atmosphere lost in reverie. Even if we finally got a real “murder ballad”.
Ne Salmiset, The Dome 52 and Other Articles
Here is the performance from the Dome in a HQ version, the version that have been aired on the German TV, RTL II.
The guys and Anette have been at the Ne Salmiset, a TV Show in Finland, which was aired yesterday on MTV3. Here and here you can find the interviews they have made and here you can hear the LIVE version of October & April.
In the next part of YleX videos we can hear Eero and Lauri talking about Sail Away, the song was born around a camp-fire, and they wanted to make a classical song, but then it turned out to be a really nice rock ballad.
Here’s a video made a while ago with Aki and Lauri at Voice TV where they talk about meeting with Alice Cooper and the Scorpions, about the compilation album and Aki joining the band, about the Black Roses demos that sounded better than some of the ready songs from the album.
