VILLE VALO
THE HAMMER INTERVIEW
From the highs of rock stardom to the downward spiral that nearly finished him off for good, here are the life and times of the dark prince of love metal
WORDS: PAUL BRANNIGAN • PICTURES: JEREMY SAFFER
PRESS/JEREMY SAFFER
In Ville Valo’s mind, the night of July 12, 2007 was going to be special. Standing in the wings as his band, Him, prepared to walk out onstage in front of 14,500 Metallica fans at Stockholm Stadion, the singer felt a mixture of nerves and excitement as the Finnish quintet’s dramatic intro music boomed around the venue: this would be their moment.
“So we walk out, and the crowd is cheering, and our adrenaline kicks in, and… I realise that there are no instruments on the stage,” he says. “Our guitar tech had his wristwatch set at the wrong time, and he was having lunch, thinking that we still had an hour before we played, and the guitars were still in their cases. So we walk on from one side of the stage, and then have to walk right off again, pure Spinal Tap. I’ve never been so ready to kill somebody.”
Sitting in front of a well-stocked bookcase in his Helsinki apartment, Ville laughs at the memory. Now carving out his own path as VV, having called time on Him in 2017, the 46-year-old singer is freshly returned from a holiday in Mexico and is in good form, able to laugh at the absurdity of the journey he’s undertaken across three decades in the music industry.
“I think if you can keep the comedy/horror aspects of this business in balance with the artistic and the beautiful elements of making music, you might just survive and make it through all the madness,” he muses.
What do you remember about the first time you stood onstage with a band? “When I was in third grade, around nine years old, we started a band and I played bass, because I loved Gene Simmons. We had these monthly school discos so that the preteens could have their first slow dances and get a whiff of intimacy, and a DJ would play for a couple of hours. Then our band would finish the night playing, like, Wonderful Tonight by Eric Clapton, Dire Straits, With Or Without You by U2… I started playing ‘proper’ gigs at 14, playing bass as a gun for hire. I usually got paid in beer.”