Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart

H.I.M. and Auf der Maur on Christmas

From: Kerrang!, 2004-12-22
Date added: 2004-12-24

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Ah, Christmas, time of romance & heartfelt feelings! Let me ask you a few questions...
Melissa: I hate Christmas! is my answer to all of them!
Ville: (Amazed) Why?
Melissa: Why? I dont know. maybe it's because I came from a non-traditional family.
Ville: Being on tour all the time, it's really like an excuse to have everyone sitting down at the same table to eat.
Melissa: I like my family, so it's definitely not that. I dont know what the problem is. Maybe the gift giving, just uninspired with it. I have big dinner parties and give gifts all year round.

Maybe you don't like ham?
Melissa: Oh, I hate ham. Is that a Christmas thing?
Ville: For dinner it is.

what presents could you give to someone to win their heart?
Melissa: A baby!
Ville: Now you're being romantic.
Melissa: The best gift ever would be the gift of life!
Ville: (stunned) You said that, okay? I say the new Kenny G album, Duets.

What Christmas present should someone give you to win your heart?
Melissa: A marriage proposal? Actually I do love these mini recorders. If someone could give me one of these, the little panasonic ones, they're the best... With compressed little mics. That or a marriage proposal and I'd be happy.
Ville: A six pack of Miller High Life and a PBR t-shirt. That's the first thing that came into my mind now. I'm a simple person, I like simple things.

What is your favourite smoochy Christmas song?
Melissa: (sings) Good tidings I bring, to you and your sins, I will forgive. That's 'We wish you a merry Christmas'.
Ville: Uh... Dead by X-mas by Hanoi rocks.

Will you be with a special someone this Christmas?
Melissa: No... but actually, I'm very excited; I'm just going to Paris for Christmas. My little brother just moved to Switzerland to go to architecture school, and my family decided to make Paris the Christmas celebration. Paris is good any day of the week, and will make Christmas better because I love Paris.
Ville: Yes! I'm just gonna be back at home in Helsinki, with my parents and their dog and my little brother and his girlfriend and my girlfriend. Taking it easy, and then getting totally shit-faced later on at the back of the pub. It's tradition, a Finnish thing. That and eating Rudolph.
Melissa: (chokes) Eating Rudolph?
Ville: I love reindeer meat. It tastes very good. Almost fat free and all that. It's good for you.

And on New Years eve?
Melissa: I love New Years eve. I'm not always the Grinch! New Year is my favourite celebration!
Ville: I hate that the most.
Melissa: Really? Oh my god, see we are polar opposites, totally not the same. I love it because it is this scary turning of the new leaf and therefore it's the end and the beginning. I always want to be somewhere that is symbolic of what I hope my year to come is. I'm gonna be in London with my best friends, Alice and Fred who I went to high school with. London's a pretty fun town. And I like the idea of being in Europe because I had such an amazing year in Europe this year, that I hope to have an incredible 2005 in Europe as well.
Ville: We're gonna be playing a gig in Helsinki because I hate New Years'. There's too much pressure of having the best evening ever. I always hated that when the clock turned midnight, and off we go with the New Year. I thought the best way of celebrating was actually start the new year by playing a gig.
Melissa: Which is a premonition of what he'll be doing in 2005, which is playing gigs.
Ville: I think this is gonna be the sixth year in a row. We're playing a small gig, about 600 people at a club in the centre of Helsinki; it's a club where we started out. There's people flying out from all over Europe and a couple of people from the states as well. It's gonna be good fun.

Did you pull last Christmas?
Ville: (sings) Last Christmas I gave you my heart...(laughs) Er, same old, same old. It was really simple. I met a girl, we started hanging out, I brought her to my parents. we just ate and talked. We've been on tour for the last couple of years, so I haven't had the ability to see my parents that much.
Melissa: I was where I spent Christmas growing up, at my grandfather's house in Massachusetts, in Cape Cod. It's a beach town, so in the winter it is abandoned, just old people and fishermen. It's beautiful. Every Christmas day we go to the beach, and there's snow on the sand and beautiful rolling dunes and freezing crashing ocean. And I always look across it and imagine what's happening in Europe.

Apart from romance, what's your favourite thing to do on Christmas?
Melissa: Ah, a walk on the frozen beach maybe.
Ville: Eat the Rudoplh! Just like the old saying; you've got to destroy to live...alpha and omega. Rudolph helps Santa Claus to get to our apartment, then we take Rudolph, slaughter him and eat him.
Melissa: That's romantic.

What is your most lonesome Christmas memory?
Melissa: I never celebrated Christmas alone!
Ville: I've always been with my parents, always been home. Twenty seven years in a row. The lowest Christmas I ever had was, spiritually, for my grandmother, her husband died on Christmas eve, and that was heavy shit. That was like lonely for my whole family. Imagine, for her, losing him on that event. That was lonely.

What is your most romantic Christmas memory?
Melissa: This is maybe where my Grinch comes in. This is the first in five Christmases where I'm not celebrating it with a boyfriend.
Ville: So this is gonna be the lonely one?
Melissa: Yeah. Great. At least I'll be in Paris, the city of love.
Ville: Nah it's not. It's the city of shitty food and frog legs. My romantic situation is so good. And I think the next one is going to be pretty romantic. I'm not a big flowers and candlelit dinners sort of guy, so you know, get fucked and hop into the bunk and have a good time.

How do you pull the object of your desire at Christmas?
Melissa: Invite them to a family affair?
Ville: Not necessarily. Probably later on, at the pub, if you're lonely, as you're going to be in Paris. After all that dinner shit, you're going to be all alone walking around.
Melissa: So I see the hot French guy and...I can't imagine actually picking someone up on Christmas. That's the least sexual day of the year to me...
Ville: That's an interesting thing to say.
Melissa: ...unless I have a boyfriend, of course.
Ville: I'd never do that because in Helsinki, the people that hang out in bars, are loners, from the countryside, who can't afford to go to their families on Christmas. Christmas eve is usually crazy in bars cause all the lunatics are there. People who are super, super desperate and so superbly alone that...
Melissa: All they have to do is go to a bar and they'll get action, cos everyone there is lonely.
Ville: Yeah, but let's say in Finland, it's not a nice sight. I'd rather wait until New Year; it's just a couple of days after.
Melissa: Pick someone up on New Years', that's a fun time.

What is your idea of a romantic dinner?
Melissa: Obviously, it doesn't matter where you are or what you're eating. It doesn't matter what anything is other than the two open hearts. You dont need anything for it to be romantic other than the right person.
Ville: Turkey jerky and the right person! I was thinking maybe even a nice bed, but you dont need a bed. A bunk.
Melissa: A little picnic in the bunk.

So, can you define the difference between romance and eroticism?
Melissa: It's the difference between nude and naked. It's soul versus flesh. and therefore it's physical chemistry or...
Ville: Spiritual chemistry.
Melissa: So it's an alchemy or biology.
Ville: Words change their meaning with different people. Fleshy things can be very heavenly, very uplifting spiritually; you dont neccessarily have to be rude, lewd or gross in any sense. At times, depending on the person, rude and gross, that's the way to go. All depending on the situation.

Any brilliant pulling techniques?
Ville: We don't have the mistletoe tradition, so I usually just kiss everybody, kindly on the cheek as a gesture of warmth and respect for those people I hang out with. And well, my daddy owns a sex shop, so I'm holding, like, massive dildos over peoples heads.
Melissa: That is a good lure!
Ville: I used to work there as well, as a kid.
Melissa: That's exciting. that's erotic versus romantic.
Ville: Christmas time is really a cool time to be working in there! The seasons are so drastic in Finland, it effects people and they really go for it.
Melissa: Probably lots of people buy sex toys for their lovers at Christmas.
Ville: Yeah.
Melissa: That would warm the cockles.
Ville: Exactly.

Who would you like to kiss under the mistletoe this year?
Melissa: Rudolph, my sweetheart that I will bring to Paris.
Ville: Unless he's broken. The remains of rudolph. Maybe just the head. Easier to carry it around.

So what should someone do to pull you?
Melissa: Be themselves.
Ville: Swear a lot!
Melissa: Sailor mouth for him (points to Ville) and a gentle touch for me.
Ville: Firm yet gentle... For me, the best way to start it out is just have a talk. I've never had a one night stand, I dont like that stuff. I like to know the people I'm with, because it feels better, on various levels, emotionally, physically and spiritually.
Melissa: So to pull you, it would be friendship.

What is the biggest turnoff, then?
Melissa: Try too hard.
Ville: Being too pushy.

What makes you a pushover? how should someone approach pulling you?
Ville: By trying to pull me cleverly.
Melissa: Pull me tenderly.

Which brings us to the annual office party; what are the pitfalls you'd advise us to avoid?
Ville: At a big record company party a couple of years back in Helsinki, our guitar player, Linde had a big fight with one of the main pop acts in Finland. He tried to hit that guy. Our sweet AandR girl got right in the middle of it and got smacked in the face. That was sort of close. I recommend trying to avoid physical violence.
Melissa: No fighting for sure. Physical violence is not an option. Public display of your heroin addiction at the offics party might get you fired. Shooting up in the corner by the Christmas tree is not a good idea.

Who were some of your biggest heartthrobs when you were growing up?
Ville: Maybe Susannah Hoffs from the Bangles. And I liked Madonna a lot when I was a kid.
Melissa: Mine was Rick Astley. Forever, it will be. I loved him so much. I told Kerrang! this about 100 times before. He was the one; I just loved him so much. Now I realise I just saw something of myself in him, an androgynous redhead person.
Ville: So you became Rick Astley!
Melissa: I became Rick Astley...with a harder edge.

Do you believe in Santa Claus?
Melissa: I believe in a big special force, I don't know if he has a beard though.
Ville: Not since one year Santa came back to our place, and he was totally wasted. You know those rent-a-santas? He was all drunk, and my parents tried that a couple of times after that, and have Santa come over giving away the presents. But after that, every year I got so scared, when the knock was on the door, I hid under the table, totally scared, shivering and shaking. So I'm scared of Santa. I don't want him to be existing...
Melissa: Did they rent the Santa at the olde sex shoppe?
Ville: Shut up! You know, we didn't have any relatives.
Melissa: (interrupting) Did they celebrate Christmas at the sex shoppe (tries to stop laughing and composes herself)? Go on, sorry, that is tragic. So...he was a creepy, drunk guy?
Ville: Sweaty, paedophile type of guy!
Melissa: Ha! Santa is a pervert.

Many thanks to Sarah for typing the article up and scanning in the pictures!

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