Earlier than HIM cornered the market in Finnish goth steel, Helsinki’s The 69 Eyes had the elegantly wasted after-midnight look and sound nailed down. In 2009, as they geared as much as launch their ninth album Again In Blood, mainman Jyrki 69 sat down with Metallic Hammer to speak intercourse, vampires and rock’n’roll.
Jyrki 69 is a stone chilly rock’n’curler. He sits nearly horizontal within the lobby of his Camden resort sipping at a drink, cloaked in jet black denim and leather-based, all tousled raven hair and silver jewelry. If he wasn’t ingesting it could be arduous to inform he was really alive. He’s certainly one good-looking, cadaverous motherfucker. He says that he loved the occasion he was on the evening earlier than however provides: “When it was the sixteenth spherical of Jäger I knew it was time to name it a day. It was nonetheless as loopy as hell after we left, individuals bouncing off partitions, ladies standing on tables screaming.”
The remainder of his bandmates have gone again to their house metropolis of Helsinki, in Finland, however the frontman of the glam goth steel group, The 69 Eyes, has stayed on for an additional day to hang around with Hammer and hit quite a few steel reveals and golf equipment over the weekend. 2009 marks precisely 20 years since this cool rocker and his black-clad comrades first took to the stage with the mission to distil every little thing that they thought was righteous about music into one band. They contained the grave gothic melodrama of The Sisters Of Mercy, the glam rock of Hanoi Rocks and the thundersome ramalama of Motörhead.
However absolutely, by rights a band of this classic nonetheless making an attempt to hit the large time, nonetheless dressing like one thing the cat dragged in (from Sundown Strip), ought to be a humiliation, proper? Like a Scandinavian model of Crème Brulee, the Eurovision wannabes from The League Of Gents. Effectively, maybe in the event that they’d tried to alter with the occasions the reply could be sure. They definitely didn’t add a fats man in a backwards baseball cap to their line-up within the late 90s. It’s arduous to think about ever seeing a photograph of this band in large shorts or luminous rubber ‘cyber’ gear. As an alternative they’ve remained 100 per cent devoted to the reason for being louche, outlaw rockers.
Once you spend time with them it genuinely looks like they don’t have a selection within the matter although. It’s The 69 Eyes or nothing. They’re definitely not rock chameleons. Jyrki sips on the Guinness which matches his color scheme completely, as he sits insect-like behind aviator shades. When his countrymen Turisas and Finntroll are talked about he reveals his hand, albeit politely: “I’m not a role-playing video games man. I’m not about ingesting beer and singing folks songs. I’m all about intercourse, blood and rock’n’roll. All of those role-playing sport bands and folks steel bands with their ingesting songs… properly that’s attention-grabbing and they’re from Finland however I don’t have time to become involved with them.”
He says that there are two strands that undergo all Finnish music linking them to different bands: specifically politeness and melancholy. He expands: “HIM, Nightwish, Amorphis, Hanoi Rocks all of them have this tuneful melancholia… this is the reason we needed to go to America to file our new album, so we might get fucking arduous, stuffed with perspective and in your face. There’s a large distinction between the Norwegians and us. They’re Vikings aren’t they? We had been afraid, hiding from them within the woods whereas they burnt and pillaged.”
When requested to decide on which ingredient out of intercourse, blood and rock’n’roll is an important to the group he’s adamant: “Intercourse. For me, intercourse has at all times been essential in rock music. The primary cause to be in a band. The Beatles had been a really anti-sexual band however the Rolling Stones had been pure intercourse, so you may guess which one is my favorite. The identical factor with Weapons N’ Roses versus Religion No Extra, or The Stooges vs Pink Floyd. When rock’n’roll began it was all about intercourse. Nothing else. The rhythms get up that lust. It’s all in regards to the thriller and the intercourse and the stuff that occurs after darkish.”
So when he’s requested if he doesn’t costume up as a caveman as a result of it could intrude along with his possibilities of bedding a scorching gothic woman, there may be the merest trace of a smile and nod by means of a solution.
It could be unsuitable to recommend that the group have remained precisely fixed, after all. Their new album, Again In Blood (their ninth), is definitely a a lot ballsier affair than the previous efforts, Angels and Devils.
“To make a brand new file we would have liked a change,” he says. “For the final 10 years we had made data with Johnny Lee Michaels however this time we needed to work with another person. Matt Hyde needed to work with us and he actually favored my voice. As an outsider he might see the band otherwise from a man who had been working with us for 10 years. And he kicked our arses. He instructed us, ‘I do know what sort of file your followers need.’ His roots are in traditional rock – Skinny Lizzy, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, that form of stuff. He mentioned we weren’t dangerous- sounding anymore. There have been too many keyboards and it was too well-produced.”
He stops and slams his drink down: “Earlier than, in case you hadn’t seen us stay, you won’t know that we’ve got a very nice rock drummer. Now you may actually inform!”
It’s much more spectacular to notice how steady The 69 Eyes have remained when you concentrate on how a lot on the planet of rock and steel has modified. They fashioned spherical Jyrki on vocals, Jussi on drums, Bazie and Timo-Timo on guitars and Archzie on bass in 1989 when the ability of Jack Daniel’s- and-hairspray-fuelled rock was robust. The Cult had been nonetheless a power to be reckoned with; the Sisters Of Mercy had simply found Meatloaf’s producer Jim Steinman; whereas hip youngish gunslingers Danzig and Weapons N’ Roses had been in full bloom.
The 60 Eyes started life as a glam steel act, influenced by their neighbours and forebears Hanoi Rocks and worldwide acts similar to Fairly Boy Floyd. But it surely was after they began to include gothic and traditional rock components that they started to forge their very own hybrid sound. Their breakthrough album got here almost 10 years later in 1990 with Blessed Be, a file which continues to be seen by many as their main assertion.
However now, it’s Jyrki who looks like his time within the solar has arrived: “Matt Hyde’s manufacturing model could be very arduous. He was very powerful and he squeezed the entire blood and the tears out of us. Once we really went to LA it wasn’t like rock’n’roll fantasy camp it was extra like a focus camp! However that’s how he acquired a 20-year-old band to lastly bloom. We’re now in full bloom!
“I’m happy with it,” he continues. “We’ve been taking part in for 20 years this September and we might have put out some form of lukewarm compilation like anybody else would do, however as a substitute we got here up with this spectacular, thrilling new album. We’ve at all times been in regards to the picture to a sure extent, the gothic look however now greater than ever it’s simply in regards to the music. Effectively, that and the vampires.”
Ah sure, the vampires. No chat with our Finnish mates could be full and not using a dialogue about our fanged fiends. Jyrki raves a couple of large bag of vampire movies he has purchased from HMV and mentions seeing current oddities similar to pre-teen, Swedish vamp romance Let The Proper One In and cult French film Lips Of Blood. He says that one specific tune off the brand new album, Starvation, was primarily based on the erotic early 80s horror of the identical identify that includes David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve however, regardless of trawling video shops and DVD rental retailers whereas they had been recording, they couldn’t discover it wherever. Ultimately Matt Hyde rang him in desperation: “He mentioned, ‘That you must do the vocals once more man. They suck.’ I had to return to LA however by this time he’d discovered the movie and we simply left it operating on an enormous display screen whereas I used to be singing. And this time we nailed it.”
Again in the actual world, there are not any things like immortal beings who’ve lengthy incisors although: there are simply bands who’re lengthy within the tooth. The 69 Eyes should not immortal beings, staying without end younger, feasting on the blood of their victims. And though the rock life-style is one of the simplest ways of abdicating the boredom of grownup life – simply have a look at Lemmy – they’re clearly all dudes of ‘a sure age’. Why ought to some younger man who wasn’t even born till after their first ever gig take them significantly?
Jyrki appears unfazed. “That is our mission,” he states, merely. “Because of this we’re nonetheless hungry and why we nonetheless wish to push the band – precisely due to this 20-year-old. As a result of they haven’t heard us but! There are individuals on the market who’ve house of their hearts for The 69 Eyes and we gained’t cease ’til we’ve discovered them!”
The singer’s youthful enthusiasm for his position as a rocker is infectious and he describes his life in the identical approach a suburban 14-year-old dreaming of the life-style on the highway would. “You realize, only in the near past I used to be at Obtain,” he says, “and I opened up the door to our portakabin and simply exterior our door was David Coverdale, Joe Elliott and Brian Could telling one another jokes after which Billy Gibbons of ZZ Prime handed by! It was like watching TV. What else do you want? That is what it’s all about.”
Undeniably it helps that across the globe the band have their devotees; probably the most notable of whom is Bam Margera, who befriended Jyrki a decade in the past whereas the pair had been in Paris. In addition to being mates, the Jackass has directed two movies for them, together with the current Lifeless Women Are Simple.
“We’re in his newest film, The place The Fuck Is Santa?, which is filmed in Helsinki. We’re occasion mates however I actually like what he’s doing. It was nice attending to do one other video with him – it was a lot enjoyable. I can’t consider something extra enjoyable than going to Bam’s fort for a number of days to movie a rock video with scorching chicks. Playboy.com was the primary place to indicate the video for Lifeless Women Are Simple. I used to be psyched. I used to be sending messages to all of my mates saying test this out playboy.com/69. How cool is that? All the things is all about residing rock’n’roll goals and residing the life.”
And with that, he finishes his drink and dissolves into the wet London evening, persevering with the everlasting seek for rock’n’roll mayhem.
Initially revealed in Metallic Hammer problem 196, August 2009