INTERVIEW - TUOMASHOLOPAINEN.NET

by deathwish

Hello, it's Agnieszka here...

Hello! How are you doing?

Doing just fine. And how are you?

We're doing just great. We've actually just finished recording the drumms.

And what will happen next?

Now that we have all the drumms recorded for all the 15 songs, Emmpu and Marco will start recording bass and guitars next Monday, in about a week. And then I will do some demo keyboards during the next month or two. We have a lot of time to do that before entering the studio in London, in December to do the first parts of the orchestral and choir recordings. And these orchestral parts will be done in two parts - the first one in the mid December and the other one in February. And that is because Pip Williams has such massive amount of writing to do that he couldn't do all the songs for Nightwsh in mid December so we need to give him more time.

And what about the vocals?

The vocals cannot be done until all the orchestral parts are recorded anyway. We have realised it already while doing Once that when you do the vocals before recording the orchestral parts, there might be some conflicts with the vocal line so it's just easier to get everything else done before actually recording the vocals. So whoever is going to be a vocalist, she will do her part after the February session.

How would you describe in very few, vague words the style of the new album, the songs, the subjects of the lyrics? What can we expect? Are there going to be any suites like Creek Mary's Blood or Ghost Love Score?

The overall feeling that I have about the material is that quite a bit like the previous album. I mean, the same elements are still there. The extremes have remained, there are some really hard songs as well as soft ballads. The style of the music is not going to change that much. Of course, the biggest change will be the female vocals. Because the style is going to be quite, I think, different. But the music in itself is going to be pretty much the same, but there will be, of course, some new treats that we haven't used in our music before. All these guest musicians that we've managed to gather for the London session there will be some surprises, people will go like What the hell are they doing now? Why are they using that kind of stuff here? There are going to be some 'shockers' but I don't want to reveal them. And well, there's one really huge song that lasts for almost 14 minutes. It's my personal... and I think it's also the band's favourite one. It's really a nice epic piece of music, which to me is more like a piece of movie music because there's so much going on in this song. Well, I'm really excited about it, it's gonna sound really nice. And the rest of 14 songs are... it's quite hard to tell. Well, the music engineer Mikko Karmila said that they were more progressive in style but I wouldn't know. It's really hard to say at this point.

And when can we expect - more or less - the brand new single and the album itself?

Well, I'm pretty sure that we will have the finalized album in our hands in April or so. But I'm not sure if we have time to release it in the spring time, because it will take a lot of promotion, doing the music videos and stuff. And also - if we release the album in the sprng it would mean that we'd have to go to festivals during the summer and that's definatelly not the easiest start for a new singer to perform in front 20 thousand people or so. I think we're going to release the album in July or August and then we'll start touring in America where we're doing smaller gigs so that the vocalist can adjust. I think it's the best thing for her to do because it's going to be very hard for her anyway so.

Century Child was quite a dark album and you admitted after the release that you had had a very difficult period in your life when you were writing songs for this album. Now that so many things has happened in the band, you lost a friend and - as you said yourself - you went through a very stressful moments concerning the split, can we expect that the next album is going to be dark, gloomy and heavy maybe even brutal?

Personally I think so. In a way... There are some really dark songs. For example this long, 14-minute piece is really dark at least in Nightwish measure. And there are other songs that are... well, I would use a word brutal but definitely really hard both musically and lyrically. But on the other hand there are songs where you can feel some relief when you listen to them. At least I do... So like I said before - the extremes are there more then ever before. So it's not going to be like Century Child 2. There is more hope in some of the new songs.

Is the orchestra going to be even bigger then on the previous album?

It's going to be pretty much the same. Pip and me, we want to use these key players that we used last time like Gavyn Wright playing the first violin and there's Anthony Pleeth playing the solo cello like he did in Kuolema Tekee Taiteilijan. So there are these few key players that we want to have in the orchestra this time as well. I would say that 80% of the orchestra is going to be the same as before but we're gonna use a little bit bigger choir this time 'cause last time it was only about 18 people.

And now I would like to ask you some questions about Tarja. Would that be ok...?

Well... actually, I wouldn't really like to talk about this matter anymore. It's been a silent extreme for both parts and it's ancient history now and we'd like to move on. And these things have been discussed already so many times before so... maybe it's just best not to talk about it anymore.

Ok, no problem. So let's talk about new vocalist then.

Ok.

Personally, I'm looking forward to hearing new vocalist but there's one thing that I'm a bit afraid of, as a fan. Some of Nightwish's pieces are so closely connected to Tarja's voice that it's really hard to imagine any other person performing it. Will the new vocalist perform a lot of old songs during the gigs or will you mainly focus on the new ones?

Naturally we will focus on the new ones like we'd been doing before because when you put up a new album you wanna play the new songs. But we're absolutely not going to forget the old song neither. I'm sure that the future playing lists will include songs from the previous albums as well. I think we can never get rid of songs like Nemo or Wishmaster or Sleeping Sun. But of course it's gonna be a huge task for the singer - she will be always compared to Tarja but I'm pretty confident that she'll do well.

You must have listened to hundreds of demos that people has sent to the band. Are you optimistic about the new vocalist? Have you heard any good demos, good voices?

Yeah... I've heard some really, really good demos and I'm not exaggerating a bit. I mean, there's been like a few hundreds of them so far and natuarlly, the majority of them are the ones that we cannot really accept, they're not our potential singers. But there are a few that are really good, that give you the shivers and everything. At the moment I feel really confident and so do the guys. We have a couple of very, very good candidates but it's not only about the voice. We need to spend some time with these people, get to know them, see how we get along with them. Finding a voice is not really a problem - there's been a lot of good ones up there - the biggest problem is the character of the person. And some minor problem like if a person can't speak English that could be a problem - no matter how nice a girl she is and how well she sings, she simply needs to be able to do all the interviews and that kind of stuff so... I've been like Dr. Frankenstein so far - trying to build up a suitable vocalist... But she is up there!

Have you already had some face-to-face encounters with the potential vocalists?

Yeap, there's been quite a few of them actually.

And when will the new vocalist be announced?

This is actually a really good question that I would love to answer. People are raving about announcing the new singer, especially here in Finland all the time. Again there was a story today in one of the Finnish tabloids about who she will be and bla, bla, bla... I want people to understand that the new album will be out in, let's say, August. If we announce that the new singer is going to be She in, for example, January, than there's like six months that people know who the singer is but they haven't heard a single new song. So people would have half a year to find out everything about her, talk shit about her and actually doom her to death. It really wouldn't be fair so what we have to do is to announce her name to the paper on the same day that the we publish the first new songs that people can listen to so it would be convincing. So I think we will postpone the announcement for as late as possible even if we know who she is right now. I mean, we don't know this yet, but if we did, we would pospone it as far as possible.

But aren't you afraid that Finnish magazines, tabloids will somehow manage to get to know who she is earlier?

Yeah, there's a very huge probablity that it would actually happen. For example when we start to hang out together, when we bring her to the studio to record her parts, the paparazzi are everywhere. We just have to do our best to keep it secret. And I hope that the media and the fans will have a fair amount of quiety and that they will understand that is good to keep her secret for as long as possible. Not because of us but because of her.

How do you personally feel about the new DVD, End of an Era?

I am actually very satisfied with it. When I watched the material, especially the show video, I felt such a pride about the guys and Tarja. It was really like a symbolic highlight of the band's career. I mean, ten years of hard work and here we are. That's the main impression that I had. Of course there is this bittersweet feeling as well, but the main one is still pride. I just hope that when people get this DVD they can experience the Nightwish showitself, not looking into the background and wondering what will happen afterwards. I know it's kinda hard to forget but… consider it as a normal show.

You had known before the show that the band was going to give Tarja the famous letter. How this awareness influenced you during the gig? Did you worry about it or left all the burden behind and enjoyed the show?

We just enjoyed the show. It's quite weird but the thing didn't even crossed my mind once during the show. It was in my mind three minutes before the show and three minutes after it but during it I was in whole ecstasy for all the time so whatever was to happen next it didn't came to my mind.

Last time we talked, you said that it's always the greatest fun to do a new song during the show. In Helsinki you played Creek Mary's Blood for the first time, probably quite a challenging song to perform live. So how did you feel playing it?

It was a real highlight of the show, the highlight of the band. Having John Two Hawks on stage was such an honour. It's probably my all time favourite of Nightwish songs and being able to perform it live was a great experience. But anyways, the song is really difficult to play live. You wouldn't actually hear it but it took a lot of training, lot of practise to get it right and I think we pulled it up really well.

Amongst the pictures put up in the gallery at the DVD, there are pictures of you and two ladies - who are they?

I don't know the girls! I don't know who they are. (laughing) I met them only when they came to the studio to take the pictures. The joke behind those pictures is that people are quite crazy about the new singer so we just wanted to spice the session up a bit.

In the concert, you have a Jack Sparrow toy in front of your keyboards... why is that?

Hm, first of all I think that Jack Sparrow is THE coolest character in the history of cinema. And there were quite a few stories here in Finland that I would be, sort of, copying his style and that I look like him especially while playing keyboards. Actually I take it as a compliment so I just wanted to make that joke and put that figure.

You even had a picture taken in a pirate clothes...

It was like an advertising campaign for a Finnish music magazine. And they wanted to me be Tarzan in the beginning! (laughing) I didn't think that it would be that appropriate so I suggested a pirate disguise. I think it ended up well this way.

You must have seen the second part of the movie...

Yeah, of course!

...so how did you like Davy Jones playing his organs? He had a couple of more 'something' to hit the keys...

Yeah! That was amazing. I guess that this scene was my favourite out of the whole movie. And Davy Jones - it's such an incredible character. He was almost better than Jack Sparrow in that movie - he, kind of, stole the leading role. It was awesome!

He smoked in quite a funny way...

Yeah! And by the way - I absolutely loved the ending of the movie! It was like the coolest line in the history - "Hello beastie!" and he jumped into Kraken's mouth. Oh yeah!

How was your holiday? Do you think you've managed to re-load your batteries after such a long period of living out of a suitcase?

The whole summer was like a vacation. We were all in this place called Sävi where we were rehearsing and arranging all the new songs so we were like playing 16 hours every day. It was a hard work but at the same time it was a total reload of the batteries, you know. Being in the middle of nowhere, just hanging out with the guys. It was really nice. But I didn't have anything like a regular vacation. In this job you are never really working and you're never really on a vacation.

How was your hiking in Lapland? Where exactly have you been?

Ooooh yeah! That was cool! We hiked from a place called Levi to a place called Ylläs - they're two downhill skiing centres in the northern part of Finland. We hiked about 65km so it wasn't that long. But it was literally great. The weather was perfect and we had a lot of fun!

Have you ever thought of releasing an album consisting only the orchestral versions of your songs? Both the newest ones and maybe old songs arranged for the orchestra?

Yeah, that has crossed my mind but... Well, Nightwish's a metal band and I thought that if I wanted to do some orchestral stuff I'd be probably doing it as a solo artist, solo composer. But as it comes to Nightwish I want to keep it more... hunchy!

And would it be possible that you composed something on your own?

That would be definitely a great composing dream that I've had in mind for years. Someday I would definitely want to try that out. I even had some offers to compose music to some Finnish films but I just think that we don't have the time at the moment. Nightwish and everything that happens around seem to devour all of my energy.

Would you like to re-record some of the old songs with the orchestra and choir?

Mmm, actually I wouldn't like to do that. I mean, they were recorded as they were with all the means they were able to get at that time. They sound how they sound because of what we were back then. I think that if I got back to them arranging the once again with all the orchestra and so on they would loose something. Personally I think that's what happened to Sleeping Sun when we re-made it. I prefer the old version. So, I guess it'd be better to let the old songs rest in peace.

You've always emphasized that you would like to compose a soundtrack. And what about an opera? Would you compose the music for an opera, if someone asked you to? If you had a good story about some beauty and her beast?

Hm, I never really liked opera - it's not my thing. Film music is my thing, classical music is ok but I had an overdose of it when I was young so I'm not really fond of it either. I have gone to the opera for 3 times and to be honest I didn't really enjoy one minute of it. Maybe I went to the wrong operas, I saw e.g Tristan & Isolde and it was terrible! I had to go out during after the first hour because it was boring. So that's just a piece of art that I don't really get.

Your parents... how do they treat your work? Are they proud of you?

They've been very supportive since the very first day. They never told me not to be a musician or so. My dad bought me the first keyboard in 1987, he gave me the money. Actually my dad is taking care my company, of themusic publishing company because I don't understand anything about business and he's very good at that. So he's supporting me this way as well. And mu mum… she's totally into the thing. She's 55 years old now but still she's got black leather pants and has plenty of our t-shirst. Yeah, she's really into that thing.

What does family mean to you? Are you a family man?

Hm... Yeah, I think I am a family man in a way that I want to take the best care of the people that around me and are important to me. I'm quite down to earth with this matter. Meaning that I care about my 'pack' - my family, closest friends. I wouldn't really want to think about African children if I'm not sure that everything is at its best with my family.

You never want to explain your lyrics and how do you feel when you hear others' interpretations that are way far from yours? Have you ever had some interpretations of your lyrics?

Yeah, I've heard many of them. I think it's really flattering that people are so interested in the lyrics. They are really going very carefully through them and have their own interpretations. That's the whole point of the thing. There's no ultimate truth about it so that's why I don't really want to expain what I mean writing this or that song. It I said it then everyone would think the same and the mystery would be gone.

Have you heard any funny interpretation that were like - way far away from what you meant?

Yeah, sure. I've seen some very different from mine interpretation of Gethsemane for example or Ghost Love Score or Wish I Had An Angel.

Some artists say that the best reward for their creativity is during the gig, when the audience is singing their songs along with them. How do you feel when you hear the crows knowing all your songs by heart and singing along with the vocalist?

It's one of the most incredible feelings that you can have, definitely. It means to me that the people are honest and that they must've gone really down to the bone with the stuff that I write - it's really an intimate thing. And there's this mass rapture during the show when people are singing along the songs. It's quite impossible to describe what I feel then. It's a mixture of relief and being valued by the people. I feel somehow alive and realize that there's some sense in what I'm doing. You just want to hug all those people then and thank them for being there.

The number of Nightwish fans has grown significantly since the last album. How do you feel about it? Do you feel they all understand your music or was it maybe a commercial boom? How would you describe a true Nightwish fan?

Hm, first of all there's been a lot going on wth the previous album. There's this trend for that kind of music, there're lots of well-known metal bands. And there was all this promotion by Nuclear Blast, a lot of touring so there were more people getting to know Nightwish. But as it comes to a true Nightwish fan - I guess it would be a loyal fan. The one that trusts us and doesn't judge by what he or she sees or hears. There's been many fans who'd send us to the deepest level of hell just for what we did, I mean the vocalist thing and I wish that these people just give the new vocalist a chance. And if they don't like her or the new music they can always switch to something else.

Did you watch this year's Eurovision? Wasn't you a bit pissed off that Lordi got into the final and they didn't want to let Nightwish in?

No (laughing)! Just the opposite. I felt so produ about the guys. They're so nice people and they did their best. I didn't have a chance to watch the show live, though because I was doing a show but when I watched it the next day - I really had the shivers! I felt really happy about them.

What is your favorite childhood book, author? And when was the first time you read Lord of the Rings?

I read it when I was on the first grade, I was 7 years old. In the elementary school, on Fridays we always had the reading class for the last two hours. So everyone had to bring a book and read something and I read it during those classes for the first time. And as it comes to other childhood books... I always read everything about Donald Duck and all the Disney stuff. And there was Astrid Lingren, the Swedish author - I loved her books as well.

If you could go back in time and re-live one memory from your life, what memory would you want to re-live and why?

The Christmas of 1982. I was six years old then and I saw the movie Snowman for the first time on the Christmas Eve. In general I absolutely love Christmas time. And back then I was an innocent kid and watching this movie - I was like in heaven. I can still remember it, hearing Walking in the Air for the first time. It, kind of, changed my life in a small way.

Do you have a driving license? Do you like riding a car? And do you have a car, if yes what kind of?

Yeah! I have a driving licence, I have a car and I LOVE driving. I'm not a car maniac, I don't know anything about the technical stuff, I don't know all the brands but still. I have a Toyota Land Cruiser. Driving for me is very relaxing. I love driving long distances just listening to the music, droping to the gas station for a coffee and continuing the journey. Very relaxing!

What makes you like Disney films so much?

Good question. I just love imaginary worlds. Imagination is like my biggest source for everything I do in my life. Mythology and that kind of stuff - it's all very close to me. I learned to read at the age of 2 as reading Donald Duck and maybe that's how it started beating in my blood.

What is your favorite Disney character and why?

Donald! He's so funny and he's got the biggest part ever that people don't seem to see. He's hard working and he's think about all the best for his friends. He's such a funny and complex character. Always makes you on good mood.

Do you still get inspired by the stories of Tolkien and if yes, will you write more songs based on his works, poems?

He will always remain like number 1 for me but I think I've moved on from this kind of inspiration. It'd be also kind of cliché to use this theme all the time. And lately, I've been so much into other books and stories. I would love to do something based on fantasy again - there's a lot of stuff to be covered in this area - but maybe not precisely on Tolkien...

Can you list all your keyboards and stuff you have?

I just got a new keyboard called Korg Oasys. I also use Korg Karma - I've got two of them. I also have Korg N364 - it's a classical one but I don't think they're producing it anymore. And then I have a Trinity and Triron. Generally, I use Korg keyboards.

Are you going to ever go back to this Ocean Soul - Lonely Soul theme in your songs?

It's all the time actually. Maybe not in such an obvious way as before but... it's till there.

What brand of wine do you usually drink during the concerts? Do you have your favorite kind of wine? And generally what are your favorite alcohols?

Well I drink red wine. I don't like white wine. And during a gig it's always a red wine - whatever wine the organizers get. I don't think I have a favourite brand, I'm not so much into this but I think that Chilean wine never fails. And in addition to wine my favourite alcohol is definitely whisky.

And what cigarettes do you smoke?

Green Berkeleys.

Where did your hat come from? Is there any special story behind it?

I like hats in general. I got into that a couple of years ago but never thought I would use it so regularly. I bought my hat in Australia and I started using it and felt it was really good so I stick to that. That's all.

Is there any chance that you would play in Poland again? I know it's far away from now but still...?

I think there's a very big chance. The next tour will probably be the largest that we've ever done. It'll start - most probably - in September next year and I think we'll be touring at least 2,5 years. Even though we did a massive tour last time, we feel that there were so many missed oportunities and we would love to get back to those.

Ok, I guess that's it. Thank you so much for taking yout time.

Don't worry about it. It was my pleasure!

Good luck with the new album, the new vocalist and with everything!

We're gonna need that so thanks!