048 I don’t have a memory of ever wanting to do anything else but make music
12/2023

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Full episode transcript is below. It’s been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

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If you are compelled to make music, make music. The rest will come along with it. Ville Leppanen joins today and talks about missing meals, playing for pizzas, and weighs in on whether there will ever be “another Nirvana.”

Ville cofounded and runs The Animal Farm with his brother Mat. Find artists on the label and blogs from Ville at www.theanimalfarm.co.uk.

00:45.28
Russ
How did you find Ville in the first place? How did you two meet?

00:52.65
Terry
I submitted a video for him to review and he liked the video, and we met a few times and discussed what's it look like to release a few songs. He told me I was really bad at social media which is true, and then we so kept in touch. So we met through music. That's the answer you were looking for.

01:17.68
Russ
Ville, are you good at social media?

01:22.62
Ville
What's social media? No no I'm not. I grew up without it, and I was happy to do so. But of course you know the daily daily work of working with artists and doing stuff you have to be aware of what it is. I'm not personally ever on it.

01:43.50
Russ
I'm glad you said those words I'm not personally on it because I feel like the the nut of my question there was did you feel like Terry was bad by observation or by comparison personally to Terry.

01:58.15
Russ
Terry introduced you as the founder and owner of a music label and studio. Is that right?

02:05.76
Ville
That's right, yeah. I co-own it with my brother Mat (Lepannen) and we've been running the business now for just over 20 years. Kind of depends on how you count, but just over 20 years, 22 maybe. The answer to the question question about social media is I honestly can't even remember what it was. Usually when people send in music I triy to listen to the music without looking at anybody's social media because I don't want to be influenced by the number of hits or the statistics that are irrelevant to the quality of the music. So I listen to the music without any any of those sort of distractions in mind. But obviously then thereafter if you like something you need to check out what these people are doing online and how they're presenting themselves there because it's part and part and parcel of what artists need to do these days. And besides it's a lovely way of communicating what you've got.

03:05.83
Russ
So you brought it up, not me, that you've been doing this for 20 years. Are a lot of the artists that you're working with (and then trolling their social media pages) much younger than you?

03:15.38
Ville
Well of course, all of them. All of them are younger than me. I mean, of course yeah, artists tend to be.

03:22.69
Russ
So what's what's it like to interact with people who are in some cases just starting out brand new? Are you are you getting people that this is their second or third go around, or is this their first time interacting with a label?

03:51.62
Ville
So I think most people who get in touch with labels and manage (we manage artists as well) tend to do it at a point in their careers where they've tried to do it on their own for a bit and then realized nothing's working. It's really difficult. They don't know what to do and they feel that somebody in in our position can have a bit of magic to to put in, and of course we don't. The only thing we can do is say well these sort of things work and these are the sort of areas you you have to improve in and raise the bar in and and then you have to be really committed to it for a long stretch. To imagine that there's a technological solution to what is essentially a creative problem is insane, you know?

There's lots of good music in the world, and we can all still just listen to all the Beatles records. So why make anything new? You know, in that sort of jokey sense. You've got to make really good music, and then you've got to take a long view. It will take a long time for that music to find an audience and these sort of technical gimmicks of you know, do this one…?

When we started there was wasn't even Myspace. Then Myspace came in and that was like “Oh this is going to change everything.” Youtube was going to change everything. Facebook was. Instagram's going to. Snapchat was. Non-fungible tokens were going to change everything. Now Tiktok, that's going to change everything.

But in reality it hasn't changed anything in the life of a musician. You sit in a room and you try to come up with good ideas that then get rehearsed, gigged, recorded. And then other people hear them and most of those ideas nobody will like very much because the law of averages. Most ideas are not very good, some will be okay, some if you work at it hard enough for long enough will be the life-changing sort of career-changing ideas. Breakthrough ideas. I suppose that the role of a manager in a label ought to be to help an artist to arrive at those ideas. It takes time and it takes a lot of effort. 

When you're in contact with really, really young artists who've grown up in social media they sort of think that that things can all of a sudden just blow up and then you get a career. And I think there's precious little evidence of that having having ever happened.

06:34.48
Russ
Yeah, I'm not sure that's unique to to any particular industry either. I mean you're describing about this law of averages piece. That when producing a lot of stuff, some will be good and some of it be amazing. Judgment about what's amazing might come from the one who's making it, but it might also come from other people who've been down that road more. I think about that, and I think “You know, being twenty years old none of that would have ever occurred to me.” Social media or otherwise, I would have had no idea if you'd told me that stuff straight to my face. I would have looked at you and I would have nodded and said “Yes, yes, yes, I understand what you're saying. So what am I supposed to put up on my social media page to get this to be a hit?” I think that's just part of being twenty.

07:29.82
Ville
I came into the business as a musician myself (and this is in the 80s), and we had a problem. Our problem at the time was that in order for us to be able to make a record we had to get a record deal. Because you couldn't make independent, that was too expensive. Nobody had the money and besides even if you had the money to do it, there was no distribution so you couldn't get anywhere. You had to get a record deal, and we had to impress the A&R guy. If they didn't like what we did there was nothing we could do. So early on in my career I learned to deal with rejection, but now you speak with younger artists who cannot deal with rejection because they don't need to. They can just release it and put it out and they can find a little success. And it's not always a little! You can be a bigger sort of social, what do you call it, an echo chamber on their social media where they go “Woo!” You know, “This is great!” and everyone starts whooping and I go “Well, it's maybe a little bit great, but in the in the greater scheme of things maybe not so much.” That's a really difficult barrier to break through.

08:44.32
Russ
It almost sounds like it'd be harder once you've had a little bit of success. If you're just being told no all the time, you get used to being told no. Then when you break through you're happy, but you still have your eyes on or how to get to the stadium shows or whatever. Whereas if you've if you've been told that it's great by a bunch of people you don't even know, and you now have full blown fans, you think “Well, I’m good. I’m doing a good job. So why isn’t it blowing up more?”

09:09.94
Ville
True, yeah. The truth of it is if things are actually blowing up then those artists don't need more help. Chances are that they're already doing it with the help of people who know how to do it and and who can help them.

09:30.89
Russ
Is blowing up even a real thing in in the sense of massive popularity very, very quickly?

09:42.30
Ville
Ah, you know the old old saying is is that it takes 10 years to become an overnight success. I think things do blow up very quickly now, whereas in the past before the internet things just took longer to get there. 

10:04.00
Russ
You you were talking about coming to it as a musician and trying to impress the A&R guy. Did you find when you were playing music, did you want to do it to play music? Did you want to do it to play shows? To write? What was the part you were most thrilled by? And then how did that fit with or clash with having to go out and do the business of a band.

10:36.16
Ville
Recently I was at my parents' house. My mom had a bunch of stuff in the attic that she wanted to get rid of and she had kept some press cuttings from the band that I was with when I was 18 and 19. We found a bit of local success in Finland so there's quite a few of those press cuttings I didn't know that she'd kept. It was really nice to read them because in one of them I said something that I didn't remember saying. It was something like I want to make music for a living, and I want to be respected for the musicianship that I've got (or at the time I thought I had). It was very little to do with the stardom stuff. I wanted to make music. Whatever that meant. Touring? Great, do that. Or in the studio, or in the writing room, rehearsal room. Do that. That's what I wanted to do. I still do today. 

Every morning when I wake up I play the guitar. I practice it every day and I try to write something every day. I just enjoy that process I don't think there's anything more fun than that. With Mat, my brother, I’ve made thousands of recording projects over the decades and they're all fun. All of them are fun to make. I just really enjoy the process. 

I don't personally get to do that so much anymore just because my role in the company has changed, but when I get to it's wonderful. I used to enjoy touring when we toured. Mat didn't so much, but he put up with it because he understood that to tour successfully meant that you could carry on making records and he enjoyed that part of it.

I don't have a memory of ever wanting to do anything else but make music. To me it was just like “Yeah, of course I'm going to do this.” Then everybody in the family and everyone around you says well don't don't be stupid. My grandfather said don't become a musician, it's a shit job. But of course when someone says that to you when you're young, you want to prove them wrong.

13:14.52
Terry
So tell about Snowdogs. Was that the first step for you and Mat or was that later? Tell us about the genesis of Snowdogs. Where it formed how you, how you made it, played in the states. Who were some of the bands you toured with in the US? Give us give us 3 or 4 minutes on Snowdogs.

13:36.72
Ville
We had already been a bit been in the business for a long time by the time we put that band together. I had a high school band in Finland that got a record deal and we had found a little bit of local success. Then some of the other guys in the band, because we have national service in Finland, they wanted to go and do their national service and go to university and stuff like that and I didn't. I kept on making music and the other guys just went into civilian life. My brother Mat was old enough at that point and we started writing together and made a couple of records which which weren't very successful in Finland.

Then very early on we thought we wanted to move to the UK. Both of us have been influenced by british music over the decades so we wanted to go there. There was a Norwegian band called Aha that was really successful in the eighties. “Take on Me” was their big hit and they were like role models to us. They just went to London and then they made it work. They slept on floors in basements and just made music, and I remember thinking that it's so romantic. 

There was some article about Aha where they're saying they didn't have enough to eat so they you know, passed out when they were climbing the stairs away from the basement. I thought “Oh wow, that's cool. That's what I want to do.” But of course then when we got here and we had no money and literally didn't eat every day the romance was gone. It wasn't romantic at all. 

We got a publishing deal here. We were sort of staff songwriters for a publisher and we did that gig for a while and then whilst in London we put an ad into Melody Maker or NME or one of those and auditioned some drummers and found a guy. Started doing the clubs and started touring and we got a record deal here. The deal here in England first was with a company called Track Records. It was the relaunching of the legendary Track Records label that had Jimmy Hendrix and The Who. The thing was that Snowdogs were the first band signed to Track Records since Jimmy Hendrix. We thought that was quite a nice thing to be able to say.

16:01.82
Russ
It is.

16:04.92
Terry
It is, yes. Confirmed.

16:11.60
Ville
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know it was just a PR phrase I suppose. Then we started doing stuff internationally. By the end of the nineties there was an American company called Victory Records who heard our music and said that they'd like to do a deal.

16:34.11
Russ
Through that process from local success, then moving to London and not eating, what share of your life was music?

16:49.92
Ville
A hundred percent. I never did anything but music.

16:52.77
Russ
When you’re “doing music” and realize you are out of food right now, does the music stop so that you can go get food? I know this sounds very pragmatic, but how do you make it through a day? You still want to make music. You still wake up and play guitar. You still have band practice and shows to play, but where does the basic need for sustenance fit in?

17:23.93
Ville
You know, I've often thought about that. Bear in mind this is thirty years ago now and you look at things with rose tinted glasses, but I don't know how we survived. And we had a publishing deal! They paid us in advance so we could eke out a little existence on that, and we were doing different sort of session work, and then production. Just any kind of musical hustle that we could do.

There's one time when I did go to a play at an Italian sort of pizza place restaurant. Two times 45, and I got paid I think fifty quid for for the evening plus all the pizza that I could carry home with me. That kept me and my then girlfriend, now Mrs. Leppanen, fed and it was enough.

I did 2 of those gigs but then I got fired because the restaueur wanted to hear Italian music and I was playing Nirvana and Oasis. Whatever was popular then. And he sat me down and he says “You know this wouldn’t be so difficult if you weren't good. You are very good, but I'm going to have to let you go.” He says he wants to hear Italian music and all I could think of was I know the theme song from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. That's a spaghetti Western right? But it didn't wash.

Without a doubt they were very very difficult years. We had a home studio and were in the studio every day. The was that you could drink as much tea as you wanted because tea was cheap but as far as everything else was concerned, there wasn't a lot of it. I've got a little sister. She's 10 years younger than me and I think she came came to London on a study trip or something and she burst out crying when she saw us because we were so thin.

19:49.23
Russ
The love of music.

19:50.49
Terry
Well, it's not like excessively big now. You're both thin as it is today in all the abundance and wealth and opulence that you live in now.

19:58.41
Ville
Oh yeah, which we live in now. You know the reason I'm relatively thin is that I play a lot of squash (the racket sport). Squash in England, I don't know whether it's like this all in the states, but in England it's quite a sort of middle class sport. At our club there there are lots of people who work in financial services. I was having a drink at at the club bar with my friend Matt who’s from Texas and he's an English language professor in one of the universities here. He was looking at these these bankers and hedge fund managers and said “Those people are risk takers. I'm an academic. I'm not a risk taker.” Then I said to Matt that yes I'm kind of with you, that I'm not a risk taker either. And here's his jaw dropping, he says let me get this stray moving to England to to play punk rock wasn't a risk? You know, when when you look at it in another sort of terms of course it's it's an insane thing to try, but I really didn't feel that way. I thought it's just natural. That's what I want to do and and so far so good I've been able to continue doing it.

21:28.62
Russ
How how severe and deep was your biggest doubt? Did you think at some point “Oh man. I might have messed up.”

21:45.64
Ville
I've never felt that, but every year around this time I start thinking it's all gonna end. Every year for many years now I've been wrong about it. Thankfully, I suppose. When Snowdogs…because we weren't a successful band in the sort of greater scheme. We toured with Blink182 and Alkaline Trio and

22:16.93
Terry
At the Drive-in, one of my favorites.

22:20.25
Ville
At the Drive-in. The Ataris they were sort of like MXPX. There's all those sort of punk bands of that era we toured with, and it was okay. We had done all right touring and making a living at it. But then towards the end of that there was a period of a year where we already had our own studio, and we were writing these songs and recording our record. Then going off to do a tour, and then we come back when listened to the record and we go “Oh this is terrible!” And then we delete the whole thing and start over again.

That process went on for a year. Within a year we wrote, recorded, and deleted three albums worth of material that we just weren't feeling at all. We thought we were, but we weren't happy where we were. We started doing different things. We were already a bit older by then and and Matt and I had this conversation and said, well if we're going to keep doing this we're going to have to start from scratch. Go back to playing the shitty clubs, and try to get a deal, and everything else. And I don't think we were prepared to do that at that point in our lives. That led to moving into music production, and from there to management, and then to the label.

That was a big moment where I went “This is going to be really difficult now.” But somehow we muddled through and and all of a sudden within a year or two things were looking up. Musically it was a lot nicer because all of a sudden we were able to make records and make music with many different types of artists and not just play the same twelve songs every night so I enjoyed it musically.

24:12.60
Terry
So I want to make a statement, Ville, and I want to have your opinion on it. I think music was better when there were gatekeepers.

24:26.93
Ville
I don't think the gatekeepers made the music any better. Certainly I've got this feeling of my own career that when people did the gatekeeping it pushed me to to do better. So in that sense I think you're right? But you know there was a lot of crap music in the old days. Yeah.

24:58.90
Russ
Terry’s middle name is rose colored glasses. He he only remembers the good stuff. Terry, when was the last time you went crate digging at the at the record store and found all the stuff that's super forgettable?

25:11.11
Terry
See Russ makes this point all the time that there's no way you can say things were better or worse today than in some period of time in the past. Because everything's been what it is today at every period of time in the past and there's no way to say things are better or worse and that's essentially it. But I think a case can be made that the decentralization of music has made it impossible for especially guitar rock. Maybe it's just that nobody wants to hear guitar rock anymore. I don't think so, but I don't think there will ever be another Nirvana.

26:13.75
Ville
I'm not so sure you're right about that Terry. There are countless basements and rehearsal rooms where these things are happening. I am old enough to remember when Nirvana broke and it was at the tail end of all the hair rock of the eighties and stuff. It was awful stuff, and there's nothing really worth listening at that time for me anyway. I didn't listen to rock music for years and then that came and and it changed everything and it can still happen. It'd be a horrible feeling to wake up to to say it isn't going to happen so I'm purposely thinking “Yes, it will happen.”

You go out looking for it and stuff, but what's making it difficult for instance in London is London has become a very unfriendly city to musicians. Rents are stupidly high. Transportation is difficult. You can't get to gigs, and there aren't any gigs because the rents are too high. To operate as a band is expensive and difficult. Then somebody who's doing laptop-based, sample-based music in their bedroom can make it sound great for for zero cost. So it's kind of a technological shift into ways of making music that make guitar music a little bit more difficult to do, but there are lots of guitar bands out there doing stuff. I might not think all of them are very good, but that's that's all right. Know there's bound to be a few that are, and then you have to find them.

28:10.00
Russ
Do you have an idea what a good guitar rock city is right now?

28:16.19
Ville
We work with artists from most all continents that the message seems to be the same: that guitars are out of fashion. It's not very guitar-friendly anywhere. I remember a few years ago I was at the Great Escape festival which is like the british version of South by Southwest and I was talking to somebody in a bar. She turned out to be a journalist writing for a couple of big outlets and I thought okay I'm going to schmooze a little bit here and order her a drink. I started talking and I asked her what what kind of music she was interested to discover, bearing in mind that it's a new music showcase festival. She just looked at me and said “Well, anything that isn't four white guys with guitars.” This was a few years ago already and I kind of already knew, okay, well that game is dead for the time being.

29:25.99
Russ
Terry and I feud about this. He doesn't know it's a feud because I try and tone it down and not be aggressive with my co-host. But I think the reason Terry thinks the music used to be better is because Terry's not listening to electronic music made in the last twenty years. And he's not listening to rap, and he's not listening to pop electronic music which is having a massive resurgence in quality. When you don't see that stuff, it's hard to see where the good stuff is.

29:59.55
Terry
I have to defend my honor here. I went through a two year stretch very recently where I listened to nothing with lyrics. Lots of Aphex Twin. Lots of DJ Shadow. Lots of Four Tet. Very, very, very dialed into the electronic scene. 

30:22.96
Russ
All that stuff is old now. But I see your point.

30:32.49
Ville
Can I interject before we move on. I think the reason why rock music is not very popular at the moment is because there's no innovation in the genre.

30:34.12
Terry
Culture wise sure.

30:35.63
Russ
Please, allow the professional to weigh in.

30:50.79
Ville
If you listen to any pop playlist of the best pop stuff from the seventies, eighties, nineties, oughties, it all sounds really different throughout the ages. Modern pop music sounds really different from the bubblegum pop music sound of the eighties. But if you take a guitar band, so much of it could be from any decade. I can't think of a rock band that's broken through in the last decade or fifteen years that has actually innovated the genre in any way. 

31:33.40
Terry
That's a great point. A fantastic point. But what do you do? Is it skill? More notes? Better chords? Tone? More asynchronous rhythm patterns? What is innovation in guitar rock?

31:49.53
Ville
Learn to play! That’s how to put innovation in music. To just talk about guitar, you can play the guitar in in many different ways. Inversions of chords you use. What syncopation. All that business. I just think that it's stuck in the past. That's why when kids talk about rock music they still talk about Nirvana. Well, that stuff is thirty years old. And there should have been something newer and better and more exciting by now.

32:28.70
Russ
Chili Peppers and Foo Fighters are still the massive touring acts. The kids, the grownups, everybody loves those if you like rock music. I talk to friends who are in their twenties and say I remember the Red Hot Chili Peppers greatest hits album…from 1990? 1991? And my friends haven't heard any of these songs, ever.

But you know the piano went out of style too.

32:56.13
Ville
Uh, the piano?

33:02.70
Russ
Yeah, meaning every kid was taking piano lessons because they had. It was part of being a well-rounded person. Then things like recorded music took a huge chunk out of all that. Previously, if I want music I'm going to go to Terry's house to listen to Terry or Terry's daughter play the piano. And now I can gather around the phonograph instead. Or gather around the AM radio instead. So a lot of this stuff is technical, not only cultural.

33:24.80
Ville
Oh, I see. Yeah, my mom made us take piano lessons and we hated it. I did piano from the age of 5 until my teens when I started rebelling against it. She said there will be a day when you'll be thankful for me making you do this. I'm still waiting for that day.

33:48.23
Russ
I thought you were going to go the other direction and say and now I'm a successful person who needs those piano skills most days.

33:53.99
Ville
Well that's true. That I do.

33:55.79
Terry
Ville’s brother is a very talented pianist, or at least works well in the studio.

I have a question for you about culture. You've experienced it from many different perspectives. Two part question. The first part of this question is what makes you feel at home? You've had to acclimate to multiple different places from a culture standpoint. Second part of that question is how much of American culture makes it to you? We're very egocentric in America. We think maybe rightfully, maybe wrongfully, that our culture is the global culture.

35:16.70
Ville
I think when we moved to the UK we were very unaware of of british culture. You kind of know that’s where they drink tea. They say please a lot, and thank you, you know? And drive on the wrong side of the road, or they go to the pub. These are sort of idioms that everybody understands, but actual british culture was very alien to us. When we play a demo to someone and they go “Oh great. This is really…interesting.” We took that at face value! “Oh yeah, they're really interested!” Of course it means the opposite. The brits talk in irony. Everything is the opposite of what it actually means.

I have to confess that in the first years when we were here, we were just so focused on doing our own thing that we didn't really pay attention to any of that. Then as I've been here, I've lived in England longest and little by little you get used to the culture. I've got kids. When they started going to school you kind of go okay and you meet parents. You become part of the community in a bigger way than through work. You know, in the music world of course we've got friends who work in music and have been in it for as long as we have. But then once you become part of a neighborhood and you you know the parents association at a school or whatever, then you begin to understand the culture. For me, definitely being part of the squash club has helped me integrate myself better so I actually feel like I belong here. I'm not British, but I'm a Londoner. I'm Finnish, but I'm not like a typical Finn I would say. Not anymore. 

You’re right that Americans think their culture is the gold standard in the world but it isn't. Europe as a continent has a lot of different subcultures around it, and when the european union started to to accelerate in the 90s, people were afraid that local cultures would disappear in favor of this sort of global culture. But the opposite has happened. Every one of all the countries has their own music markets. There's a strong local thing. So for instance in Finland I'm surprised when I go back. The big thing is Finnish rap and Finishn hip hop. They do it in Finnish, and it sounds weird to me because the way they use language is totally different to what I'm used to. The vocabulary is different too. But that's the most popular thing. Same in Italy, in Spain. We talk to Italian artists who want to do their music in English and they say “There's no chance for me here in Italy” and that they’ve got to come to England to do it.

For a brief stint when I was a kid I lived in North Africa. And you've got the middle eastern culture, and you know whatever we do is totally irrelevant to them. They've got their own thing and and and it's a wonderful musical cultur. Just the heritage that comes from there. It's just amazing. We've recently picked up on a Moroccan rock band I won't plug them here because wouldn't be the right thing to do, but they’re from Morocco and they sing in Arabic. And it's just so cool.

39:20.89
Terry
Plug it! Let's hear the name!

39:28.92
Ville
They use middle eastern instruments like the oud and a lot of other stuff in their work but they're a rock band. They're called Lazy Ball. Fantastic band, and we're getting a little bit of interest for them now and and it feels good.

Then there's an Indian chap called Takar Naba that we're working with. He's from the foothills of the Himalayas and writes sort of jazzy music that has Indian-Tibetan overtones. To be able to discover this sort of stuff online and then get involved and try and break it elsewhere is one of the big perks of the job. Not to say that it wouldn't be nice to discover the next Oasis coming out of Manchester. That'd be nice too. But there's a lot of good music in the world that comes from different cultural perspectives. On the other hand I guess it may be true that American culture is the closest we’ve got to an overall culture.

40:33.26
Terry
Russ is going to take us out but thank you for coming on. Absolute blast. I don't gush over anybody but I think you and your brother are fantastic people that I enjoy tremendously as people and then as music partners. Whatever that partnership is or looks like down the line. 

Anybody who comes to this should check out Animal Farm because they are fantastic people and I can't say enough how much I enjoyed being there and being in the same room and working with them.

41:27.22
Russ
Ville, I just appreciate you taking the time. I feel like I've been given a gift here for the holidays, you humoring me for my questions and giving a window into what it’s like without being corny. So I appreciate it.

41:49.47
Ville
My pleasure I've really enjoyed chatting. You had really good questions about stuff that I haven't paused to think about for years.

42:08.17
Russ
I'm just gonna close on this: the way you describe squash is exactly the same here. It's the same all over. See you next time everybody.

42:08.79
Ville
And you!

—end—