Interview with Jussi69 at Ankkarock Festival - English version

(The 69 Eyes)

05.08.2007 von Ron Moger

At the moment, trash goth rockers The 69 Eyes are in the middle of one of their busiest years so far, with tour dates spanning Europe and America and a new album hitting the charts worldwide. I caught up with Jussi 69 at this year’s Ankkarock festival in Finland, to see how the band are getting along, what the future holds, and to find out why he never wanted to be a racing car driver

So you just got back from Lithuania, how’s the tour going, what are you trying to achieve, are you promoting the last album Angels or is there something else..?

Jussi 69: Well we started the whole festival season and we now have more to do and that always changes the facts a bit. I mean, when we headline our own shows it's like an hour and a half and kind of more of the last album, "Angels" of course, and the festival is always a Best Of“ or Greatest Hits“ and today’s show is going to be around an hour so we’ll play the singles from "Angels" like Never say die“ I guess Rocker“ and of course Angels“ itself. I like festivals, it's always an opportunity to put all of your energy into that one hour. Also though, when your start playing more festivals you start to crave to play, like track number 8“ from "Blessed Be" or some slower moving songs, but we get to play this summer rocking out.

So how do you keep it original?

J69: Well, we try to change it, well not every night, but just to please ourselves. Sometimes you find that when the set is being played in a perfect order you want to keep it that way. I wouldn't call that a routine though, just everything is going smoothly so you know ok well this song is going to be like that and Bazie (lead guitarist) is going to maybe do this one lick after that song so we know it’s going to go to the next song. I wouldnt call it as routine where we’d be like machines doing the same thing over and over, I do like it when that happens but after a while you really have to change, especially when there are so many same people coming to our shows no matter what country we’re playing and theyre getting bored and knowing exactly thta the lost boys is going to come or, whatever. But at least today is going to be different from the Lithuania festival so

It’s a home crowd so does that make a difference?

J69: It’s a home crowd and this year we’ve already done like 100 shows already but in Finland we’ve only played like 3 times so it’s great and especially when we’re 30 minutes away from helsinki and there’s lot’s of friends there’s fear, I dont get nervous when I play to 70'000 people or if it’s a live tv show in Hollywood, but if you have friends there it’s like oh, there’S Nico, I’d better not fuck up because he’s watching!“ and I like that feeling, it’s like nervousness but in a good way.It makes you try harder and to show off, to them that like we rock, really!“

What’s going on with the sound of the band at the minute because maybe to analyse it your sound is going less gothic like perhaps with previous albums but on the other hand you’re going to be touring with Within Temptation and before you were with Cradle of Filth so what’s your thinking behind that?

J69: Well like we say, with the album Angels“ we’re going more and more back to our roots, with this 80’s hard rock thing, but when you think about rock bands right now in the year 2000’s you might think of Bily Talent or The Foo Fighters, but we’re not the Foo fighters so we’re closer to bands like within temptation. We’d still tour with bands like Billy Idol but he isn’t touring that much. The within temptation dates are happening in the UK and Germany and I guess our audience is more from the gothic side than from the Foo Fighter’s side let’s say, so that’s the whole point.

Moving on to the UK specifically, are you happy now that it’s all at last picked up for you?

J69: yeah well you know but not many people know that we toured there with a van in something like 96, playing for something like 12 people every night and we’ve tried things out, we’ve been there more than 10 years ago already and finally something’s starting to happen for us which I think you can’t understand how much we appreciate that afterhow much we tried it and it makes us like oh wow, finally!“ after we tried to get the game going on for so many years it’s a really rewarding kind of feeling for us that after all this work and years with this band it’s finally paying off.

Does that make it difficult, though? I mean, it’s sort of happening the same time as things are kicking off for you in America.

J69: Actually, it might look like that from the outside but we’re not exploding in America, we dont have a number1 hit there or anything, we just have a chance to tour there now, which is great, but that doesn’t mean that we have to skip the reast of the world just because the USA is such a big country. I mean, look at us, we’re in Korso now near helsinki and the last show we did was in Lithuania so it doesnt mean that we’ll just move to America and forgot the rest of the world.

Will you be concentrating on that: making sure your priority is your home country?

J69: We try to plan it so that we go everywhere which is what we have done this year except a few gigs earlier this year when Jyrki was sick so they got cancelled But it’s weird for us to hear from some people like they dont care about us because they have such a success in America. We’ve been to so many new countries this year alone like Croatia and places like that and we’re actually including more and more new places and of course the UK more than we ever did before so we want to make sure we go to all of the places we’re invited and, if we’re not? We’re still going!
We’Re hoping to go to Australia which is a place we’ve never been before and we just did these eastern european countries we hadnt done, and also the UK is kind of a place we havent been to that much so I think we’Re going to go there fort he third time this year. After the within temptation tours we’re planning to do some headline shows there too.

What are your next plans for perhaps the next album, what sound do you think you’ll be going for?

J69: The thing with us is that you never know what’s going to happen, when I say that we’re going back to our roots, it doesnt mean that we’re going to record wrap your troubles in dreams“ again, you can hear that influence more and more but at the same time we’re every year learning more and more how to learn to write songs so just because we’re going back to some of our old songs it doesnt also mean we’Re going back to being maybe 19 year old guys who can’write their own songs.

Do you see yourself doing this in 100 years just like the Rolling Stones?

J69: I just saw the stones and i was thinking it would be so cool to do that when you’re 65, i mean Mick Jagger was running way more than Jyrki ever did (laughs) on our shows and I guess they always had more energy than we ever had when playing live. It’s kind of a challenge so, let’s see.
Of course you know how it is, if you ever got bored you would stop right now and that’s what I would do. I’m not promising to Stopp next year and Im not promising to do this when Im 65. Let’s see how it is, maybe you’ll see us tour in Croatia in the year 2026 playing Gothic Girl all over and over again, probably with two line ups cos (sic) we’ll end up in-fighting and boozing like and LA Guns kind of thing, Jyrki’s 69 Eyes“ that kind of thing! Let’S see. No Im just joking around!

So as long as it’s fun you’ll keep going

J69: Yeah, and right now it is. I mean it was new and fun and cool when I was 17, I was 17 when I joined the band and somehow it’s getting more exciting after all these years and that’s so cool.I dont know why that is but we’re getting new things to play with every year like now we have stuff to do in the UK and we’re going to new countries and that always keeps fresh. Again, you shouldnt forget that I never wanted to do anything in my life except to play drums in a rock band and tour. When I was a kid I didnt want to be Batman, i didnt want to be a policeman or a racing car driver, I wanted to play drums. How many people get to do that? I have so many friends who did want to be that racing car driver or Batman and I dont know anyone who got to BE batman but I got to do what I wanted to do so Im really lucky

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