Matti Pellonpää played the lead role in a total of nine films, but the musician in him has remained in the shadow of the big screen.
– I’m still not sure if I’ve fully recovered from Pelts’ death, even though it’s been almost 30 years.
– That man was a walking heart.
Saarinen has edited the book Matti Pellonpää – Musiikiin parissa, which records Pellonpää’s musical output.
Pelts’ intense and many times praised and awarded acting work has overshadowed the man’s musical skills, the most significant of which was the band Peltsix. Now Peltsix songs are published as a songbook for the first time.
The lyrics rushed to the paper
The band’s name was also kind of self-explanatory. Pellonpää was Peltsi and the band had six members, i.e. six. The gallery of names ending in x in the Asterix comics also had its influence.
– Peltsi was very specific about this. Once, he even removed a concert poster, on which some organizer had drawn the name of Pellonpää over the band in big letters, laughs Pale.
The band’s songs were born around Pellonpää’s lyrics.
– It went the other way around than usual. You couldn’t send demos or sheet music to Pelts, they didn’t get any meaning from them, but the lyrics came, sometimes as scribbles on papers and answering machines, and we then developed the rhythm and tone for them.
The style was everything from folk to rock, prog to ethno and roots. Everything was united by the spirit of doing good and Pellonpää’s singing interpretation. The texts themselves were like miniature plays. Already many names such as *Sandpaper Woman* or *Torttuimainen elma* told the story.
Pale Saarinen says that the actor, who has been bathed in many broths, was initially very nervous before the gigs.
– You couldn’t hide behind a role on stage, you had to be your bare self. It was a return from the movies to a live audience.
\”What old body?\”
Peltsix had a record of releasing two full-length albums during its years of operation, the third album based on anagram texts remained in the planning stage after Pellonpää joined the heavenly orchestra at only 44 years old.
– Peltsi, who is known as a lively raikulipi boy, wanted to completely change his lifestyle in recent years. He sobered up and after his recovery had time to look at this world clearly for three years, before the congenital heart defect proved fatal, sighs Pale.
– I met the man two and a half weeks before his death. A gentle-looking man stood in the doorway, saying in a familiar accent \”What old body?\”
What could the Peltsix band’s message from the distant 1990s be to the present?
Pale laughs.
– Do everything! Don’t limit yourself to one genre. If you fall, get up.
– So did Peltsik.