Vampires Read, Too - The Story Behind The 69 Eyes and Dead Girls Are Easy

It's no secret that I'm a fan of Finnish glam/goth rockers, The 69 Eyes. A friend sent me a link last year to the "Live At Tavastia" videos on YouTube, and I was hooked. I friended the band on MySpace, and to my surprise, got a reply directly from Finland's Prince of Darkness himself, their lead singer, Jyrki69 (Jyrki Linnankivi). It's pronounced "Yurkee", if you're wondering. :-)

You see, I hate to blow the band's badass cover, but they're actually a bunch of really nice guys, and Jyrki was dropping me a note to tell me that he'd read my books, and that one of them had provided a little inspiration for a song he'd written for their new album, which they were working on at the time. He didn't tell me which one, and I didn't ask, because he evidently wanted it to be a surprise. Since I've never been one to peek at presents before they're given, I was happy to wait and see what happened next. We corresponded a bit, which was very nice, and I learned a lot about Jyrki and the band in the meantime: gold-selling artists with a career that's spanned over 20 years, fan clubs in just about every country in Europe, and still the original group of guys who have yet to burn out and fade away. Jyrki himself is a well-read, articulate, art aficionado with a degree in Chemistry and a "Young Person of the Year" award for his work with Unicef. (I don't know why I even bother to write fiction, because THAT is just the kind of stuff you can't make up, people!)

At any rate, the wait was worth it. The debut single from their current CD, Back In Blood, was titled DEAD GIRLS ARE EASY and it was simply awesome, as is the rest of the album. The song was then turned into a music video, which debuted this summer on Playboy.com. You can see it, and listen to it, right here.

The Eyes then took the Australia, the US, Europe and the UK by storm with a follow up tour promoting the new CD, during which I got to meet them all in person. I posted all the pics on my blog back in October when it happened, but this, of course, is my favorite one - Jyrki and me, with Jyrki holding up a copy of Dead Girls Are Easy, which all of the band members signed.
While they were in Croatia during their tour, they did several interviews with the local media, and here, for the first time, is Jyrki telling the story of how he found the book in a bookstore, thought the title was cool, and bought it. The Croatian to English translation leaves a bit to be desired (through no fault of the lovely Ivy Sataic, who conducted the interview - it's more of a Google problem), so I'll reprint the portion about the book right here:

IVY: And when we talk about art we cannot bypass books, which leads us to the song "Dead Girls Are Easy" after the same named book. What attracted your attention in the book to name the song after it?
J69: I get inspired in many ways. It can be the name of the movie or it can be a painting or picture in the magazine. Something that just got my attention. So one of these days I was walking around the book store and I noticed the Dead Girls Are Easy book and was like, "Wow! The title is cool." I bought the book. Then at the same time we were writing new music, so that title really fit as a song. Later on I had to think about what the hell that could mean as the song obviously is not the straight reference to the book. I actually have all Terri Garey's books, which is pretty cool stuff, and I can't wait if they're made into movies. But I mean, in general, Dead Girls Are Easy was a really cool expression and I just started to think what it could mean and what it could mean as a chorus in a song, so I started to build it up like that.

So there you go. Truth really IS stranger than fiction, in SO many ways.

I love The 69 Eyes--for their music (their drummer, Jussi, puts Tommy Lee in the shade, and all three of their guitarists, Bazie, Timo-Timo, and Archzie, are masters of the craft) their originality, their showmanship, and their kindness. As Jyrki pointed out in yet a different interview, good guys can wear black, too. :-) Buy their CD, and get bitten!