Editorial

THIS IS THE STORY OF THREE FRIENDS WITH A FIXED IDEA


1990, Pop & Jazz School in Oulunkyla, 7th class: two little boys - Ville with his brown hair and green eyes and blond, blueeyed Mikko - are their teachers' despair. The first talks too much and never stays quiet, the second never speaks but it is impossibile to find him at his desk. They discover a common passion: rock music.
Ville plays the bass and had already tokk part in some bands inside the School of Music: B.L.O.O.D. and Elovena Boys, playing covers of Iron Maiden, U2, Dire Straits; Mikko plays the guitar and is very fond of blues; they sometimes play together Charlie Parker and John Lee Hooker.
The first band formed by the two - Aurora - gathers a certain success in the Oulunkyla's School District, maybe because beyond the musicians' talent, the girls begin to notice the charm of a certain pair of green eyes and of a certain blond head...
So, among beer boozes typical of nordic teen age, the first cover of Deep Purple, Jimi hendrix and Black Sabbath take their life.
These two very soon are joined by a third element, called Mikko as well, two years elder. He plays the bass too and meets Ville quite often to make music together.
Two bass players in the same band have no sense: so Ville, winning over his original shyness, becomes a singer while Mikko Paananen - with the nickname of Migé Amour - takes the place of bass player. No one could rob to Mikko Lindstrom his beloved guitar! So all together go on working hard, pushed by the same passion: Kiss and Black Sabbath's music!
Five years later, in summer of 1995, the drummer Juhana Tuomas Rantala (Patka), and keyboarder Antto Melasniemi join Ville valo, Mikko Lindstrom (Lily) and Mikko Paananen.
So H.I.M were born.
Their first public exhibition is called "H.I.M play Type 0 Negative"; in October 1996 the first EP sees the light: "666 Ways To Love" contains three songs written by Ville: "Stigmata Diaboli", "Dark Secret Love", "The Heartless" and a Chris Isaak's cover, "Wicked Game". on October 19 1996 H.I.M. paly for the first time at Tavastia, rising the interest and the satisfaction of Asko Kallonen, a BMG promoter, who realizes to have met a band different from all the others that, even technically good, seem all too similar one to another.
"These guys are going to explode...I've never seen no one working so hard..."; among the listeners, there is also Welldone's Tiina Vuorinen who decides, from that moment on, to take them under her wingand describes them - during their first interview, as the most shy people ever met, almost unable to speak and dedicated to fix their own shoes...
After some time, Tiina leaves the business to her ex-husband, Seppo Vesterinen, who become the omnipresent and irreplaceable band's manager.
Since that moment 11 years have passed by; the band has changed, now the keyboarder is Janne Purttinen (Burton) and the drummer is Mika Karppinen (Gas); the shyness has been won and those guys gave us a lot of amazing songs, toured the world together with bands like Metallica, Placebo, Linkin Park, went gold, entered the top list of sell...but sometimes I like to think about them like that...as the school's pests, dreaming to play like Kiss and Black Sabbath.

Mrs. Lindstrom-Rosanna

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