Our brisk journalist Silvia was at a champagne breakfast with Lauri from The Rasmus one day before The Rasmus' newest European tour. The place was the restaurant 'Tori' right in the middle of Helsinki.

S: "Tell us a bit about your upcoming tour ?"
Lauri: "It is a 3 week long tour going -for example- to England, France, Belgium, Italy, Holland, Spain and 2 gigs in Iceland to Reykjavik. Reykjavik is really cool. I get to see Björk and maybe to swim to some geysers."

S: "How big is the stage you'll be playing on ? What does the tour look like ?"
Lauri: "It's a pretty small tour. Last year we played for about 4000. We're going down from that a bit. The public will be around 300-600/gig. I hope at least a few hundred will come to see us. I guess that it'll be hard in England. They think that they know all about music... In with the public there'll probably be many criticizing 'rock cops'. Or then maybe not... how could I know !? But anyway we're going to play in smaller places."

S: "Do you have to virtually start again in every country (playing in smaller places, doing lots of interviews) or do they already know you from before ?"
Lauri: "Now they have started to know us before we go to some countries. And the Internet is good. People take all kinds of stuff from there. And radios play a bit of our songs and they show our videos on MTV. It helps a lot, but of course we still have to start again sometimes too. In fact we wanted to start again, we didn't just come to try to get something (play somewhere) impossibly big. It would be good if we had more time so we could try to build more solid foundations in every country. Because it'd be weird if some new band came to Finland and would play in Tavastia straight off."

S: "You have done many interviews in different countries. Can you see differences between different countries? How do they treat artists ?"
Lauri: "In Finland people treat us really well. They don't do any rumour (spreading) news (except a few shit magazines). It's nice to do interviews where we can talk about what we like; we don't have to talk about girlfriends if we don't want to. For example, in Germany there are papers that don't want to ask us about anything else. But I'm not interested in talking about my private life. If they're interested, they can read the texts from our CD's. That is as much as I'm ready to tell."

S: "How do you manage to cope with all this ?"
Lauri: "Good question. But we work it out. We have done this for so long, that we have learned to know our own lanes. We know how long we can hang around in a bar if we have something important to do tomorrow. Sometimes I'm feeling bad if I do too much in one day. First having to work in the morning and then a gig on afternoon. We should keep promotion and touring apart. There is just so little difference between them. If I start feeling bad before a gig it's hard to keep it invisible so people notice it very easily."

S: "The recording deal with the Record Company, Playground, was really important for the band. There was a big change in your music. What were the reasons for this ?"
Lauri: "The CD deal with Playground was written in 2000 and the same year Aki came to play drums. This time wasn't so good for us. People didn't buy our CD's and we needed social support. Then we trained and made songs for about a year. Our music style has changed a lot from our first album to the fifth. And now I guess that's it. We don't change anymore. Dramatic Rock. We want to emphasize some things, like good and bad."

S: "Did disbelief come at some stage ?"
Lauri: "Yeah we were thinking about that when we had some bad moments. When an old mate leaves after 6 years it doesn't feel good. But Aki was an old mate too, he used to be our shirt seller and he used to play in Killer and Kwan. Then we stole him for The Rasmus !!"

S: "Your voice has advanced. How have you trained it ?"
Lauri: "I have never taken singing lessons. I guess that it comes from lifestyle. I listened to one old song today and I sounded exactly like Mickey Mouse then. I also used to look like a bit different."

S: "Your tour list is great to see. You have achieved what you've wanted. What are you up to next ?"
Lauri: "More foreign countries. Maybe go to Japan or the USA."

S: "You've done lots of work on other bands with Pauli. Could you imagine being a Producer for someone else in the future? Or do you just want to be on stage ?"
Lauri: "I don't want to be a producer of sounds. I don't even know a lot about it. I would like to be a songwriter, because I've written songs for others too."

The end, thanks, Cheers ! And let's eat porridge.

thanks to *ICE* (The Polar Bear)