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The person, who surprised me most by trying to convert me to God, was the keyboard player Pete from Dingo, around the end of 2001. I went backstage at the Tavastia Club to get an autograph from Dingo. Earlier on I used to like the band, I had a Dingo scarf and all kinds of other stuff. But then I had been too young to see them perform live, so I went as an adult. And Pete started talking very seriously to me that I should start believing in God. Quite sadly he asked me, have you never been in a situation that you hadn't a single friend. I didn't lie, when I said, no, I have always had friends. Then Pete took a swig from his Karhu beer, turned his head away from the bottle and said in a quiet voice, I see. Then he didn't talk anymore. Everybody has to be happy their own way. During my Rastafari period I tried hard to believe that Haile Selassie was a kind of Messiah, but I could not quite make it", Ville says. "God never put me to trial, it's always being said that happens to everyone a couple of times in life. Luckily I was not baptized, I'm a pagan. My mother is a Christian, but my dad isn't and me neither. I think it's cool, when kids can decide for themselves whether they want to be Christians or not. I never went to church, except with the school, and I had no religious education. But I did read the bible, the satanic and the Christian. I think the Old Testament is just boring. And the New Testament is not very interesting either. So many lies are told about the Holy Shroud of Turin, and the evidence that Jesus Christ ever existed is so thin, that I rather tend to believe that Jacques de Molay of the Templars was in that Turin shroud. What happens with the bible is somehow the same as with Coca Cola. When there is enough of money for the marketing, you can get just about everyone to buy a certain brand. But Afri-Cola or Dr. Pepper also taste good, there are many alternatives. And what is also weird about the bible is that it has been translated from millions of languages into millions of different versions, and still they insist that it is the truth. Of course there is a piece of truth in any book, but for me they are just literature, a rather boring kind of fiction. I don't think people who believe are idiots, but they are not really intelligent, either. Everyone has to decide for themselves. I've always wondered, how such a diffuse book can so strongly influence people's lives. For the Finns the book should rather be the Kalevala, although I'm not a patriot. In national mythologies and religious books you can find some really good philosophical ideas, but also a lot of things that are plainly evident. ‚Thou shall not kill.' Isn't it quite obvious that nothing is worth killing for? ‚Thou shall not commit adultery' is a completely different story, it's more about details. This and all the other commandments are rather amusing". HIM never took the number 666 very seriously. For the band it does not really have the meaning of the number of the Beast, but represents an element of second rate horror movies. Already on the band's first CD there was the song Your Sweet 666, which comes from the saying of a priest that, when you play Stairway to Heaven from Led Zeppelin the other way round, you hear the message "Here's to my sweet Satan 666". Your Sweet 666 is a homage to Led Zeppelin. Foreign reporters have always been interested in the name HIM, and still ask over and over again how it was chosen. That's why the band got used to making up so many lies about it. When the boys band Hanson was popular, they used to say HIM stood short for Hanson Is Murdered. When Gas, who's a passionate ice hockey amateur, joined the band, HIM was suddenly short for Helsinki Ice hockey Maniacs. There are many interpretations. And each time they got away with those lies because the HIM members are such accomplished liars. They remain dead serious and so far the Pinocchio effect is not showing. "Sometimes the name HIM also sucked", admits Ville. "But the name of a band is not all that important. If you take Eppu Normaali for example, what kind of a name is that? It comes from Ab Normal, a character from Mel Brooks' film Frankenstein Junior. The name doesn't aggress anyone, it doesn't mean anything. If an audience listens to HIM, they don't think of God or His Infernal Majesty. They think of our songs or of my heavy make-up in some cheap German video. Well, a music video." What really pissed HIM off, is that that they didn't have their name registered on time. They just didn't have the money for it. Companies with the name HIM in it or Him are all over the world. Ville Valo mentions that, in the 70s there was an English gay porno mag called Him, and in Germany there are women's wear shops which make wedding gowns, dresses and other clothes for transvestites. The web address www.him.com belongs to a metal recycling company in Arkansas, USA, with the name of Hummelstein Iron & Metal. The address www.him.org belongs to a religious group: Harvest International Ministries. Which, of course is to some degree an irony. The internet system Google comes up with as many as 57 million entries if you research Him. That's a lot to check out. A problem is that there is another band called HIM in the US and they had their name registered in their country. Which means the Finnish band HIM has to perform under another name when they become active in the US. The American HIM band plays experimental jazz and has released albums, that had a few good reviews. It already happened that the HIMs of both continents got mistaken in cases of mail record orders. Sworn Eyes- and Our Point of Departure-CDs are no rare Ville Valo recordings but global rhythms, improvisations and jazz.  Sharing Burton's birthday cake at the book publishing party Translated by Sandra M. <- back to news page: 1 / 2 |
