Rock Tribune sierpień 05

czarnycharakter

Grow up succesfull.

Taken from Rock Tribune August ‘05
Written by Dominique Van Hautegem
Translated by SuomiGoth

On the moment I got the promo of Once in my hands, I knew after one time listening that this was a catchy collection of songs. Right after it’s release it was clear that the critics loved it, but the fans liked it even more. Meanwhile Once soled more than one million copies and it can be said that Nightwish is Nuclear Blast’s goose with the golden eggs. After months of touring and miscallenous happenings, it seemed the right time to have a little chat with bandleader Tuomas Holopainen. How does he experience the whole Nightwish-hype and how does he cope with it? How is the band doing and what are the plans for the near and far future. Are there already ideas about the next album and how difficult is it to not let all the succes go to your head?

Not a sweet little kitty.
That Tuomas calls us one minute before the agreed time shows us that he is a very professional musician. It’s only 11 in the morning and a strong cup of coffee is helping me to wake up in the difficult morninghours. When I ask my interlocutor about his mental and physical state and he says he’s also still recovering from last night. ”I’m staying with friends from my parents in Helsinki at the moment and we had a really pleasant evening. I woke up about half an hour ago and I’m actually still waking up. It also seems that I’m in the company of a slight hangover this morning.” He sounds a little ’slow’ and it’s immediately clear he isn’t talking about a sweet little kitty who’s walking at those friend’s. (In Dutch when you have a hangover, you say: ”I’m having a tom cat”)

In theory
When we spoke just before the release of Once, Tuomas was convinced to have made a really good album which also added something on the artistical side. Specially the use of an symphonic orchestra had a great influence on the uitcoming, according to Tuomas. Now that Nightwish had the chance to perform these songs live during countless shows, how does he think about his sayings now?
”The songs keep convincing me, even after we played them hundrds of times, and that’s a good sign. I’m still 100% satisfied with what we have done on this album. Every Nightwish album reflects a certain period in our lives and I support them completely. When I listen to the songs on our debutalbum now I can still put them in their spirit of time and I still like them. About the commercial succes; nobody in the band expected it. We are blown away by the peaks this album reaches. There are almost one million copies sold and that was really unexpected. Don’t forget that our music is quite complex and that we really belong in a tiny corner of the market. In theory music like this shouldn’t be having albumsales this high, but we prove the opposite. It proves that nobody can predict what the big audience will like and that must be positive knowledge for other musicians.Everybody has his change to have 15 minutes of fame, if you just believe in it.”

Carpe Diem
Commercial succes is something every musician is hoping for deep inside his heart. Everybody makes music for an as big as possible audience to enjoy. Usually succes has a bad part too. Is this something Tuomas has experienced?
“If I should analyse how the group reacts on this fairytale, than I have to say that our attitude barely has changed since the beginning. I always say that we are a naive band. We are musicians so we concentrate on music. There are other people working for us who bother about technics and managers who take care of the book-keeping. Everybody does what he does best and that’s how it should be. When we’re working on a new album we concentrate only on making the best songs we can and see the release as our souvenir for the offspring. It really has to be done and has to be a reflection of our skills of that period. If we go on tour afterwards, we life from day to day and our motto is “Carpe Diem”. On tour everything can go wrong where you can do nothing about and you’re basically dependent on a lot of different people. It’s not wise to let that depress you. So we forget bad live-experiences fast and continue with renew energy. A person will be affected by the fact that you’re number one in the charts of many countries, that’s something everybody can understand. It’s more the case that the people around you act differently when you sell more albums. We’re in the middle of it now and have barely time to change character-wise.

A bad day
We return to the bad live-experiences for a moment. Dynamo Open Air 2004 was one of the first shows Nightwish did after the release of Once and shortly after the band left the stage we were able to speak to the band shortly. It was clear that this wasn’t one of the most smooth shows in the history of Nightwish and that was something you could read on the face of Nightwish. “It was a show that I wanted to forget as fast as possible. I don’t think we did one worse since than. Festivals are usually a ticking bomb and really everything can go wrong. That day everything went wrong. Technical is wasn’t going smooth and we suffered under a heavy pressure of time. Our show is based on pyrotechnical apotheosis during the last number, but we weren’t even allowed to play that last song. On moment like this you want to give your fans everything and than it appears we can’t. No miracle some of us were frustrated. Luckily, we haven’t had such a bad day after that one.

Angels-menu
One of the songs on Once tells about the fact that Tuomas sees himself as a ‘Nemo’. A lack of self-confidence is a good summary of the message in the song. Did Tuomas already changed his view on himself?
“The fact that such ammounts of people buy your albums and go to your concerts, proves already that I at least did something good with my life. The search for who I really am, is nevertheless continuing. Nightwish helps me with that, but it stays an unsure case. You never know what you will discover after the next corner. Maybe you will know yourself in such a way that you disgust yourself. I’m already on my guard, though I can say I’m doing pretty fine these days.”
When I hear Tuomas talking now and compare him with the bottled barrel of agression and frustration, I spoke to in the times of ‘Oceanborn’, it looks like he has come a long way. “That’s completely true. Back than I saw life quite negatively and had not much perspectives for the future. Though I can say with my hand on the heart that the succes on financial wealth didn’t really help me with that, the fact that the band is doing so fine, makes that we can go on with it without a lot of problems and that I can discover myself more by means of the music” Do you feel moraly obliged to keep on searching who Tuomas Holopainen really is? “I don’t know. Maybe somebody somewhere up there is playing a game with me and am I obliged to Him to search to the answers on my questions of live and death.”
When I say that it’s maybe better that he hasn’t find those answers yet, Tuomas immediately understands where I’m going. “I realize too that when I once have all those answers, there’s no need to keep Nightwish on and that’s something I really don’t feel like yet, so we’ll keep on searching some more right now. Even though it would be nice to get some of the answers and gain some more self-confidence with it.”
It’s clear that Tuomas hasn’t lost his low-selfesteem yet, not even thanks to the enormous succes. Being famous attract all kinds of people. The rock-‘n-roll life has his reputation and it can’t be that Tuomas hasn’t experienced them yet. Is he someone who enjoys it fully and takes everything that comes on his way? “Ofcourse I’m also only human and the only one of the band who doesn’t have a steady relationship. Occasionally I do enjoy the things the rock-‘n-roll life offers, but in moderation. I try to avoid all possible bad publicity and things like that could give why to such publicity.” So the go wild with some ‘Angel’ now and than doesn’t belong to the daily menu? “Not really,” Tuomas laughs.

Alternative route
A life as a musician may look attractive, still I feel that many feel quite lonely. You may play for an audience from a thousand to fiftythousand fans, but once you go off stage, boredom hits you and you have to spend your time with the same 4, 5 people every day. Some do take the time to talk with their fans, but these are only superficial contacts, where you give autographs and receive compliments. Once the day is over, you’re back in the tourbus and you spend your day waiting. “The loneliness is indeed on of the most difficult things in a life as a musician. Most people you see only once, but as a member of a band you’re there a couple of weeks or even months. You’re away from home and the longing for your family and friends will occur sometimes. Personally, I call to home than, but usually I just try and focus on the music. After all is that’s why you’re there. The one and a half hour of show makes it all worth it. If even that fails, than all your negative emotions will show up and you will burst.” What if nobody answers your call... “Than I take the alternative route and drink untill I fall down. But luckily we’re inside the band a close family. Every member I see as my best friend. Even with the crew we have a good bond and that makes life on the road a lot more baerable. We’re now working with almost all the same guys we were working with 9 years ago and to me it looks like we respect eachother more and more. Even traits you don’t like we put aside and turn to the positive sides more. The whole band has grown up and that’s what makes it fun.”

Some rest
It may be clear that it has been quite a busy year. Did you have time to do other things besides Nightwish? “In the beginning it was busy, but now it isn’t all that bad. We leave tomorow morning for Germany to play on the Earthshaker Fest. Than we have a couple of days off and we can spend our time watching DVD’s, swimming and being on the island. We’re not done yet. Our vacation will be when November ends. When the tour ends in autumn and we have also visited South-America, we can all take some rest. As a single, it’s for me a lot easier, but Marco has two kids and Jukka has one, so for them it get’s a little to much now and than. We try to take that into consideration and the way our schedule is now, with sometimes a few days off, has to do with that.”

Collection
The readers who’ve been following Nightwish for a while, know that Tuomas is a passionate collector of Disney items. Has there been any new items been bought in the last your to put into the collection?
“It’s isn’t easy, but I’m doing fine. Not so long ago I bought an old Walt Disney Donald Duck-comicbook and I paid more than €150 for it. A lot of money, but worth it. I’m also a passionate traveler.”
Do you travel in luxury or do you take the rucksack?
“I usually only take a bag. Travelling like that you can really see the country and you can do whatever you want. After this tour that’s the first thing that’s on my to-do-list.”
Where do you go than? Do you search for adventure or culture?
“Both, as long as I don’t have to be on a sunny beach all day. Thailand, Australia, Egypt and Eire where great destinations in the past. I’m usually away for a month or two and return fully loaded with refreshed energy.” Are journeys like that endless sources of inspiration?
“I try to think as less as possible about music when I’m travelling, but once you’re working on new material, every time the I see how the travelexperiences are woven into the new songs.”

Future
If we now look to the future, than it wouldn’t surprise me if Nightwish would release a new DVD as a statement. “On the 21th of October we have a gig in the Hartwall Arena in Helsinki and we will make footage for the DVD there. It will be something special, with a lot of fireworks, videoscreens and also we’ll fly John Two-Hawks over. There we’ll play ‘Creek Mary’s Blood’ live for the first and last time.”
Does this mean that the idea of playing with a live symphonic orchestra has been put on a waitinglist?
“We’ve thought about it, but it takes a huge amount of logistic preperation and a lot of money too. We decided to postpone it for now. It doesn’t mean we will never do it. Before the Once-tour ends I think we should do it at least once. That would be the perfect ending of a great adventure.”
In September a ‘Best Of’-album will be released. When I mention it, Tuomas immediately starts talking: ”Personally I’m not happy with it. It has an unfortunate timing and I don’t see the ‘why’. Recordcompanies actually decide things like this and as a musician you can’t do much about it.”
Is there any new material on it?“The only new part will be a liveversion of the Pink Floyd cover “High Hopes”, that we play live at the moment.’
What’s exactly the case with the Nightwish-beer that was released during the release party of Once?
“At that time it was a nice way to surprise the people who were there. These days you can now get it everywhere in Finland. It has actually been taken a little to serious.”
Do you have boxes full of them in your cellar, or do you prefer French wine?
“I do have some boxes besides some bottles of wine. But I’m not going to sell wholesale with it.” Is it a good beer anyway?
“It’s not bad, but I’m not really a fan of beer.”

Surprises
Finally we’ll angle for new material. Are there any ideas yet and what can we expect?
“When I come home from a tour, I sleep the first day, the second day I wake, get a cup of coffee and immediately sit down to work on new ideas. So yes, there are many ideas I’m working on. At the moment three songs are ready and I’ve got different kinds of themes.
Are you planning on taking risks or stay more or the less on the same way?
“When I’m writing, I don’t really think. I just let everything come to me and think about it later. That’s the only way and the most natural way. The only rule I have is that I never want to make the same album twice. Aspect a comparable one with ‘Once’, but than with a lot of surprising elements.”
And with those words we say goodbye to Tuomas.