by Lenny Stoute - pics: Maria Gunni
To boldly go where no band's gone before. To seek out and make contact with new rock'n'roll life forms. Such were the travelling orders of the starship Helix as it hurtled through Canadian airspace. I was pleased as a two peckered rabbit the lads of Helix were off to make history. And mad as a rabid sidewinder that the devious bastard Stoute had manouvered me off the tour and grabbed the tickets.
Disguised as a Viking transvestite, I managed to catch up with him at London's Heathrow airport and before you start squawking, let me just say that for this evil, conniving bastard, four grams is no way excessive. So I stashed him in the baggage hold of an Air India jet and waltzed onto the British Airways flight for Stockholm with the heartless, baby-eating bastard's boarding pass.
I knew I'd done the right thing as soon as I saw Weiner's (the wizard of the sound board) lewdly grinning mug. He was attached to a blonde lady soccer player with thighs to match. Her friends were likewise blonde and looked like they were out of the California Girls video. Clearly the kind of sensitive people the vile degenerate bastard Stoute would be offensive to. The gentlemen of Helix were surrounded by a blizzard of blonde heads as they signed record albums to the soundtrack of Long Way To Heaven . The stereo's wailing to Ride The Rocket , a rock-stomper in the grand ol' Helix tradition, with their familiar over-the-top attack. Yep, after a long year's journey into the light of international recognition, Helix are now reaching for Heaven.
Which is how the album initially got its name. The scene was the Metallion launch party with Helix booked to headline and them a mere 16 hours away and having just finished a gruelling gig in extreme heat.
"So when we got in to the bus," remembers Vollmer, "and someone asks where we would be playing tomorrow. Someone else answers: 'Toronto. We're playing at Heaven.' Then someone else remarks: 'it's a long way to Heaven.' When we came back to choose an album title, that one seemed to fit our situation.
" Walkin' The Razor's Edge established our credibility as a saleable band in the U.S., so the challenge now is to build on that. Everytime you move up one level, you get a better understanding of how long away it is to the top."
Another successful in-store promotion behind them and a night off ahead, so Helix are in a good mood to party, and my arrival is as good an excuse as any. Being that I'd never been in Sweden before, the guys proceeded to run down the vital facts of tour life in Sweden.
The Goonies
The Goonies are a hard core of about 20 girls who follow the band to every date. Goonies live on cheese sandwiches and beer and need little sleep. They range in age from jailbait to hardened switchblades of 18, and in looks from the not-to-bad-at-all to the three-bag, rip-your-arms-off-in-the-morning. Sex with Goonies is only for the desperate and those not afraid to be laughed at. Even the road crew through them back. Fritz, drummer and Mother Teresa of the band, says simply: "Hey, Goonies need love too. Have you hugged your Goonie today?"
The Viking Theory
Everywhere you look, you see blonde heads. They are usually attached to appetizing blonde faces and bodies. They look like extras in an ongoing Platinum Blonde-Billy Idol video. I wonder aloud what happens to the ones born ugly? Are they left beside hockey arenas to freeze into tiny blue pucks?
"There aren't any," says Brent Doerner darkly. "Haven't been any for hundreds of years. It's the Vikings; when they came here pillaging and raping, they killed off all the men and ugly women and raped the beautiful ones. A few generations of this and the dark, ugly ones are history," he finishes looking at me meaningfully.
The Sun Never Sets On Your Party
This Midnight Sun business is pretty wierd. Basically, the sun never sets; it just kinda crouches down a little, then stands up straight and tall, and before you know it, you're beat for your night. Which can put you in the overly-possesive position of asking someone home for the day. To the tour party, no night means having to fight the urge to bop 'til you drop. This also means that since everyone sleeps at different times, there's always a party shift.
This party takes place in the room of Madison, the Swedish act opening for Helix on most of the tour dates. The members of the band are cowering on the bed, eyes bulging from their heads as a Canadian type party swirls around them. They are watching the combined forces of the Pig Dog Choir and the Werewolf Crew lay waste to all beverages and smokeage. The Pig Dogs are the band's offstage disguises and the Werewolf Crew exactly that. By day, hard-working light'n'sound men. But after midnight, when the last cabinet is loaded and the last truss is lowered, they change into animals.
The Battle Of The Baltic Babes
Much, much later the party staggers off in the direction of our hotel, The Baltic, a modest place where you wouldn't expect trouble. Until you try to get a girl into the place. The first comers ran into Helga before she was fully awake and wound up enough to get physical. Phil the Kiwi wasn't so lucky. As he cheerfully ushered his little flock into the lobby, Helga charges out, grabs him by the throat, pins him against the wall and proceeds to wallop the living shit out of him.
Then Brent slides in with his guests; Helga bravely breaks off beating on Phil to grab a pair of cuties by their long blonde hairs and drag them kicking and screaming out on to the sidewalk. Then returns to charge into the mob in the lobby with both fists swinging, scattering drunken bodies left and right as the crew of the starship Helix flee into the night air.
The strategy after that is for persons to go down to the lobby and distract Helga while others try to sneak up the fire escapes across roofs. Some make it through but many don't and the carnage is awful, the sidewalk littered with bruised and bleeding Swedish welcome wagoneers. The band are virtual prisoners in the Baltic with Helga on guard, so we order up vodka doubles and try to call the Canadian embassy.
The Aftermath
"See," Brent is explaining to Gary Swensson, the local promoter, "the crew work such long, hard hours. When they have a day off they want to blow off steam; it's hard to give them a bad time about it." It's the day after the battle of The Baltic and the serious and well-meaning Gary is beginning to wonder if he's bitten off a little more than he can chew. And this is only the beginning; at this stage Helix have nine shows remaining in their tundra-breaking tour. Whereas most international acts play only the south of Sweden, Helix have chosen to take the act to all the people, even the Laplanders - beyond the Arctic Circle. The promotional machinery's already in place, the press is attentive at every stop, there are live radio bits to be transmitted back to Canada. There's serious momentum on a roll here and no way to stop it without causing an awful wreckage. Gary's sparse blond beard is changing to white before our very eyes. He's nervous and getting more so as one of the local crew laughingly assure us we'll be running into snow further north. Which is a downer, as we're sure someone mentioned sun and topless beaches before we left Canada. Could be all tell and no show.
Lapping It Up In Lapland
It's the last day of school. Expect a riotorous reception, we're told. It is. The dressing room's surrounded by by faces jamming in the windows and trying to climb up the sides of the building. We watch kids getting their pre-show blitz in the parking lot. It's about an even split between pastels and denim'n'leather; both groups are equally pissed.
Promptly at 11, with 3,000 or more reindeer-lovers howling at the moon, Helix charge on stage for my first look at the new show. The look's more muscle and bare flesh, less leather and studs. Brian Vollmer's a Jim Dandy-ish figure in white spandex and knee-high combat boots. The set opens with House On Fire , off the new album, breaks for an oldie with Young And Reckless , then kicks straight into the meat of the new set with four tunes from Long Way To Heaven . By now, numerous punch-ups are getting on and the girls in the front are squealing like pigs at a bacon makin' party and grabbing for anyone they can reach. Including roadies. And yours truly, who gets a might too close to the barrier and one Vikingette grabs a double handful of hair and just won't let go. I felt real bad having to smack her in the face but it was the only way to break her grip. Besides, she was smiling as she hit the ground. The Kids Are All Shakin' is a killer-rocker which opens the album and just before they jump into it, Vollmer stops the music and announces; "Kids are getting hurt in front. If the pushing doesn't stop, we'll whack off." Well, actually what he said was "walk off," but after three days without sleep, you hear funny things.
It does the trick and the show goes on to only sporadic incoming fire; stones, a pretty pink shoe and a few beer bottles that explode in the pit, scaring the starch out of the photogs crouched down there. One of the kids tells me that the reason the bottles were thrown empty was because they like Helix. If they didn't like the band, the bottles would be full of piss or gravel. But Vollmer and Co. have got the little vandals in their hands. Brian picks out a little cutie to be the centrepiece of the action when he sings Make Me Do . The crowd applauds long and loud. The three string-benders, Hackman, Doerner and Gray, stand back-to-back-to-back and tear off the middle bridge in Animal House ; and the place goes ape. Rock You turns into an out-and-out chant with the house drowning out Vollmer on the chorus. The encore's My Kind Of Rock , and, ever the showman, Vollmer picks out a kid and rides him around on his shoulders making victory signs to the crowd, which is clearly foaming at the mouth by now. Getting out of there in one piece involves charging through a tunnel of police and flinging yourself into the van while trying to prevent the Clairol posse from doing the same.
Helix started happening big in Sweden with '84's Walkin' The Razor's Edge and subsequent tour, which pushed the record close to gold. This year, it was felt that if the boys toured simutaneously with the new record release, it would go over the top. This year they arrived not as contenders but as a main event and lived up to the billing every stomp of the way. Even the heavier rockers off the new album are structured than previously, and demand a higher level of musicianship from the band. Vollmer is hitting his stride as a frantman; he's confident, charming and assertive, singing better than ever.
"Hey, I used to sing in the Ontario Youth Choir, ya know. I can modulate with the best. I had nodes when I was starting out and the doctor told me I'd have to quit singing or they'd never get better. I went to this opera singer named Ed Johnson from Hamilton, and he showed me a few things. Like how to get more out of my voice without straining. After about five weeks with him, I was in fine voice again and didn't have to get an operation."
Part of the answer comes out of Vollmer's having to quit drinking. Cold. Not a drop. "Had to. I was having blackouts and that's just not cool. I woke up one time to find myself in a Camaro racing across the prairies at 120 mph beside a girl I'd never seen before. I didn't have a shirt or shoes. That's the sort of thing that can set you straight. Besides, I was putting a lot of unnecessary strain on myself and wrecking the voice."
The full power of the Vollmer pipes comes across not during the rockers. You've heard him scream 'til the paint melted before. It's on the almost-ballad Deep Cuts The Knife that the afterburners cut in and move from a croon to a breast-thumping crescendo and back again, as smoothly as a Trans-Am going through its paces.
Beyond The Arctic Circle
There are trees. It doesn't turn into instant tundra just because some sign on the highway says Arctic Circle. The sign is a good excuse for cracking the champagne and catching an early afternoon buzz. The trees are a good place for the reindeer to hide. There are lots of them about which clicks Vollmer into his Wild Kingdom mode, hanging out windows by his ankles and clambering about the van roof, trying for hardcore reindeer footage on the 'ol Super 8. We pass a store with what looks like a family of Wookies hitching in front of it. Turns out to be a showing of what the fashionable Laplander will be wearing this winter. Which is the same furs he wore last winter.
Later that night at the gig in Gallivare, we could have used those furs. As the band churned through their set you could see the steam rising off them in the frosty air and the cold played all kinds of sick games with the tunings. But the kids don't seem to notice; this, after all, is the first big rock show inside the Arctic Circle and from the first bars of House On Fire , they're into it, yelling and fisting the air. The band is gelling like plastic explosives tonight, pliant, going with the flow, but packing a lethal punch at every turn. The rhythm section of Hinz and Gray are pushing the pace every chance they get, upping the ante for guitarists Doerner and Hackman to stay atop the wild wave of sound.
It's not technically the tightest night they'll have but the rapport between band and crowd is total, and as Vollmer steams through Heavy Metal Love and Dirty Dog and the kids go apeshit, a little thrill runs through the assembled crew in the wings. Helix are laying down the law in Lapland in no uncertain terms.
The Kids Are All Shakin'
Fifteen is the age of consent in Sweden. Which means there are lots of 12-year-olds lying to get to the party...."And how are old are you little girl? Twe...thir...fifteen." This makes Keegan very nervous; he's the tour manager and possessor of the most thankless job of the crew. He is the face of responsibility; getting to bed on time, getting out on the road bright and early. He may be a nice guy for all I know but it's still best to have him safely tucked into his cage before any boogie goes down.
By one's and two's the party gathers in the small hotel bar, which we've persuaded the young desk clerks to keep open until it's dry. Which won't take long at this rate, so it's a good thing Gary kicks in with a couple bottles of the local jet fuel. Which helps everything get louder and more energetic. Didn't actually see the lamps come down but they were asking for it, dangling there like high-tech wasps' nests. Did see someone getting tied up with studded belts by what looked like twin mermaids. And did see Terrible Tom, the light man, trying to put it in someones ear. You won't hear a word about the nipple contest or the 'after-hours McDonalds' but sometime later a girl is running through the halls in black lace panties being chased by the irrepressible Weiner, dressed as an Arab, laughing maniacally and shaking his snake. And an unidentified blonde head is buried two-floors down in the garden where its owner fell trying to puke off the balcony. A reeling desk clerk comes by to say the bar's dry, 186 beers drunk. This is serious but no one's in any condition to find a liquor store, and already people are passing out where they stand. The Goonies sleep where they fall...
It's Father's Day. Do You Know Where Your Paternity Suit Is?
.....Stoute here. Barely arrived in time to save Helix from further damage at the crazed hands of Stunner Crunch. It took massive doses of reindeer tranquilizer, but he's peacefully asleep in a TWA jet baggage hold. With his disturbing presence out of the way, Helix carried on with the serious business of stamping their brand sharply on the brain of Swedish rockers. They set a number of attendance records, sold lots of albums, made good hard-driving rock'n'roll and generally conducted themselves as goodwill ambassadors for Canada. In concert, the group fully realized the potential of the songs on Long Way To Heaven , and armed with material that could go either hard or AOR, look set to make further inroads into the U.S. market. Heaven, in the sense of world chart success, may not be that far away from Helix.
