"A SECRET ENCOUNTER"

Do you want to know what Ville Valo would like to do with Tanja Karpela the most?This rare interview deals with both feelings as well as big money.

It was indeed time the two key persons in our music export cultural minister Tanja Karpela and rockstar Ville Valo met. "A really charming man and an intelligent human being. I liked him a lot.", Tanja said after the interview. "Cool! A beautiful woman who really puts herself into what she does.", Ville said. "If I wasn't taken I would ask her out right away. It would be wonderful to take Tanja to Storyville and have a little alcohol with her".
Tanja takes a cup of coffee, Ville a beer.
"Ville's and HIM's part in the Finnish cultural export is very big.", Tanja begins. "Ville, like many other Finnish artists in the world, has been loyan to his own thing and believed in himself. The result is so good that international success was a natural consequence for you.".

But the wild music on the internet worried the minister. Anyone can download anyones music without them to get any royalties for it. The business in pirate CDs near Finland's borders is also a worrying thing.
"There's a new law under construction in Finland that it would be prohibited to import a single pirate CD to Finland. In the net we try to reach a situation in which it would be possible for the user to see if a piece of music is there with the licence from the artist or not. It should be possible for those who make music to earn money also on the internet."
Ville has a surprising view.
"Downloading and pirate CDs! The market is so full of music that is of so inferior quality that people will listen to it only for free. CDs are starting to be silly single compilations. Who on earth wants to pay something for Pop Idols? Record companies practically throw idols to the market places in Viborg and Mustamäki where people who don't understand music hog them."
"It would, of course, be fantastic if the wild business could be controlled. I'd like to have more money to, sure. I may be working on one song for three years, spend 500 hours on it and negotiate with several producers for tens of hours."

Tanja reminds that the law of copyright that's under construction in the Finnish parliament at the moment is the most reformative in the world. And that why also pirate CDs and the net must be put under control.
"If HIM's record is sold for 2 euros in the market place in Viborg it's a loss also for Ville. The same with the net. And the young people who download the music don't mostly even know that it's illegal."
Ville sees broader causal connections behind the illegal acts.
"There's not enough artist in the music business any longer who have real credibility. Let's compare e.g. the massive career of Led Zeppelin to the mass music that's produced by the McDonalds principle. Few are the artists today that really have an influence on people's lives and move their feelings. In the visual arts the opposites of this kind would be let say Juhani Palmu and Salvador Dali. Everyone sees the difference. Or in rock and pop Antti Tuisku [came third in the Finnish Idols] on one side and Tuomari Nurmio and Dave Lindholm [older and appreciated musicians in Finland] on the other."
"Artists today are faceless and expressionless line products, even though people actually long for more substance and emotional rewards int their lives. Myself I want to be at least a direction sign to good culture."
Tanja believes that Ville will succeed in his mission.
"I like HIM's music. Also Bomfunk MCs, The Rasmus and let's say Värttinä represent Finland very well outside their home country. Creativity and loyalty to your own thing wing the music you all four make, even though the styles are different."
"We have suggested that the cultural export will be supported by 90 million euros up to the year 2010. The companies who work in behalf of the artists in the pop and rock scene should also be supported. We want to invest in competence and in that way improve the working conditions of artists who do creative work."
Tanja comes to think about the music marketing event Midem that's arranged in Cannes. The theme country of each year gets to organise the opening concert.
"Finland could act as the theme land say year 2007. Ville and his band could perform in the opening concert. The state would contribute significantly. Creative industry is one of the economic fields that grow fastest in the world. Around 86 000 people worked in it in Finland in 2001. The same year the whole export of music was 15,5 million euros."
In Ville's opinion Midem is in principle ok. But.
"I like more the kind of support that's for a longer time. For instance the education in music in schools could be enormously improved. Too often some unsuccessful teachers kill the interest in music for a musician to be. You should feed the lust. You should invest in training facilities: a beginner drummer can't train home in a flat, can he."
"Bands' school tours could be supported, present young yazz bands. In the exceptional atmosphere in Oulunkylä secondary school I could see myself how fruitful all that is. You could also support photoshoots of young bands, which are important for progress. Or in promotion in the first place."
Tanja agrees.
"I've also met too often attitudes that rock isn't culture. But it is and therefore it must be supported. I extended state subsidys to e.g. Provinssirock, which I also visited and saw in which great extend rock moves people."
Ville has played music for 20 years.
"Only the last five years I've been able to pay my own rent and phone bills. I'm in gratitude to my parents for the time before that. They did everything they could so that I could devote myself to what I love: music. It's because of them that my creativity didn't die because of being foeced to have a dayjob and being then too tired to make music in the evenings."
A role model has responsibility and hopefully humbleness too. Both Tanja and Ville are a lot in the public eye, as idols as well. Tanja has experience in it in more than one field [she was Miss Finland and a model and her life has been in the press a lot..] and she reminds that no one can be perfect.
"Responsibility issues are justified. The role of an idol is to touch people and his actions have an influence. You still can't live in unrealistic illusions, because everyone makes mistakes. You have to keep the humble attitude to be able to learn from your mistakes and also from other people."
Ville will not even try to dramatize the responsibility issues.
"I'm responsible above all to my own heart. I open the door to an old person entering to a grocery shop and I don't smoke where someone doesn't want me to smoke. These kind of things - and them my heart is happy too."
"But there are also other perspectives to this. It's justified to ask how I possibly could have sny responsibility at all when I sing Join Me in Death. I really don't encourage anyone to do bad things. Art is for me above all a way to questionize reality."
Tanja is listening attentively.
"Exactly, Ville. It's important to questionize and in art you need creativity to do that. And humbleness doesn't allow being fake, you have to be yourself. I agree with you on that to 100 percent. Being responsible doesn't mean being false and like sugar candy. Also a reponsible person, an idol or not, has his faults."
In Ville's opinion the relationship of rock music and government is problematic.
"The state supports rockmusic even though it's mostly based on unlawfulness, e.g. incites people to revolt. It's also based on abnormal behaviour, like art in the first place. Vincent van Gogh cut his ear off, Picasso was a master in sexually loose living. Andy McCoy has his drugs, Badding Somerjoki died of booze as well as Tapio Rautavaara more or less."
"Creative people are all crazy somehow. You then try to extinguish the burning feelings by ways that are not very physiologically healthy. Real rock fights against the system and is, as you say, an escape from this shit. Art is madness, creativity is madness. Tanja, it's pretty interesting that you're going to support a band that praise drugs and hookers."
Tanja pricks up her ears.
"Oops, Ville. I'll now use the opportunity to make sure that it's not about the ministry of education, the ministry of trade and industry and the ministry of foreign affairs becoming artist managers. Grant systems are a diffrerent thing, but the public support we are talking about should be directed expressly to companies that are working with the artists. In that way we can improve the general preconditions in this field. The creative competence is already there."
"But I agree with you regarding that there are cases where a controversial artist enjoys grants from the state personally. Possible stricter and looser grounds for the grants have been under discussion, but I think it's not my business as the cultural minister to interfere in the contents of art. On the other hand it's of course not allowed to brake the law even in the name of art."
Ville is happy.
"Way to go Tanja!"
Tanja thinks it's a natural thought that Ville, as a distinguished musician could be one of those who are awarded by the yearly Suomi-award.
What does Ville say to this?
"I don't really see myself as a messenger of the image of Finland. I felt really good already for that I was invited to the Independence Day party, even though I couldn't make it since I was in fever of 40 degrees celcius."
Tanja thinks that creative people need recognition.
"A record or a concert is just a top of an iceberg in an artist's work. The public don't always realise how much invisible work that has been done prior to that."
So, how is it, Ville?
"True, but it's hard for me to be objective. The only "decent" job I've had was selling sex toys in my father's sex shop."
"But the support I could hope for in music business is instruction. How to teach e.g. young musicians so that they won't make accidentally record deals that in fact can forbid them to make records for several years. There are sad examples of that. I would have been there several times if I didn't have a manager called Seppo Vesterinen."
"Couldn't the state contribute in arranging music business education of some kind? So that people wouldn't sign wrong contracts in terms of insidious business. How about "The guide for a young musician"?"
"Good idea., Tanja says. " There should be more information. It must be pretty hard to make it right if a person's been misled and discouraged in young age."
Ville adds:
"99 out of 100 people can never make it to the top of the iceberg, and out of these at least 25 have been fucked by business men."
The minister and the rockstar have a lot to talk about. Soulmates perhaps?
Sympathy, at least. Tanja says that she'd like to see HIM live.
Shall we try to arrange that?
"Definitely", Tanja promises.
They start to check their agendas.
"And Tanja, if you can't make it else, then you definitely come to see the traditional New Year's gig in Tavastia." Ville invites.
"You're also welcome to the famous backstage!"