Finnish rockers The 69 Eyes have been around since the 80’s, but it’s only recently that they’ve begun to make inroads into the American market. With a new vampire-themed album released just in time to capture the bloodsucker-friendly zeitgeist, they’re currently hitting the road in the hopes of connecting with old fans and finding themselves some new ones.
Kirsty Evans sat down with frontman Jyrki right before the first show of the tour in San Francisco to talk about cartoony horror bands, old school rock and roll, and what makes Finnish bands unique.
Kirsty: This isn’t your first time in San Francisco, right?
Jyrki: No, this is the 4th. We’ve been here a couple of times headlining ourselves and then we played at The Fillmore with Cradle of Filth, which was brilliant.
That’s a strange combination.
I don’t think so. Cradle of Filth is kind of a cartoonish black metal band and we’re kind of the same, like a cartoon rock band.
That’s interesting, because when bands that audiences here aren’t familiar with open for American bands, the audiences can sometimes be a little hostile.
In our case it was a perfect combination because we were introduced to a new generation of kids. The best feedback is when after the show people come and tell you “I never heard of you before but you guys rocked.” I’m sure that on this tour there will be a lot of kids who saw us back then and realized that hey, there’s this good band that we like.
We’ve been touring for 20 years so why do we still exist? The point of touring and making new albums is that I’m sure there are a lot of people who would love our band but they still haven’t heard us. Even though we’re a household name in the worldwide metal scene, people have seen our pictures and know our name, they know that the drummer has funny hair, but they probably haven’t actually heard our music or seen us live. There are a lot of people who have a place for 69 Eyes in their hearts and that’s why we still make records and tour, because I want to reach these people because I know they exist.
Listening to the new album, you almost seem to be channeling the late 80’s LA metal scene. Was that a deliberate choice?
Well, you know we are an 80’s band since we started in 1989. Our roots are there, more or less. I think it took about 10 years for us to come up with our present day goth and roll 69 eyes sound.
What did you sound like when you started out?
69 Eyes is the prototype of a band where we put all the influences of our own favorite bands in there musically and visually. When we started we loved Danzig and the Sisters of Mercy but at the same time we loved Guns and Roses and the New York Dolls, so the question was how to make all these elements part of our sound.
There’s also a horror movie element to it.
Of course, that’s always been there since the beginning. I was a big Cramps fan so I thought it was more fun to be a horror movie related rock and roll band than sing about my emotions.
There aren’t very many bands left in that horror-influenced space.
Yeah, it’s sad. The Cramps are gone, and since they’re gone I think we need to carry on the torch. Of course we would like to be the next Halloween band; The Cramps were the ultimate Halloween band. All these bands that have never been fashionable or trendy, but they’re eternal.
Cult bands
Exactly. When we were doing the record in LA I had some time so I went to this Fangoria horror magazine 30th anniversary convention at the Staples Center and there were 30,000 people, these horror freaks, and I realized that’s pretty much our audience. Somehow, when we play or whenever there’s a horror convention these people come out from nowhere, they do exist.
They’ll also turn out to see bands like Slipknot.
Sure, it surpasses trends. That’s what we’ve been doing for the past 20 years. Our original influences are still there but we have our own sound and we’re not a retro band, even though the bands that I’m talking about are older. We always want to have a current hard sound while still recycling the old classic values like leather jacket, dark glasses, black hair.
The thing that jumped out at me right away given that you’re from Finland is the Hanoi Rocks influence. I was never sure how popular with the mainstream they were in Finland. Is that something that you guys grew up with?
Oh yeah, they were the biggest, most famous band among teenagers in Finland during their active period in the beginning of the 80’s. Every girl or boy tried to look like Nasty Suicide or Michael Monroe.
At what era was this?
Early 80s, 81 till 85 or something. And then all of a sudden in 85 Hanoi Rocks broke up and then a couple of years later all these same kinds of bands started to come out from LA. Guns and Roses had their record out and all these guys tried to look like Hanoi Rocks, and that was very interesting for me.
Izzy Stradlin kind of looked like Andy Junior.
Yeah, exactly. I was excited, like wow, this is really cool, all these band trying to sound like Helsinki rock bands, because of course when Hanoi Rocks existed in Helsinki there were a bunch of other bands that existed who were influenced by them, and of course, naturally, we are influenced by them.
Is that where you picked up the 50’s rock and roll influences?
No. It’s a crazy thing, in the Finnish music scene, I think, Finland is very isolated, or it was very isolated, and we have our own music scene there, which means…the rock that Finnish people like is metal, ACDC and Metallica. Finland has always been a rock country.
I can’t think of any pop bands from Finland.
No, and no R and B or anything like that. It’s a rock country and strangely enough I think we have great knowledge of the history of American rock. In the 70’s, the biggest music that was fashionable among teenagers was 50’s rock. I guess it was everywhere because of Grease and Happy Days. I was a kid back then and when I started to listen to music it was Elvis and 50’s rock. I’m still a big fan and it still excites me. I just got this as a present from a fan [pulls out Elvis LP], it’s pretty cool. So that’s where it comes from, but it’s pretty interesting that you’ve noticed that, it’s something that we have in common.
It’s something that you hear on the choruses in your songs, that 50’s sound.
Yeah, yeah. And you know the vocals on this album, I recorded them at Matt Hyde’s house in Van Nuys, which is this low rider, American Graffiti kind of area of Los Angeles. I grew up on 50’s music and I’m not a metal guy. I don’t think the 69 Eyes is a metal band, we’re a rock and roll band, and my roots are in the 50’s.
The metal scene was closer to that in the 80’s but now it’s gone in a very different direction.
Yes. That’s the difference between say us and HIM, they’re inspired by Black Sabbath and bands like that, we’re inspired by The Stray Cats and Elvis.
Since you mentioned HIM, other than yourselves and them are there any other Finnish bands right now that you’d recommend that people check out?
Well, Children of Bodom, of course.
Which is a totally different sound.
Yeah, that’s really hard metal, but that’s a great band. And also Amorphis which is also a metal band.
It seems like everything from Finland has a slight goth tinge to it right now.
The thing is, the way we write the music and the kind of melodies we have in the music are always melancholic. That’s the similarity between HIM, Hanoi Rocks, and us, for instance. We have similar melancholic melodies in our music. It’s just in our heart and that’s how we write the music.
Isn’t it sort of a cultural thing?
It’s definitely a cultural thing. In our hearts we’re always longing for something. When winter comes and the migrating birds leave…
It’s a long winter.
It’s long and the birds fly south to Africa or something, but we can’t follow, we stay to face the winter and the dark period. We are always longing for the south or towards the sea or the adventures that might lie ahead. That’s something that every Finnish band has in their sound.
It seems like you have kind of a cult following here in the US. At what point did you realize that you had fans here?
We started meeting people at our shows. The world is not that big any more. We did a headlining tour 3 years ago and we had a cult following because of our MySpace, which was relatively young then. The three tours we’ve done, all of them have been based on our MySpace activities, we never really had a supporting record label who would get us press.
The back catalogue was released here at some point though, right?
Yeah, but we’d never done for instance any press in the US before this. So now we have a really active record label.
You signed to The End, right? They’ve been picking up a bunch of interesting international bands recently.
Yes. It’s interesting to do this tour and to be doing far more promotion than we had been before.
Now this is always kind of a dicey subject – what’s your approach to illegal downloading?
Well when our album was just about to come out I heard that it had leaked to the Internet and someone had counted about 2000 downloads. I’m happy that people are eager to hear our new stuff, naturally, but I sort of wish that the fans had waited for when the record officially came out so we’d have everything ready for the package deal. It’s hard to say, I mean I’ve never [illegally] downloaded anything. I would say that if I buy a record from iTunes, if it’s good I really want to buy the physical product as well. I hope that those people would still buy records because we don’t want the record industry to die.
Are you putting any thought into how you can persuade them to actually buy the hard copy in terms of how you put the package together?
We sell them at the shows and there are different packages, like there’s a vampire edition which is with a DVD, and there’s a special tour edition with a t-shirt and stuff. The record companies are coming up with new ideas about how to sell.
I found it interesting when I was doing some research on you guys that there are a lot of pictures of you doing meet and greets and things like that, posing with fans, and a lot of cult bands won’t do that.
Really?
I think some of them may be kind of nervous around their fans, and I’m curious because you guys seem like you’re very comfortable.
It’s like KISS said, the fans are our bosses and we tour for them. What the hell, you know? They’re our friends, we party with them. We don’t draw any distance between us and our fans.
What’s the typical fan profile for 69 Eyes? Who do you see coming to your shows?
Sometimes there are teenagers who’re very open and they want to rock, they like the Crue and the Misfits and now they like the 69 Eyes. Also older people who were around back in the 80s and they still want to rock and who understand our values and what we’re about.
Another unusual thing about you is that you have a master’s degree in Analytical Chemistry. How did you end up going from being in graduate school to being in a rock band?
Well, you know, what can a poor boy do but sing in a rock and roll band and be a student? That was my youth.
Did you originally intend to keep following the academic path?
Yeah, I mean I may still do that. I don’t want to limit myself in any way; I enjoy practicing science as well.
Given the music scene being as it is, do you ever feel pressure to dumb yourself down or not sound too smart, in that sense that that’s not what some people may be expecting from you?
No, I find it strange that people think it’s amusing that someone has brains and uses them in some other way than just trying to poison them with booze and sing in a rock band. That’s a very old stereotype. I would be ashamed to say that I’m just a singer in a rock band, so of course I have multiple options what to say when I meet a girl for instance.
The other interesting and unusual thing about you is the UNICEF connection. How did you get involved with that?
I was first asked to be a spokesperson for a child trafficking campaign, which is very much happening in West Africa, and I did that for a year, and I guess I was so good at it that they asked me if I wanted to be a Goodwill Ambassador.
What kind of things do they ask you to do?
As a Goodwill Ambassador, my mission is to answer your question in this interview about it. As I mention UNICEF I hope that somebody who reads this will go surf and investigate what UNICEF means. And then maybe next time when Christmas comes they’ll buy UNICEF Christmas cards, which is one of the easiest ways to contribute.
So maybe having someone like yourself involved might spark the interest of someone who normally might not be paying attention to that kind of thing.
Talking about UNICEF is always the last question in the most extreme metal magazines and stuff, so hopefully through me the message of even just the word “UNICEF” will get printed in some different media than before.
Some people will see it who otherwise never might have before.
Exactly. I think that’s my mission. I’m happy if after somebody reads this, some girl goes to surf and finds unicef.org and then gets interested in taking part in what UNICEF does.
To wrap up, for anyone who isn’t familiar with 69 Eyes and happens to just stumble across this interview, sum up 69 Eyes up for them. If they were to come out to one of your shows what should they expect?
Well, I came up with this definition – the 69 Eyes are like Elvis meets Dracula in Helsinki. It’s rock and roll and some emphasis on the dark. Old school values that never die, and the vampires, they never die either.