Synnin viemää: Chapter Twenty-Four (pp. 226-233)
AT A SKATER PARTY IN PHILADELPHIA
The first gig in America and the trials of Burton
You’d be wrong to think that the most dedicated HIM fans are suicidal teen girls. One of the biggest fans of the band is Bam Margera, star of Jackass and skater millionaire.
HIM left for their first gig in the United States in August of 2001. The destination was Philadelphia. This was Ville Valo’s first trip to the other side of the Atlantic, and the flight was a pretty nice experience since the band had first-class tickets.
The gig in Philadelphia was arranged by Bam Margera who’s one of the best-known, most respected and certainly also richest skateboarders in the world. The general public knows him from the heavy Jackass show on MTV. On Jackass, Bam’s bones are in danger of breaking every time he gets his hands on a skateboard, bicycle, shopping cart or some other vehicle. On the show he also systematically tortures his dad Phil by waking him up in the small hours of the night with metal music or a few punches.
On Jackass Bam often wears a HIM shirt, and when you look closely, you can see that Bam’s skateboards are decorated with heartagrams. But what about Bam’s tattoos? That’s right, they’re the same as Ville Valo’s.
Bam has a heart tattooed on his wrist, and between his genitals and his navel he has a heartagram. Bam’s girlfriend Jenn has the word HIM tattooed on her lower back.
- Bam was worried that I would feel that he has stolen my tattoos, Ville Valo laughs. - But the things is that a tattoo isn’t mine or yours but ours. It’s not a question of stealing but of sharing. If someone wants to get the same tattoo that I have, that’s okay. After all, Bam is a good guy, he’s just a huge fan of the band. Of course he’s insane but in a good way. Plus he has used Daniel Lioneye’s music on Jackass.
Bam says that he originally got into HIM after reading Ville’s comments on the songs from Razorblade Romance on the band’s website. The band started to interest him, and it was because of HIM that he became addicted to the internet since he had to regularly check the band’s website. When Bam later happened to be on a skate tour in Europe, he managed to buy Razorblade Romance and was sold.
- Bam came to see a couple of our gigs in Europe, but at first we didn’t know anything about the guy, Ville says. - In London we were introduced to each other, and after that we have hung out together more than once. A cool and easy-going guy, not at all stuck up. Although he does drink a lot of booze.
Back in the day, Ville used to skate a lot himself, and Bam gave him two skateboards as a gift.
- I stopped skateboarding when I was fifteen because there weren’t any suitable indoor skate parks nearby, Ville says. - I practiced skateboarding for many years in a row, and it kept me in a really good shape. It was a fucking lot of fun, a sport without being one. No group leaders or sports teams. It’s about communicating with people your age, a great way to hang out. A little like drinking but more constructive.
An example of Bam’s dedication as a fan is that the American skater magazine Big Brother even published an article just about Bam talking about his relationship with HIM. In the article Bam praised that HIM is without a doubt the greatest band in the world and that it is his holy mission to make HIM a household name in the US because all American bands are utter crap compared to them.
Bam says in Big Brother that when he’s away from home, he always has with him a CD case that holds 24 CDs. Two of them contain music by his brother Jess’s band CKY (which stands for Camp Kill Yourself), the other 22 are HIM CDs. In addition to the official releases, they include special editions and especially live bootlegs recorded on different gigs all around Europe.
Bam has also been to Finland a few times to see HIM play, and on those occasions Bam and the band have of course ended up drinking together. Bam has also said that if Ville and his girlfriend Jenn had wanted to have sex together, that would have been very much okay. That actually anyone who turns down sex with Ville is an idiot.
HIM’s gig in Philadelphia was scheduled to take place together with a prerelease showing of the CKY3 movie that was directed and produced by Bam Margera. The film is a kind of variation of Jackass except the material is a lot heavier. If on Jackass they wake Bam’s dad up by hitting him in the head with a rubber toilet pump, on CKY3 they wake him up by pissing on his face. And if someone wonders why his dad Phil puts up with such a treatment, an explanation could be that around the time of the gig in Philadelphia, Bam bought his parents a house that cost 400 000 dollars.
When HIM arrived in Philadelphia the day before the gig, Bam contacted them right away to let them know that there was a party that night and they were all invited. At nine p.m., a stretch limo that seated about sixteen people arrived in front of the hotel. The destination was Bam’s new house. In addition to Bam’s family, there were people from Jackass skating, fooling around and filming themselves falling down. This time Bam’s dad wasn’t mistreated, but his crazy uncle got his ass kicked.
HIM was transported to the Trocadero where their gig took place with the now familiar limo, which made the band members purr with satisfaction. Once there, they excitedly tried to spot celebrities. In addition to Tony Hawk and other skater heroes, some actors had been invited, and Ville was excited to spot Juliette Lewis who had played the lead role in Natural Born Killers.
Originally CKY was supposed to be the headliner of the night. Ville had specifically wanted HIM to perform first since HIM’s records hadn’t at that point even been officially released in the US.
When HIM’s crew came to take care of things, the house employees were reluctant to help. Let’s wait until CKY gets here and see then which stuff you can use. But then Bam decided that HIM would be the headliner. Just like that the attitude towards the Finns changed, and things started moving along at a completely different pace.
When HIM started their set, people stared and wondered what was going on, but they didn’t have to play more than two songs before the crowd was won over. The audience was in a crazed state, and people were taking wild dives from the upper balconies into the sea of people. On the stage, there was an insane amount of booze bottles, and towards the end of the gig Bam and his friends got on stage to howl the backing vocals.
After the gig, the audience was shown the CKY3 movie which also included HIM’s video for Right Here in My Arms. When CKY3 was later released on DVD, the extras included HIM’s version of Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell shot at the concert in Philadelphia.
HIM’s gig was filmed in its entirety because Bam Margera wanted HIM to be included on his first real movie Haggard that premiered in the fall of 2002. Around the same time with Haggard, also the Jackass movie hit the theaters.
- It’s interesting seeing how the skater community has adopted HIM, Asko Kallonen from BMG says. - That is mostly thanks to Bam Margera. Jackass is so popular around the world, and even on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 video game you can see the HIM logo on the skateboards and shirts. You can already see that even the English skater crowd has started to look into this heartagram band. In the spring of 2002, the atmosphere in London was close to that in Tavastia. The people were fully on board, and 14-year-old skaters came to ask for autographs. It’s funny how an entirely different audience has discovered HIM.
- That skater connection can be especially significant in the US. Luckily Ville has a skater background; that gives the thing credibility. HIM’s music is after all different from that of normal skater bands, but what does it matter.
After the gig in Philadelphia, Bam took the guys from HIM to an after party at a local strip joint. Now it was Linde’s turn to show to Bam Margera how the Finns do Jackass humor.
- It was a place where you were supposed to behave well, Ville says. - It wasn’t your average Finnish dump with strippers but a fancy place where everything cost a shitload, everything was really neat, the ladies were beautiful and you weren’t allowed to touch them. There were these huge black bodybuilders with ear monitors walking around the room to make sure nothing unexpected happens. We were having a really good time and were about to leave when we noticed that Linde wasn’t with us. He had stayed at the table by himself. He was downing shots and the table was covered with empty glasses.
- Suddenly Lnde started throwing the glasses around. These black guys were approaching quickly and I just got there in time. I grabbed Linde and started to drag him out. At the coat check, I left Burton to take care of Linde and went to take a leak.
- I held Linde in an upright position and told him that we should get going. Those huge guards were starting to give him dirty looks, Burton continues the story. - Suddenly Linde started to open his pants like he was going to piss right there at the coat check. I told him to cut it out, you’ll get your ass kicked here and after that you’ll end up in jail. I held him by the coat, and suddenly Linde who had his fly open grabbed my shirt so that buttons went flying. At that point, I had no choice but to slap him across the face. The change was immediate. Linde whined that don’t do that.
- Surprised by the sudden rush of adrenaline, at the same time drunk and feeling guilty, I thought that oh fuck I hit Linde, how is he going to take that. And I hit him pretty hard. But that huge black guy seriously would have killed Linde in an instant. Fortunately Linde took what had happened without any drama. He just kept whining all frightened.
Besides Linde, Burton also managed to confuse Seppo Vesterinen in Philadelphia. Burton bought a remote-controlled fart machine, an ingenious little box that makes a farting sound when you press a button on the remote control. The use of the machine in different places amused the band but not Seppo.
- It almost led to a definite break up between me and Seppo, Burton says. - All that just because of one little fart machine.
- I’m too old for that kind of humor, Seppo Vesterinen sighs. - That famous fart machine annoyed me, but that is however in some way my own personal problem. I’m not a huge fan of school boy humor, and when the target is an outsider, I really am not amused. If the fart machine is used in a hotel lobby or a press conference, it’s not funny. We have been to a few hotels along the way that we better not return to.
After Philadelphia, HIM went to New York for a few days, and it was again Burton’s turn to endure hardships.
- I had a cockroach in my ass, a depressed Burton remembers. - It was pretty horrible. I was taking a walk with Mige, we were window shopping. Suddenly, it started pouring, and we went under a staircase to try to keep dry. Water was running down my hair, and all of a sudden I could feel something walking in my ass. I tried to grab that something, and suddenly a cockroach fell from my ass crack. That was a horrible experience especially since I was hung over. After that I had a funny feeling for hours thinking whether there were more of them there. The whole day I had this little itchy feeling between my ass cheeks, and that night when we went back to the hotel, I tried to dig a little deeper in the elevator. I found a cockroach leg there.
- The poor thing was just trying to find a home, Mige says.
While Mige and Burton were playing with their cockroach, Linde and Ville were hunting down Iggy Pop t-shirts. The two of them asked the salesman in a punk clothes store they had found where to look for such shirts. The guy freaked out completely and started tearing off his shirt. Ville and Linde thought that the guy had gone insane and that they might somehow be partly to blame. But instead five Iggy Pop tattoos were revealed when he took off his shirt.
And of course there were several different Iggy Pop shirts for sale at the store. Linde bought six shirts and got hints about where to get more Iggy Pop stuff. In the end, he managed to hunt down more than ten Iggy shirts in New York.
- I, on the other hand, went crazy for a genuine Kiss flipper from the 70’s, Ville says wistfully. - It cost two thousand dollars and was still functioning, but there was no way to get it to Finland.
- We did see a lot of good in that short trip to America, Ville continues. - I liked the American attitude, that bubblegum culture where everyone smiles to each other and pretends to be so fucking nice. That superficiality and the TV channels, Dunking Donuts, Budweiser and the whole thing. Everyone is happy and you can’t have too deep a conversation with anyone. It’s like an air castle.
From the book HIM - Synnin viemää by J.K. Juntunen (WSOY, 2002). Translated and posted here with permission of the author. Do not post this translation on any other site.
The first gig in America and the trials of Burton
You’d be wrong to think that the most dedicated HIM fans are suicidal teen girls. One of the biggest fans of the band is Bam Margera, star of Jackass and skater millionaire.
HIM left for their first gig in the United States in August of 2001. The destination was Philadelphia. This was Ville Valo’s first trip to the other side of the Atlantic, and the flight was a pretty nice experience since the band had first-class tickets.
The gig in Philadelphia was arranged by Bam Margera who’s one of the best-known, most respected and certainly also richest skateboarders in the world. The general public knows him from the heavy Jackass show on MTV. On Jackass, Bam’s bones are in danger of breaking every time he gets his hands on a skateboard, bicycle, shopping cart or some other vehicle. On the show he also systematically tortures his dad Phil by waking him up in the small hours of the night with metal music or a few punches.
On Jackass Bam often wears a HIM shirt, and when you look closely, you can see that Bam’s skateboards are decorated with heartagrams. But what about Bam’s tattoos? That’s right, they’re the same as Ville Valo’s.
Bam has a heart tattooed on his wrist, and between his genitals and his navel he has a heartagram. Bam’s girlfriend Jenn has the word HIM tattooed on her lower back.
- Bam was worried that I would feel that he has stolen my tattoos, Ville Valo laughs. - But the things is that a tattoo isn’t mine or yours but ours. It’s not a question of stealing but of sharing. If someone wants to get the same tattoo that I have, that’s okay. After all, Bam is a good guy, he’s just a huge fan of the band. Of course he’s insane but in a good way. Plus he has used Daniel Lioneye’s music on Jackass.
Bam says that he originally got into HIM after reading Ville’s comments on the songs from Razorblade Romance on the band’s website. The band started to interest him, and it was because of HIM that he became addicted to the internet since he had to regularly check the band’s website. When Bam later happened to be on a skate tour in Europe, he managed to buy Razorblade Romance and was sold.
- Bam came to see a couple of our gigs in Europe, but at first we didn’t know anything about the guy, Ville says. - In London we were introduced to each other, and after that we have hung out together more than once. A cool and easy-going guy, not at all stuck up. Although he does drink a lot of booze.
Back in the day, Ville used to skate a lot himself, and Bam gave him two skateboards as a gift.
- I stopped skateboarding when I was fifteen because there weren’t any suitable indoor skate parks nearby, Ville says. - I practiced skateboarding for many years in a row, and it kept me in a really good shape. It was a fucking lot of fun, a sport without being one. No group leaders or sports teams. It’s about communicating with people your age, a great way to hang out. A little like drinking but more constructive.
An example of Bam’s dedication as a fan is that the American skater magazine Big Brother even published an article just about Bam talking about his relationship with HIM. In the article Bam praised that HIM is without a doubt the greatest band in the world and that it is his holy mission to make HIM a household name in the US because all American bands are utter crap compared to them.
Bam says in Big Brother that when he’s away from home, he always has with him a CD case that holds 24 CDs. Two of them contain music by his brother Jess’s band CKY (which stands for Camp Kill Yourself), the other 22 are HIM CDs. In addition to the official releases, they include special editions and especially live bootlegs recorded on different gigs all around Europe.
Bam has also been to Finland a few times to see HIM play, and on those occasions Bam and the band have of course ended up drinking together. Bam has also said that if Ville and his girlfriend Jenn had wanted to have sex together, that would have been very much okay. That actually anyone who turns down sex with Ville is an idiot.
HIM’s gig in Philadelphia was scheduled to take place together with a prerelease showing of the CKY3 movie that was directed and produced by Bam Margera. The film is a kind of variation of Jackass except the material is a lot heavier. If on Jackass they wake Bam’s dad up by hitting him in the head with a rubber toilet pump, on CKY3 they wake him up by pissing on his face. And if someone wonders why his dad Phil puts up with such a treatment, an explanation could be that around the time of the gig in Philadelphia, Bam bought his parents a house that cost 400 000 dollars.
When HIM arrived in Philadelphia the day before the gig, Bam contacted them right away to let them know that there was a party that night and they were all invited. At nine p.m., a stretch limo that seated about sixteen people arrived in front of the hotel. The destination was Bam’s new house. In addition to Bam’s family, there were people from Jackass skating, fooling around and filming themselves falling down. This time Bam’s dad wasn’t mistreated, but his crazy uncle got his ass kicked.
HIM was transported to the Trocadero where their gig took place with the now familiar limo, which made the band members purr with satisfaction. Once there, they excitedly tried to spot celebrities. In addition to Tony Hawk and other skater heroes, some actors had been invited, and Ville was excited to spot Juliette Lewis who had played the lead role in Natural Born Killers.
Originally CKY was supposed to be the headliner of the night. Ville had specifically wanted HIM to perform first since HIM’s records hadn’t at that point even been officially released in the US.
When HIM’s crew came to take care of things, the house employees were reluctant to help. Let’s wait until CKY gets here and see then which stuff you can use. But then Bam decided that HIM would be the headliner. Just like that the attitude towards the Finns changed, and things started moving along at a completely different pace.
When HIM started their set, people stared and wondered what was going on, but they didn’t have to play more than two songs before the crowd was won over. The audience was in a crazed state, and people were taking wild dives from the upper balconies into the sea of people. On the stage, there was an insane amount of booze bottles, and towards the end of the gig Bam and his friends got on stage to howl the backing vocals.
After the gig, the audience was shown the CKY3 movie which also included HIM’s video for Right Here in My Arms. When CKY3 was later released on DVD, the extras included HIM’s version of Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell shot at the concert in Philadelphia.
HIM’s gig was filmed in its entirety because Bam Margera wanted HIM to be included on his first real movie Haggard that premiered in the fall of 2002. Around the same time with Haggard, also the Jackass movie hit the theaters.
- It’s interesting seeing how the skater community has adopted HIM, Asko Kallonen from BMG says. - That is mostly thanks to Bam Margera. Jackass is so popular around the world, and even on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 video game you can see the HIM logo on the skateboards and shirts. You can already see that even the English skater crowd has started to look into this heartagram band. In the spring of 2002, the atmosphere in London was close to that in Tavastia. The people were fully on board, and 14-year-old skaters came to ask for autographs. It’s funny how an entirely different audience has discovered HIM.
- That skater connection can be especially significant in the US. Luckily Ville has a skater background; that gives the thing credibility. HIM’s music is after all different from that of normal skater bands, but what does it matter.
After the gig in Philadelphia, Bam took the guys from HIM to an after party at a local strip joint. Now it was Linde’s turn to show to Bam Margera how the Finns do Jackass humor.
- It was a place where you were supposed to behave well, Ville says. - It wasn’t your average Finnish dump with strippers but a fancy place where everything cost a shitload, everything was really neat, the ladies were beautiful and you weren’t allowed to touch them. There were these huge black bodybuilders with ear monitors walking around the room to make sure nothing unexpected happens. We were having a really good time and were about to leave when we noticed that Linde wasn’t with us. He had stayed at the table by himself. He was downing shots and the table was covered with empty glasses.
- Suddenly Lnde started throwing the glasses around. These black guys were approaching quickly and I just got there in time. I grabbed Linde and started to drag him out. At the coat check, I left Burton to take care of Linde and went to take a leak.
- I held Linde in an upright position and told him that we should get going. Those huge guards were starting to give him dirty looks, Burton continues the story. - Suddenly Linde started to open his pants like he was going to piss right there at the coat check. I told him to cut it out, you’ll get your ass kicked here and after that you’ll end up in jail. I held him by the coat, and suddenly Linde who had his fly open grabbed my shirt so that buttons went flying. At that point, I had no choice but to slap him across the face. The change was immediate. Linde whined that don’t do that.
- Surprised by the sudden rush of adrenaline, at the same time drunk and feeling guilty, I thought that oh fuck I hit Linde, how is he going to take that. And I hit him pretty hard. But that huge black guy seriously would have killed Linde in an instant. Fortunately Linde took what had happened without any drama. He just kept whining all frightened.
Besides Linde, Burton also managed to confuse Seppo Vesterinen in Philadelphia. Burton bought a remote-controlled fart machine, an ingenious little box that makes a farting sound when you press a button on the remote control. The use of the machine in different places amused the band but not Seppo.
- It almost led to a definite break up between me and Seppo, Burton says. - All that just because of one little fart machine.
- I’m too old for that kind of humor, Seppo Vesterinen sighs. - That famous fart machine annoyed me, but that is however in some way my own personal problem. I’m not a huge fan of school boy humor, and when the target is an outsider, I really am not amused. If the fart machine is used in a hotel lobby or a press conference, it’s not funny. We have been to a few hotels along the way that we better not return to.
After Philadelphia, HIM went to New York for a few days, and it was again Burton’s turn to endure hardships.
- I had a cockroach in my ass, a depressed Burton remembers. - It was pretty horrible. I was taking a walk with Mige, we were window shopping. Suddenly, it started pouring, and we went under a staircase to try to keep dry. Water was running down my hair, and all of a sudden I could feel something walking in my ass. I tried to grab that something, and suddenly a cockroach fell from my ass crack. That was a horrible experience especially since I was hung over. After that I had a funny feeling for hours thinking whether there were more of them there. The whole day I had this little itchy feeling between my ass cheeks, and that night when we went back to the hotel, I tried to dig a little deeper in the elevator. I found a cockroach leg there.
- The poor thing was just trying to find a home, Mige says.
While Mige and Burton were playing with their cockroach, Linde and Ville were hunting down Iggy Pop t-shirts. The two of them asked the salesman in a punk clothes store they had found where to look for such shirts. The guy freaked out completely and started tearing off his shirt. Ville and Linde thought that the guy had gone insane and that they might somehow be partly to blame. But instead five Iggy Pop tattoos were revealed when he took off his shirt.
And of course there were several different Iggy Pop shirts for sale at the store. Linde bought six shirts and got hints about where to get more Iggy Pop stuff. In the end, he managed to hunt down more than ten Iggy shirts in New York.
- I, on the other hand, went crazy for a genuine Kiss flipper from the 70’s, Ville says wistfully. - It cost two thousand dollars and was still functioning, but there was no way to get it to Finland.
- We did see a lot of good in that short trip to America, Ville continues. - I liked the American attitude, that bubblegum culture where everyone smiles to each other and pretends to be so fucking nice. That superficiality and the TV channels, Dunking Donuts, Budweiser and the whole thing. Everyone is happy and you can’t have too deep a conversation with anyone. It’s like an air castle.
From the book HIM - Synnin viemää by J.K. Juntunen (WSOY, 2002). Translated and posted here with permission of the author. Do not post this translation on any other site.