Old Man Fiddle: Finland's Folk-Rock Apprenticeship Before Lordi

MAY 15 1975 · 12:05

Pihasoittajat · "Old Man Fiddle" · Finland · 1975 Placement: 7th · Score: 74 · Language: English · Composers: Kim Kuusi, Hannu Karlsson, Arthur Ridgway Spencer · Venue: Stockholmsmässan · Host: Stockholm, Sweden · Type: performance innovation · Broadcast: color crt On March 22, 1975, at the Stockholmsmässan exhibition centre in Älvsjö — the makeshift hall ABBA's previous year's win had forced Sveriges Radio to book — the Finnish entry arrived in the unlikely shape of a folk-rock ensemble called Pihasoittajat, whose name translates roughly as 'yard musicians' and carries the specific connotation of buskers playing in the courtyards of apartment blocks. 'Old Man Fiddle' was composed by the young Kim Kuusi, with an English lyric that framed the song as a narrative vignette about an old street musician. The performance leaned into folk-rock instrumentation in a way that sat somewhere between early Jethro Tull and the Finnish humppa tradition, with a prominent violin figure doing much of the melodic work on camera. Conducted by the indispensable Ossi Runne, the Yleisradio orchestra's permanent Eurovision maestro through this era, Finland finished seventh with 74 points — by some distance one of Finland's stronger results of the decade and well above the bottom-of-the-table placements the country had become used to. The song was not a hit outside Finland, but it was a rare moment of mid-table competence in a long Finnish Eurovision apprenticeship that, from this vantage, was still three decades away from Lordi's 2006 breakthrough. Context Eurovision 1975 was the first contest to use the douze points voting system that would define the next four decades. Finland had been participating since 1961 and had spent most of that stretch near the bottom of the scoreboard. Pihasoittajat's choice to perform in English was permitted under the free-language rule that had been in force since 1973. Legacy Seventh place remained one of Finland's better Eurovision results until the late 1990s, and 'Old Man Fiddle' is widely considered a minor classic of the 1970s folk-rock strand of Eurovision entries. Mythology Finland's pre-Lordi Eurovision record is sometimes remembered as uninterrupted failure; results like 1975's seventh place complicate that story.