CHAPTER ONE - Lauri’s childhood was as any childhood in middle class-families tend to be, his father was working with immigration, his mother was working in a kindergarten. When his mother took him to piano-lessons at the age of five, he didn’t know how to refuse. “I was thinking to myself that this is part of life, it’s just a new phase”. Lauri is smiling when he remembers his piano-teacher, a 20-year old pony-tailed hippie. “She had this room that smelled like cigarettes, cans of beer everywhere, and I was playing “twinkle twinkle little star..”. All the other guys were going to Judo-classes. I was playing the piano. A bit embarrassing. Skating was of more interest to Lauri than playing piano. He went along building ramps and was hanging around for hours in a store called “Kluuvin Pro Skate”. With skating along came also, doing graffiti. He got caught once. “I had these huge trousers full of paints and I explained I was off to paint my bicycle. At the police station they asked me to write the word “Zippo”. I presume they were trying to identify my way of painting. I wrote with big letters “ZIPPO”. Then my father came and picked me up.”

Even at school there were some troubles. When Lauri and Eero (the forthcoming bass-player of TR), for example, got the idea to announce through the school’s radio-central… “all the pupils are dismissed, all the teachers are having a meeting.”
On that same school-radio the first TR-demo was also played. The group was founded in Suutarila, where in addition to Lauri and Eero the guitarist, Pauli Rantasalmi also lived. Their first training-place was in Pauli’s parents’ basement.
At the age of 13 Lauri had switched from piano to classical guitar. Against the advice given by his Northern-Helsinki music-school, the guitar-teacher spent half of the time teaching Lauri how to play Led Zeppelin and other rock-classics.
“Around that time I started to like other bands, like Guns and Roses. Before that I had listened to music like’ Alla Pugatsova’, my fathers recordings.”
Lauri’s elder sister, 2-years older Hanna, made Lauri sing and brought him to music. Graffiti and other messing about was gone, the circle of friends changed. The band came along.

CHAPTER TWO - Where Lauri claims TR to be bigger than The Beatles. We will also reveal, why Lauri used to pee in (word confusing.) and why Kummeli is the show to thank for the bands popularity…
The house of the Orange Ry is located in Katajanokka/Helsinki. 16-year old Lauri Ylönen is working together with Pauli Rantasalmi and Eero Heinonen as volunteers in a café at the youth-house. The boys sell coffee and lemonade and spread madrasses to the guests, for the tired rucksack travellers.
Lauri is carefree. It’s the summer of 95; autumn and the start of the studies in “Sibelius Academy” are far away in the future. There is plenty of time to skate, dye ones hair, watch James Bond-movies and roam around the city as care free as a young person who has just finished high-school can be.
Lauri and Pauli manage to do some talking and get their band ‘Rasmus’ a gig at the Oranssi Club. The chairman of the Orange Club, 25-year old Teja Kotilainen is observing the boys going crazy at the stage. After the gig she announces that he will be their manager. “First we will conquer Helsinki, then the rest of Finland and then the whole world”, he says.
The boys are nodding their heads. It’s been half a year already since their first performance. The biggest hit they had was at an Xmas party in Suutarila High School, it was Speedy Keinonen’s “Hän-Mies” (edit: a Finnish comedy). And now someone is talking about conquering the world.

In the beginning everything went quite fast.
The first single by TR, “1st”, was released in December 1995. To collect the money for it they had posted advertisements all around the city for Orange. The job was done at nights, with cold hands, and being afraid of policemen.
In February 1996 Rasmus made a record-deal with multi-national giant-company ‘Warner’. The first record, funk-orientated “Peep”, was released in May of the same year and during that summer Rasmus made a break-through in Finland. People at festivals were going nuts about the trumpet-funk and got all exited about our own “Red Hot Chili Peppers”.
An interview by ‘Soundi’ Magazine reflects quite a lot of the attitude Rasmus had back then. Partly it’s due to their adolescent humour, but among that there was a lot of self-determination. Many were saying that a sudden success had made them arrogant.
“That is the truth, we started thinking the world of ourselves. The feeling you get that someone loves you is so strong a drug, which goes easily to your head. At that time we were still experimenting with alcohol and that also infected our psyches and all. Later I suddenly noticed, that I wasn’t any good company, anymore.” Lauri ponders.
Peep went gold. Lots of advisors and compliments started to be around Rasmus. The band made a deal with Pepsi: Lauri’s face appeared on Pepsi cans and bus-stop-commercials. In music-magazines many of the more experienced musicians made fun of them calling them as “Pepsi-can-players”, but the youth loved them. There were plenty of gigs. Lauri decided to quit education. “I just got the feeling, that I had had it with school, I just wanted to play guitar from the moment I wake up. It was risky, but I just had the feeling that I could do better with that than school”.
At the same time Lauri moved together with bass-player Eero to Helsinginkatu Street. The living was chaotic, the pizza-boxes in the corners told a lot of their diet as young rock-stars.

From the very beginning the goal was to make success worldwide. In summer times the band went to London. The idea was to meet big-chiefs of the brand and do promotion, but their journeys usually wound up sitting in Hyde Park playing guitars and drinking beer.
After the third- album release “Hell Of A Tester”, the band was quiet for a long time. Some might even say in crisis. Lauri recalls very well a concert in Tampere at Tulliklubi, where 25 people came.
“I got the feeling that people had had enough of us. I was thinking, will we always be playing only at youth-clubs?”
The money was running out, every single member of the band was on welfare. Lauri borrowed money from their manager Kotilainen, to whom he told he had been eating “sand” in the past month.
“I started panicking. I wondered if I had made the right decision. Should I go back to school or to work?”
Warner had already given up on Rasmus. There were no longer talks about conquering the world. The members of the band were in there twenties, but already considered as washed-ups.
The drummer changed. Aki Hakala who had earlier played with Kwan and Killer got to sit behind the drum-kit. He got comments about changing his place to a band that was dying. Lauri got mad.
“I was like, I will show them, damn, lets do some new songs. When we got a new deal, it restored the self-confidence.”
With the new deal he means a contract with a Swedish Record Company, ‘Playground Music’. That was the turning point of the Rasmus.
The band added the “the” to their band name and simplified their music, decided to concentrate on the things they were good at, strong melodies based with rock. The Swedish record-company invited Lauri to come to visit Stockholm and arrange an American to improve his English skills. At the same time the manager of HIM, Seppo Vesterinen took them under his wing. We will soon go to Stockholm but first we have to pay a visit to Ann-Majs food-kiosk…

CHAPTER THREE - Where we think back to the raspberry candies that smelled like cigarettes and talk about two-faced toadies. We're also going to find out why Lauri changed his apartment.
We have moved to the kiosk nearby the secondary school. Lauri is sitting on the wooden bench next to the wall and checks if he finds his own scrapings. Two young girls walk by. Their heads turn, then the whispering starts.
It is him.
"I remember when we bought raspberry candies, they smelled like cigarettes because the owner smoked inside", Lauri laughs.
Behind our backs is Suutarila's waste hill, which is also one of the important places in Lauri's youth. Lauri tells how he made a nostalgic Suutarila-tour with his friend Esa.
"We bought beers and sat on the waste hill, at the mall and on the steps of Parakki (a hut), when it was still up."
Esa who works as a doorman is Lauri's long-term friend.
"The most real and genuine people live here. I've met half-familiar people a lot. They're usually nice company for a short while but I haven't gotten many real new friends during the past ten years."
According to Teja Kotilainen, Lauri had built an even thicker wall around himself after the band started to succeed. He says it's difficult for Lauri to trust new people.
Lauri says he has been previously too gullible and trusting.
"There is a lot of double-dealing. You feel you can't tell anyone too much about your dreams. I have become more careful. It would be good to be more forgiving."
Lauri is happy to talk to fans - if he's in the mood. Usually he isn't and everybody doesn’t understand it. Then you’d better stay away from people.
Lauri says he avoids some places. It isn't wise to go to Tennispalatsi (Helsinki's biggest movie theatre) on Friday night. He’d rather spends his nights with his friends listening to music.
Even home doesn't guarantee enough privacy. A couple of years ago German ‘Bravo’ magazine printed pictures of Lauri's apartment that was located in Tarkk'ampujankatu and ‘7 Päivää’ magazine bought the pictures without asking Lauri's permission.
As a result Lauri had to move away because of the fans that practically lived by his door.
The address of his new apartment is secret. He still has his last name in the door.
"Maybe I should take it off."

CHAPTER FOUR - Where we visit Stockholm, give a small interview to the UK and tell of what Lauri would do on his summer holiday, if he had one.

The industrial area of Bromma outside of Stockholm. Lauri Ylönen and guitarist Pauli Rantasalmi sit in the lounge of the Nord studios with their black beanies covering their ears. Pauli is picking tunes on his acoustic guitar and Lauri is humming a melody. The men are currently making a new song and talk about their idea to their producer Martin Hansen.
"Let's put church bells here, even though it's a cliché."
"Yeah, and fire and explosions!"
"But so that there's the same drumming as in the other songs."
The song has a work title "Murhaballadi" (Murder ballad). It is the middle of March and The Rasmus' fourth day in the studio. They have made their two previous albums here with the same producers Hansen and Mikael Nordin.
They thought about finding a new producer for the new album at first but they couldn't find the same tone with The Rasmus.
"It was a great feeling to come out here, just like you would have come to your home. You can pretty much walk in to the kitchen with your eyes closed and know which drawer has cookies", Lauri says at the same time as he's introducing the studio.
Bassist Eero Heinonen is putting his equipment together in the recording room. He's about to start his own part. It's almost six o'clock.
The Rasmus' work moral is tough, they come to the studio at 9 am and they won't leave before six or seven pm.
"In the evenings we have usually eaten candy and gone to bed at 9:30 or 10 pm. Really rock 'n' roll!"
In their training place in Helsinki they follow the same rules, they begin their playing every morning at 10 am. In the record company The Rasmus is being called the "office band". The band has made long tours when no one, not even their lightman, has been allowed to drink alcohol. After every gig they hold a criticism meeting where they go through all of their songs.
The Rasmus records their album in two parts: during the first two weeks they record the backups to seven songs and after a short break Lauri returns to Stockholm for his vocals. Now he should be writing lyrics. For an inspiration Lauri has packed Herman Hesse's ‘Arosude’ and the Bible.
Lauri wouldn't have to be here listening to drum and bass' recordings, but he wants to see everything go as it should. When they were making their previous album Lauri was the only member to be in the studio when the album was being mixed.
Lauri's cell phone is blinking. He goes to the stairway to give a 10-question interview to England. It - as well as Image's presence - is an exception. Otherwise the time is dedicated for recording, even though Swedish magazines have been wanting interviews after they've heard The Rasmus is in town.
The Rasmus is Playground Music's best selling artist. The budget of the album is open; they work with it until they are happy. Only the recording costs are over 150,000 euros. The band's trips and living in Stockholm as well as making music videos and marketing come on top of it.
The Rasmus' cooperation with Playground Music didn't start in a promising way. Their first album ‘Into’ sold only a couple of thousand CDs in Sweden.
"We were back then on a gig in Eskilstuna and there were six people, four of them being from the record company. It cost 10,000 marks per day to move all of our equipment and two people buy a ticket, and they were probably Finns. We were pretty depressed. I thought we were going to be starting to eat tuna fish again."
Not until the ‘Dead Letters’ album - and most of all the super hit ‘In The Shadows’ - blew everyone away all around the Europe. The album they're making at the moment is being released in 50 countries at the same time. It means a long promotional tour for Lauri.
"I had been thinking about spending a holiday in July. It would have been nice to enjoy the Finnish summer and row a boat somewhere. But now I have to leave for a 15-20 day long tour to promote the new album."
Lauri doesn't want to complain. Marketing is part of his job and it's better to get it over with before the real tour. On tour he doesn't like to talk to reporters.
"I don't like that the gig and feeling gets hurt anyhow. If you give interviews during the day, it tires and pisses you off and then the gig is bad."

CHAPTER FIVE - Where we visit the famous Cafe Opera and play roulette. Lauri also tells of stealing beer.

A young blond woman knocks on Lauri's shoulder and whispers something in his ear in Swedish. Lauri doesn't understand. The woman asks in English if Lauri could take his beanie off. Lauri won't do it.
Now we are in a bar called Kelly's at Folkungagatan, in the trendy Söder.
Lauri is a bit confused. Usually he can drink his beer in peace around here.
"It's easy in Sweden and Finland. Finns are too shy and Swedes too cool to come and talk to you."
It's different in Southern Europe and Mexico. In those places The Rasmus check into hotels with fake names and leave the concert venue with security.
"Usually we fool people so that at first a black car with darkened windows leaves the venue. Fans ran after it and we come in the trunk of some crappy van.
It's 7:30 pm. Boutiques on Götgatan are closing their doors and the bars fill up with trendy young adults. A noisy Finnish drunk passes us.
“A couple of years ago we stole beer from there for our after party”, Lauri points towards the 7/11. “I had just met BMX-bikers who invited me to their festival. In the after party there were bikes hanging from the ceiling and skating videos were playing on the TV. It was like a return to 1995.”
Lauri’s life was completely different in 1995 comparing to what it is now. Still, according to his friends, he is the same guy: happy, with a great sense of humour, caring.
In Stockholm he travels – along with taxis – with local train and subway. The band sleeps in an apartment hotel where the showers stink because of the pipe problems.
For this night there is glamour. It is Playground Music’s new female artist Sandra’s release party in Cafe Opera, which is the place where Stockholm’s celebrities and even the Royals party.
“Ylo-nen?” the doorman confirms and goes through the guest list. There is a group of people swarming under the crystal chandeliers and ceiling fresco, they would fit well into an American soap opera. Women smile with their teeth and gums shining, men are wearing suits and gel hair. Lauri is smiling.
“Let’s not stay long here. Let’s go to some rock club later.”
Lauri finds two familiar video directors behind the bar, Fredrik Löfberg and Niclas Fronda. They are laughing each others heads off when Lauri imitates their video shooting trip for In My Life in Cuba. Lauri was suffering both tourist diarrhoea and stomach illness (vomiting).
Sandra’s show is about to start. Her music sounds – as Aki Hakala says – very Swedish. After the performance they are showing Sandra’s music video on the screens.
Lauri is laughing at the music video that is a full of clichés. Lauri is laughing at many things tonight; he is on a party mood. We are supposed to continue to Söder’s clubs. One jägermeisters before it, Lauri suggests.
Leaving isn’t obviously an option anymore. When the clock shows half past twelve, the limousines are bringing even more 30-year-old up starters smoking cigars, and Lauri moves next to the roulette table. He gives the croupier a 500-krone bill and receives three piles of plastic chips.
Half an hour later he has lost all of them.

CHAPTER SIX - Where Lauri tells how he might need a shrink in the future. It is also revealed why he turned down a €750,000 commercial deal.

There is an excited man sitting in the table at ten in the morning. Lauri is presenting the blueprint of the studio he is building to Sörnäinen, Helsinki together with Pauli.
“It’s going to be a club room or a lounge where you can hang out, just the kind I’ve always wanted. We are so excited about it now. We have had meetings about this every night in some bar”, Lauri says.
Building a studio is one way to use the money that Lauri has earned. In 2003 Lauri’s income was 226,548 euros, that makes his monthly salary almost 19,000 euros. And this was before the huge success. Lauri is known to be very careful with his money. For example he goes through the ‘Teosto’ (Finnish Composers' Copyright Society) Papers carefully and has found mistakes from them.
Because of the complicated tax politics Lauri has started his own firm, Skeletor Oy. With his money he has bought an apartment. Sure he has spent money without looking back too.
“I do a lot of impulse shopping. You buy some expensive suit and never use it; actually I have bought several suits. Or then I’ll buy guitars when I want to reward myself.”
Lauri is clearly the wealthiest member of The Rasmus: he is the main writer in the band, so 75 per cent of the ‘Teosto’ compensations belong to him.
Of course there would be easier money available. He has gotten valuable commercial deals, hair spray campaigns etc. but turned them all down. Posing in Pepsi commercials years ago taught him it isn’t good to run after money. Well, how much have you been offered? Lauri goes silent.
“I’m not gonna tell who offered but it was 750, 000 euros. With that kind of amount of money you could quit this job immediately.”
There is no need to talk about quitting. The Rasmus is doing well. Lauri says his well being is compared to the band’s situation.
“The best thing about success is that it has finally happened. It feels like a job victory. There’s a huge machine running behind us. And this is just the beginning, you can really succeed everywhere. The effects can be an enormous hangover. It might be that at some point you get the feeling that you have had enough of performing in public. Then you can figure out some other way to make music.”
Lauri drifts in to talking about the future: his dreams about getting old with dignity, own a bookstore or a house in Gibraltar. It would be nice to have kids too. There is no sign of wall around Lauri when he analyzes his own personality.
“I might lie that everything’s okay and still some person or thing leaves a huge hole somewhere. And then I’m kind of fooling myself too. I can live with it, I manage to bury it, but it makes me more serious. The more those things happen, the more serious I become.”
And what things Lauri might mean?
“They can be band things or personal stuff, that touch your old friends or loved ones. They might be things I have to go through with a shrink some day, if they start to pile up...”
Lauri takes a break, tabs the table with his hand and announces he has to go to the bathroom. When he comes back, the wall is back.
And actually Lauri should be working already.

Magazine Issue Cover.
Image 2: Idol and a fan: Lauri from The Rasmus is a big fan of already deceased actor Matti Pellonpää (in the picture).
Image 3: Lauri in Eerikinkatu's Corona bar. "I used to visit here often when I was in school. You could sit here all day long for the price of a cup of coffee. But we weren't just skipping classes here, we also made homework. I think."
Image 4: Lauri on the yard of Suutarila's secondary school. "I'm used to being stared at. 'Hey look, he's buying toilet paper.'"
Image 5: Lauri at Ann-Maj's kiosk. "The last two years have been incredibly tough. It feels like I've aged 5 years."
   - Lauri smoking a cigarette. "Middle aged women are the worst. I don't get it, how they can have so many children. And when they come and kiss you. I'd rather receive kisses from some 20-year-olds."
   - Lauri on Porkkalankatu where Lepakko used to locate. "One of the gigs I remember forever happened here, we were supporting Rancid. It was our first gig in Lepakko and I was so nervous about meeting the guys from Rancid."
Image 6: Lauri walking around Hietalahti's dockyard. "After the tour I like to be at home. It's a weird thing how amazing it feels to vacuum your apartment or cook."
Image 7: Lauri and Aki Hakala at the studios. "We are trying to make our songs as ready as we can before going to studio. Here we only record them."
Image 8: Lauri at their training place in Nosturi. "I'm suprised how easy it was to write new stuff and how good it is. We would have gotten lots of pressure about making a new album if this wouldn't have happened."
   - Lauri waiting for the local train at the station of Sundbyberg. "It's important to make an album outside of Helsinki."
Image 9: Lauri at the roulette table in Cafe Opera. "I'm a very good boy at spending money. One night all your money can go to roulette, sometimes I reward myself by buying a guitar."
Image 10: Lauri in the lounge of their studio. "There may be a long time when I know nothing about what's happening in the World. It's nice you can cut all your connections to the reality and live in some cotton land."

This is an exciting story about the life of The Rasmus’ singer Lauri Ylönen. Everything begins from the housing estate of Suutarila, where Lauri teach the street credibility way of spitting and remembers the sweat smelling teen disco. Then we move to Stockholm. At while Lauri works at the studio, but at nights he relaxes at bars and gambles. In the last chapter the persistence of the reader is rewarded with the information of how rich Lauri is and how he spends his money.

In last January the vocalist of The Rasmus, Lauri Ylönen stepped inside a rock bar in Tokyo and noticed, that in one table, there were sitting, two of his youth’s favourite bands (Guns N’ Roses) members, Matt Sorum and Duff McKagan.
The worn-out American rockers were left to mope in their table together, when on the other hand there were fans from all around who had come to see the young Finns; The Rasmus’ gigs in Japan saw fans from Great-Britain and Spain.
One Japanese man burst into tears and mumbled to Lauri about how he couldn’t imagine to see The Rasmus at this bar. “I was like, ‘what’s going on here?’ Matt Sorum glared at us, when this guy was crying at me. So mad! When Aki went to talk to Matt, he just pissed back. I myself didn’t go and talk to him, ‘cause he seemed like an asshole, and the whole situation was so ‘I’m a star’ like…”
Lauri tells us at the window table of a restaurant at Helsinki, Rikhardinkatu. February is soon to end, and The Rasmus has come back from Japan. The band is currently practicing the songs for their next album, of which recording will begin in about two weeks, at a studio in Stockholm. The Rasmus’ earlier album ‘Dead Letters’ which came to the market in 2003 has sold an enormous 1,5 million copies. The hit song, ‘In The Shadows’ was last years most played song in radio stations in many European countries and The Rasmus were touring around the world: In Japan, In the US, In Russia, In Mexico... In the last year Lauri was away from Finland for more than 250 days.
The 25-year old Lauri Ylönen is the absolute lead figure of The Rasmus. He is the one asked for by the foreign magazine interviews and pr-occasions, he is the No.1 idol of their fans.
Let’s check him out a bit closer.
Height is 169cm. Dressed in all black, a hat covers his head (the colour and style of which has changed more than once during all these years).
He talks lively, with broken sentences, thinking of what he’s saying.
He is known as a control freak and a workaholic. The Rasmus is everything to him: other jobs he has never done, he even quit the upper secondary school.
He seems polite. No arrogance to be noticed, though he is a star, a real star.
“One British fan bought me a star from the sky. It is named after me. I have the certificate, where it says where the star is”, Lauri says. Another fan, a thirty-year old, Italian woman has taken a tattoo of Lauri’s autograph, (which he gave her) to her arm. She had already had Lauri’s’ face tattooed on her shoulder.
The Rasmus and Lauri’s measurement of fame can be found from the internet. From an Italian site, you can find an own Lauri discussion, ‘una sezione per parlare su Lauri’. There are almost 40 000 messages sent there, where people declare their love towards Lauri.
Lauri Ylönen is a global Neumann.
This is a story about how he became just that. Let’s leave the noisy restaurant and move to Lauri’s’ childhood view, to Suutarila, a housing estate in northern Helsinki.

First chapter, where we loaf around in Suutarila. Lauri teaches the right way of spitting and tells, how he freed himself from the claws of the mean policemen.

“Oh f**k. Parakki is gone”, Lauri Ylönen says and rises up from the backseat of a taxi to the snowy grounds of Suutarila High.
A sign tells you to leave your bicycles to the poles, a security camera, hang up to a eaves, films the brick wall.
Parakki was an important place for Lauri, when he was young. At its’ stairs he met his friends at evenings, skateboarded, smoked and spat. Lauri demonstrates the right way of spitting: Hands lean to your knees, and the spit hisses through your front-teeth. “I’ve puked there too” Lauri says and....