Okay, its finally done. Bought the magazine today and I've been translating it for like 6 hours maybe? Yeh well it was pretty long article and translating from finnish to english sometimes sucks,pretty much. Anyway, here it is, hope you enjoy
(and ignore my grammar mistakes)
Guitar Hero
Alexi Laihos road to become the best guitarist of the world has been full of shards.
Alexi Laiho lifts his bandana from his forehead. From under is revealed a long, bloody wound and a big bump. What has happened? The rock-start sits in his home couch in Vuosaari, Helsinki and tells:
Sometimes Im such a fucking idiot, seriously. Last night I was working on this one riff and thought Id just invented the best and coolest thing ever.
Laiho was sincerely happy and though that this is going to be something very cool in the next album of Children of Bodom. Then he started to hesitate. The riff sounded remotely familiar. He began to go through his cd-collection.
It turned out that it was some riff from Pantera, it was somewhere in my subconscious. I got so pissed off so I drank every drop of alcohol I could find from here. And after that I smashed one of our golden records into my head.
And that wasnt the end of it.
Then I was so fucking drunk and I became anguished by the shards of glass. I started to vacuum and stumbled to the pipe of the vacuum cleaner and fell against that wall.
Laiho shakes his head and sighs.
I dont take anything in this life as serious as making an album and sometimes I take it a little bit too seriously. I guess I would need some kind of therapy. Theres no sense in this whole thing.
No. There is no sense in smashing a golden record to your forehead but exactly because of that passionate attitude 31 year old Alexi Laiho is one of the best guitarists in the world.
Now there is no sign of the shards of glass on the fitted carpet of Alexis two-room flat. You wouldnt believe that only about 12 hours ago an angry head banger was rioting here with a vacuum cleaner. The living room is immaculately clean. There are couple of empty glasses on the bar table and from the kitchen reaches the sound of the dish washer. On the corner of the sofa lays a guitar. Walls around it are covered with soundproofing padding.
You can beat your head to it, Laiho jokes. There is no reason to doubt that that wouldnt have been done.
He sits next to his guitar and lifts his feet to the edge of the coffee table. He has just arrived from the band rehearsal. Winters last winter storm is raging outside and the wind is blowing from the open balcony door.
You can close it if you are feeling cold, says Alexi. I really dig the winter but its too long. I think on April it should already be warm.
Laiho talks the same way, articulating lazily like the toughest guy in the class in junior high and smiles on a boyish way. He often ends his sentences with or something like that or end of fucking story. The latter is even inked to his arm. Laiho is skinny and very small-sized. The dark heavy metal-hair is smooth and shiny, his eyes are lined with black. When he moves, the fob and a dozen of bracelets jingle.
Last year Laiho was voted as the best heavy metal guitarist of the world in the reader poll of the Guitar World-magazine. The guitarists, soloist and front man of Children of Bodom has also been in the cover of the same praised magazine with big guitar heroes Steve Vai and Zakk Wylde. In the polls of Metal Hammer-magazine he has often been awarded. The guitar manufacturer ESP has got Alexi Laiho Signature- collection which Laiho himself has designed.
Children of Bodom is one of the most internationally succeeded bands in Finland. It has sold about 1,4 million albums and toured around the world with bands like Slayer, Slipknot and Megadeth. The album Blooddrunk which was released 2 years ago rose in the States as 22th in the chart. From Finnish bands only HIM has reached a higher position. The albums have reached high positions on selling charts also for example in Japan, Germany, Great Britain and Canada. One of the songs of the band was in Guitar Hero 5 which was released last autumn.
Despite all the success notable amount of Finnish people has never heard Alexi Laiho playing and singing. He knows it too and understands.
If you are driving in the morning to work in some traffic jam and they play a song from HIM in the radio, it can calm your mind a little bit. But if they played some of our uproar, then there would be a crash.
Laiho goes and opens the ventilation window and lights a cigarette. Then we start to clarify what enchants Alexi Laiho to the point of madness and obsesses him to the edge of suicide.
Look now mom, check how cool someone can play!
A primary school-aged boy from Espoo, Alexi Laiho was playing all over again the music video of Guns N Roses, Sweet Child O Mine and admiring the guitarist Slashs fingers on the strings of guitar.
My mom was totally digging the solo of Slash in that song. It
is one hell of a solo, Laiho recalls. Mom was working in an office, dad had an advertising agency. Dad had played organs at one point and also the rest of the family was musical. Three years older big sister took piano classes, was dating some glam rock-guy and listened to Mötley Crüe, Twisted Sisters, W.A.S.P, Guns N Roses and Poison. Sisters albums affected to Alexi who was first playing violin. In front of the mirror he was imaging that the violin was a guitar and practiced the rock star poses. Slash and Zakk Wylde had the best poses.
As 11 year old he got his first guitar, a Stratocaster-copy and started immediately to take guitar lessons. And practice the song Sweet Child O Mine.
It took a while to learn the prime riff. I tried to listen but I didnt have the technique so that I would have understood what was going on there. One of my friends had bought the notebook of Appetite for Destruction-album. I practiced with the help of it.
The music taste changed little by little towards heavier direction: Anthrax, Slayer, Metallica. Afterwards Laiho has been on tour both with Anthrax and Slayer and Kirk Hammett from Metallica has named him in one of the interviews as the best guitarists in the world
As a 13 year old he begun music studies in Oulunkyläs Pop&Jazz Conservatory and started also to play in the school band. The other guitarist of the band Kristian Wahlström recalls well when humble and a little bit shy new boy came to the first rehearsal of autumn. They played Nothing Else Matters from Metallica. Alexi and Kristian came along well immediately. They got permission from the teachers to stay after the lessons to the class to jam. They played some Sex Pistols and took turns in guitar and drums.
At some point Alexis eager rehearsing started to show. When next fall we came back from summer holidays Alexi told that he had learned during the holiday the whole Metallica album Kill Em All, the solos and everything, Wahlström recalls.
Anyway, Alexi wasnt particularly succeeded music student in the conservatory which back then had quite strong jazz-emphasis.
Playing heavy metal was just a joke there, Laiho says. The attitude was that ha-ha, its pretty funny that heavy metal thing of yours but hopefully you understand that if you want to play for your living youd better learn this boss nova-stuff. You play that kind of stuff and stick to it.
Wahlström who is nowadays teaching guitar playing in Oulunkylä tells that he sensed the same attitude back then.
But its a respectful thing that Alexi didnt despond because of the feedback. Many others lost their enthusiasm.
In the second year in Oulunkylä in the last rehearsals of fall a 14-year old Alexi announced politely to his band mates that he wouldnt have the time anymore to play with them since he was going to load to his other band. That other band was the precursor of Children of Bodom, IneartheD.
One of the biggest export bands of Finland was founded by 12 year old classmates Alexi Laiho and Jaska Raatikainen. The band was serious and aimed high. No other option crossed Laihos mind.
It was a thing so fully decided as possible. An obsession. When I was 13 years old I told my parents I wouldnt go to high school and didnt want to become some kind of
well, anything. Except a guitar player. I was lucky, they supported me.
Laiho goes to the fridge to get a beer.
Would you have liked to have a cup of coffee or something? he asks.
On stage Laiho is shouting with anger. After the gig he gets totally drunk and breaks bones and anything what reaches his hand. But now he is a friendly and kind like a schoolboy except that is a bad simile because as a schoolboy he wasnt kind. This rock star-to-be didnt really go to school in junior high. His mother wrote even permission papers provided that instead of school the kid would practice playing guitar. But the parents told that if you wont go to high school, you must go to work.
And I did so. After ninth grade I got the fuck out of there and fast and didnt watch back. In the diploma all the other school subjects had the grade 5 except in English, and Laiho speaks it very well.
Laiho did some assorted jobs, longest he worked in a building firm. The band consisted of five boys from Espoo, IneartheD, and rehearsed of absurd amounts, played all the gigs they were offered and did demo tapes. Those were sent to record labels and sold from a plastic bag on the street to everyone coming towards. The covers were drawn by hands, copied in the work places of their parents, cut and folded.
In the cover of the first demo there was some picture taken from the Bible where some geezer is holding some other guys head.
The amateur distributors ordered demo tapes some ten pieces at a time and sold forth.
It didnt matter which was the gig in Lepakko, those demos where sold in there. That scene doesnt really exist anymore. Nowadays you can do the demo in your own living room, the whole fucking thing. Probably you wont have to even play anything anymore.
With the third demo the band got a deal which was total bullshit, Laiho tells. Some Belgian geezer offered a deal to IneartheD whereby the band pays the studio costs by itself, 8000 marks, buys 1000 pieces of their own album and after that gets a share of the albums the label sells.
It was a totally witless deal but we thought that we wont get anything else so lets just sign that one. The album was recorded and mixed in a week or something like that. But then there was a turning point. A guy called Sami Tenetz called me.
Tenetz was working in Spinefarm, record label specialized in metal music and the lead character of Thy Serpent which back in the time was gaining success. He asked if Laiho would like to play in his band and also told that he had played the album of IneartheD to the production manager of Spinefarm, Ewo Rytkönen (now Pohjola) who wanted to sign the band for the company.
I was just like holy shit what a phone call!
The Belgians were announced that IneartheD had quitted. A band consisting from the same members called Children of Bodom made a deal with Spinefarm in 1997.
According to Riku Päkkönen, the owner of Spinefarm back then, Bodom had the job exceptionally well done considering their age. Some of them were back then still under 18.
Well you could see pretty quickly that they werent just ordinary kids. Laiho was a special talent already during the first years, Pääkkönen says. Soon he noticed the enormous passion towards playing which Laiho had. If there was a gig in the evening, already in the afternoon Pääkkönen saw Alexi carrying a small amp and he was playing the guitar all the time.
Its such a big and ongoing passion that he just wants to rub elbows with it all the time.
Laiho himself thinks that along skills in playing, also the right attitude is an important maker what comes to his success.
Im sure there are some cellar-guys who practice as much as I do or even more. But its not enough if you are the king of the basement. It asks also pretty much guts from you to squeeze yourself everywhere. You have to be like watch me and watch what Im doing. Its pretty harsh action.
Pääkkönen thinks this wont do as a general rule.
Majority leaves the basement too early, before they have their own thing done and ready. Bodom had first the know-how and only then the attitude.
Matti Riekki, former host of the TV-program Metalliliitto(Metal alliance, aired in Yle, quitted in the turn of the year) and editor of chief in Inferno, a magazine specialized in heavy rock, had his first touch with the band through the video of the song Deadnight Warrior (from the first album).
I recall I was quite bewildered about the music, it was rather odd mix of speed metal-guitar, black metal vocals and keyboards. And the keyboard-player was wearing a hood and black sunglasses. It looked stupid. Afterwards both of those impressions have changed, Riekki says. But well, Riekki is specialized in metal music after all.
Music journalists hem when Children of Bodom is brought up.
Last time I listened heavy metal was when I was 13 year old, they say. Or if youve heard three songs, youve heard enough. Everyone carry on though by saying that well they are still incredibly skilled players.
Metal music is kind of like auto racing. Its a popular sport where Finland produces tremendous amount of successes but for many its still an embarrassing thing, redneck-ish and something they are shamed of. Both are related to beer, sausages, ugly caps and badly pronounced English. There are barely any women in those circles, not even as embellishments. And when someone from abroad asks why you in Finland have so many metal bands or rally drivers, there is nothing we can say and we rather tell about Esa-Pekka Salonen, Artek or maybe Sami Hyypiä. But still we have metal church services, childrens music with metal, heavy metal Eurovisions, heavy karaoke, metal-Idols.
In a book by Jone Nikula, Rauta-aika (Iron era) 2002, Pääkkönen said that Finnish media isnt interested at all about metal music.
The gatekeepers of media would hope a hundred times more that Crash would hit it. They think it would be finer to make an article about Crash or Rasmus than Nightwish, he comments in the book. Does Pääkkönen still think its the same situation?
Well in principle yes. Now theres just no crashs anywhere but if there were, the situation wouldnt be different at all. Media isnt really interested about the success of Children of Bodom and that hasnt been a problem.
Well thats true since the people do know better. All the six studio albums have sold gold in Finland and the three latest ones have rose as number 1 in the chart after they were released. The first album, Something Wild, sold world widely about 40 000 copies and the newest, Blooddrunk, sold 240 000 copies. Bands tours reach from South-America to Japan. Although Bodom isnt the first neither the only Finnish metal band on world tour. Children of Bodom, Sonata Arctica and Nightwish and HIM (so far as those 2 can be counted as metal music) belong to the so called second wave. In front of the first wave were bands born in the end of the 80 and in the beginning of the 90s like Stone, Sentenced, Amorphis, Waltari and Stratovarius.
These bands are still in action. Amorphis, Waltari and Stratovarius are still on function and the guitarist of Stone, Roope Latvala, 39, joined Children of Bodom after Alexander Kuoppala left the band in 2003. Also for example the bass player in Nightwish, Marco Hietala was already known in the 80s from Tarot, a band from Kuopio.
There has been a lot of analyzing what it comes to the reasons of the success of Finnish metal. The snowball-effect, good education in music, gloomy nature, Finnish mens need to blow off steams and feelings to music, the exotic of the North. Many of the bands have been highlighting their Finnishness in a national romantic way. Amorphis has borrowed lyrics and themes from Kalevala and Celtic mythology, Waltari has combined metal with folk music and yoiks. Impaled Nazarene, where also Alexi Laiho played for a while, caused a sensation in the 90s by threatening Russians in their winter war-themed song. There are many bands using so called Finnish- forestery: Imsomnium, Ensiferum, Moonsorrow, Turisas and Fintroll who are performing their songs in Swedish.
Children of Bodom isnt explicitly Finnish neither Laiho wants to be some kind of deputy of Finland.
We are no ones deputies. We just play rock and end of fucking story.
Originality and oddity inside the genres has always stigmatized Bodoms music. A lot of guitar solos, keyboards, the honest roaring of the vocalist Laiho and especially in the early days classical influences. Different experts have found at least following metal genres from the music: speed metal, death metal, black metal, power metal, trash metal, neo-classical metal. The band itself defines its music as extreme metal which is slightly more comprehensive term or then just as metal.
The editor in chief of Inferno, Matti Riekki thinks that Children of Bodom has been selling their albums but not itself.
With suitable solutions, for example by adding some clean vocals, I bet Bodom would be a much bigger band, Riekki estimates.
Wouldnt Alexi Laiho like then to do for example one melodic hit song with no roaring and which would increase the selling? Nightwish does sell fairly heavy material with couple of easier hits.
Laiho takes a sip of his beer and tells that he really wouldnt want to do that.
I dont give a fuck about that whole radio scene, because people buy those albums and they are who make the decisions.
Alexi Laiho punches his head through a painting on the bed of a hotel room. Alexi Laiho drinks a liquid from an ashtray and pukes. Alexi Laiho sucks a condom to his nostril and pulls it out from his mouth. Alexi Laiho is kissing as if passionately with his band mate. Alexi Laiho is lying in a bath tub with wet clothes on and splutters some drunken stuff.
The tour-life recorded with a camera by Bodom doesnt differ from duudsons at all. Laiho says he loves that kind of way of living. In a normal day on a tour he wakes up in a bus at four oclock, which the band is touring in Europe and North America with in South America and Asia you have to take the plane. Laiho takes a shower, eats and takes care of the possible promotion stuff.
Then I just grab the guitar and drink couple of beers and then we have the gig. After that, if we feel like it, we throw a party. The same thing with a loop for about 2 years.
Some band members find the long tours tiresome but Laiho feels like home on tour. And when he is here in his own apartment he feels like he is away from home, as if on vacation.
Some people go to Tenerife, some to Vuosaari.
The internet and documentaries from tours are full of video clips which the members of Children of Bodom have shooted in back stages, during studio sessions, in the tour bus or in what ever unofficial situation. It seems like no situation is private for Bodom since they have material from going to the toilet. Depending from the aspect the building of bands image is either miserable or brilliant. The band doesnt genially do it at all.
We arent playing any gods, we are like this, Laiho says.
Being a fan has been revolutionized by Youtube. Traditionally being a fan of some musician, actor or athlete has based on creating a dream vision which has as much to do with reality as the huge fan posters tore from Suosikki-magazine. As strongly as the fan wants to believe in the dream vision, the idol wants to hold on to his private life and hide from the cameras during his free time. Laiho recognizes the phenomenon.
There are rock stars that you cant get near of at all. Like Marilyn Manson, he is like a cartoon figure. But when Alexi Laiho is lying on the floor of the hotel room, passed out, he is on his fans service.
Its a pretty cool thing. Those who dig the band can identify to the fact that we are just as fucking idiots as they are, Laiho says and adds:With all respect towards them.
There are quite a few jobs where you can become the best of the world and at the same time drink insanely amounts of booze. Laiho has pulled that off quite well, only some little accidents when being drunk have disturbed playing. He has broken bones from all of his limbs, his corners of the eyes have been cut and blood has scattered. During the last tour Laiho fell off his bunk and broke his shoulder and ribs. He pulled off 10 gigs after that but then the tour had to be interrupted by the advice of the doctors. He was forced not to play in 7 weeks.
How is life when you cant play guitar? Laiho becomes serious.
Its terrible, seriously. The first week goes with just being drunk. Then comes the withdrawals. Its goddamn difficult even to listen to music when you would just want to play but you cant. Its fucking gloomy time.
Drinking of booze stays under control, Laiho says, since he likes to be sober also. Between tours he tries to take care of his condition.
Ten years ago I didnt have to but now in this age I do, thats the sad truth. I go to the gym with one of my friends but that doesnt mean I would be some fucking bodybuilder.
The songs of Children of Bodom, in which Alexi Laiho writes the lyrics, usually handle about death, anxiety and being pissed off. Its weird. Laiho has basically got all to his life what he has wanted. He has made a profession out of his passion and even so profitable that he can finance other hobbies like old American cars and partying. He can sleep until 3 in the afternoon, drink beer everyday, take his precious guitar with him everywhere and work with his best friends.
Meaning, what can still piss him off?
Im prone to that negative feelings always rise to the surface. Music is a perfect way to blow of those steams. For example you can get pissed off in some traffic lights of traffic jam, you just feel like
fuck!
This feeling just described he tries to preserve during the song making, if not in otherwise, then in that case getting in some kind of trouble. An easy way for getting in trouble is to drink a big amount of booze. When
Are you dead yet? was fully recorded except the vocals, Laiho was missing half of the lyrics. So he locked to his home.
3 days on the trot I drank booze and wrote lyrics. I bought 2 bottles of whisky from Alko every day and the cashier was always the same geezer. I didnt sleep much. I just sought that feeling when you just fall apart and in a way I did. I think those were the best lyrics Ive ever written. Those 3 days after that I didnt feel so good.
And this is what springed up:
Once again waiting for the darkness, beat up/spun and scarred. Prepare for another war/Day by day we decay. Sunlight, get out of my way/Dig up yourself from your grave/Bad to the bone, raised in the gutter,/Not exactly a muthafucking role model/to you looking down on me/FUCK YOU BITCH!
But Laihos dark side means much graver things than just being pissed off in traffic lights. He got himself into real troubles already in teens. Laiho doesnt want to tell more closely about the reasons but he was tried to kill twice. He was hiding in his sisters and friends places and even for a while in their rehearsal place in Lepakko.
I grew very angry and depressed. I hated everything and everyone. I didnt care about anything. It was normal day for me to wake up and start cutting myself.
When being 19 years old, after the first album was released, he drank a bottle of whiskey, a handful of sleeping pills and locked himself to the bathroom in his accommodation in Goteborg.
I had decided that I just cant take it anymore, I felt so terrible that I just couldnt carry on anymore. His friends broke in, got Laiho awake and delivered him to the hospital.
That either didnt feel like anything, I wasnt even pissed off or anxious about it a bit even though everything around me was just total shit.
After suicide attempt Laiho got even worse. Finally he was taken by the ambulance to the hospital and to the closed department for a few days. It was then when he decided that he wants to get better. For couple of psychiatrists he showed the middle finger right away but then he found someone who was helping a little bit. But the biggest help was through music.
It wasnt so easy to rise from the bottom; it took me many years before getting this state of mind. Now Im not depressed anymore, Im angry enough but not in the same way as I used to be. There was a time when I said that I dont really care if I live or not. But in that one day every one of my cells in my body just fought for staying alive. At least from that I knew that I want to live.
This story is told by a kid from middle-class family from Espoo who is wearing loose trousers and tinkling fobs, plays Play Station, watches sitcoms, skateboards and says that he is dreaming about meeting Matti Nykänen. Sitting on his home couch being totally relaxed and calm having the second or third beer in front of him he looks so innocuous that you really couldnt imagine him hurting a fly let alone himself. Being a diva is something that is totally missing so its difficult to think that there sits a charismatic worlds star. Also metal journalist Riekki admits this: In the same trench he is lying like everyone else. But he sure has got charisma, kind of rough and untamed, maybe kinda shy too. Laiho is in a way the wolf boy of metal. Broadly women fancy him.
Charisma is probably born precisely from these astounding contradictions. Laiho is a guitar hero, a kind boy from next door and boozing duudsons but he has also cut himself and attempted suicide.
This was kind of grim but dont freak out, Laiho says and lights a cigarette.
Are you motherfucking ready? Are you? I cant hear a goddamn thing! Laiho is yelling to the microphone. On his home couch Alexi Laiho being a guitar hero doesnt come up. That side of him can be seen on the stage of Pakkahuone in Tampere. There isnt enough space for the usual specialties of Bodom like jalopies and pyrotechnique so the show is lying even more on the shoulders of Laiho.
Already during daytime there were teenagers behind the doors of the venue dressed in bright colors and black. On the side of the serving most of the audience is in their thirties, men with crop and band t-shirts or wearing just some jokey t-shirts (I kill you for drinking my kilju. I survived Lake Bodom. Suomi-konepistooli On Tour 1939-1944.) When Laiho raises his hand and does a little sign with his fingers, those crops form a thick grass of hands making the heavy metal-sign in front of the stage. Two blond girls are dancing fiercely in their black bras and mini skirts. Then they barge to the front of the stage and soon there are 2 bras thrown to the stage.
Its Alexis 31st birthday so at the end of the gig the band tunes a congratulation song whereto the audience unites.
Now in 8th of April 2010 I wouldnt want to be elsewhere as much as I want to be here, Laiho thanks. Its easy to believe.
After the gig the back stage is surprisingly quiet. The roadies are dismantling the stage and the band with few guests are soon about to move to the bar next to the venue to have quietly couple of beers. But Laiho is nowhere to be seen. Where is the birthday hero?
He has gone to his home. Meaning the tour bus.
I think it was pretty good interview. But I dont know if I should feel offended since I was one of those "teenagers", goddamn it
(And also can tell that Alexi did go to the tourbus but at some point he went back inside)
And now Im off to bed-->
