Attention Deficit Delirium: Interview with Ville Valo
It’s been nearly a decade since I first discovered HIM, the gloomy Finnish hard rock band whose brooding, chain smoking lead singer Ville Valo derived much of his lyrical inspiration from poet Charles Baudelaire and author Edgar Allen Poe. I quickly fell in love with their dark, dramatic sound and over-the-edge romantic sentiments, particularly tracks like “Join Me (In Death)” and “Right Here In My Arms,” a sinister song about unhealthy obsession. It was April 2000, and I was traveling around Germany at the time, digging into the heavy metal scene for Billboard, Metal Edge and KNAC. HIM were touring there, although I kept missing them by being in different cities than they were at different times. They were the darlings of the German rock scene at the time, with their second album Razorblade Romance having sold over 600,000 copies there (making it double platinum in Deutschland). The group would finally make a splash in America in 2005 with the half-million selling Dark Light and have since solidified a viable career here.
On the eve of the release of their new album Screamworks: Love In Theory and Practice, I chatted with Valo for a cover story in the recent Aquarian Weekly. I conducted the interview via cell phone on a train (the wonders of modern technology), and we had an enlightening 25-minute chat, from which I got enough for that story and this ADD entry. Whereas the Aquarian piece focuses on the lyrical end of the new album, the singer’s sobriety and his love life, the story below deals with his approach to songwriting, rock ‘n’ roll’s lost edge and why bands should go on strike.
Read the interview here.
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