Entrevista a Tuomas para la revista Terrorizer

http://www.terrorizer.com/content/interview-tuomas-holopainen-what-next-nightwish

INTERVIEW WITH TUOMAS HOLOPAINEN: WHAT NEXT FOR NIGHTWISH?

Submitted by Louise on Mon, 02/11/2009 - 22:23

Last month, symph nymphs Nightwish bowed out with a huge extravaganza at Hartwall Arena in Helsinki, an 11,000 capacity stadium on the outskirts of the city, usual home to ice hockey and erm, Tom Jones, who was playing there the night after.
After racking up a mighty 190 shows around the world it was time to hang up the fingerless gloves and get that break the band so needed, the last few dates really taking their toll on the band, especially on newest member Annette Olzon.
After the fake snow had dried and the confetti swept up I caught up with Tuomas Holopainen, the band's mastermind and composer to ask, what next?

You've done it. The show is over. You're officially on 'holiday'. How do you feel?
“I didn't sleep on the night before and I didn't sleep last night either. You know it's a weird thing, two years on the road and then the final show that you're like shit scared of and really excited as well. And then it goes as well as it did it's just such a relief and such a sensation of sadness at the same time that you don't really know how to be. It's like you have been in the nicest prison on earth for two years and finally you're free and you don't know what to do. Yesterdays show, I think it was top three we ever did.”

That's the second time you've played the venue – the last time was slightly more sensational and headline-grabbing, was last night the easier show of the two?
“I think the previous Hartwall Arena show we did for 'The End Of An Era' DVD, that was equally good so I would say those two were the best shows we ever did. Just like the sensation of it being the last show, my whole family was there, everybody you know, my friends, record label, everybody.”

So Annette is safe then? After the last time you played there some us were expecting the worst? You didn't think to give her a 'letter'?
“Actually we were planning to, you know before the last song, hire a postal officer or somebody dressed-up to bring a letter on stage to Anette and then she would open it on the stage, but we thought it would be a bit of tasteless joke or then fill up the confetti cannons with letters, that would've been nice as well.”

Did the show last night bring back any memories of that fateful night? It must have been weird being back there, backstage with the band waiting to go on, remembering the show four years previously?
“Nah, we don't think about the past times any more really. I mean it didn't occur to me, not even once last night what happened four years ago in the same place, so it doesn't matter it's just I enjoyed every second on stage last night. It was a fantastic experience.”

In this time of recession so many concerts are seeing declining audiences, what was it like to look out and see a sold-out arena? Breath-taking right?
“The amount of concerts this year has been amazing and many thing's have like flopped big time in Finland, festivals and some big names in Hartwall with like 3000 people there, so we were really scared that people at these hard times will have money to come and that they're still interested.”

You're lucky to have such a dedicated fanbase!
“I've noticed the same thing. It's such a big thing for them, it's their passion and their way of life so recession doesn't mean shit.”

What's your secret? How do you prepare for a huge show like that?
“We were really relaxed and for the first time, maybe last time, on this tour we made an agreement, absolutely nobody before or after the show comes backstage. We kind of wanted it to be the moment between the band, so we were there for four hours before the show just chatting, thinking about the past, with a glass of wine, resting. Jukka was playing net poker, just you know kind of like calming down before the show, but everybody was so nervous. Annette was incredibly nervous, I was, I couldn't sleep the night before.”

Was it the biggest show of your career?
“Yeah, well it's the second biggest of our own shows. We did one show in Zurich, Switzerland, which was 13,000 but this was the second biggest of our own shows.”

So you're all chilling out together backstage? Do you feel like you have a tighter unit with Annette, I know Tarja often kept herself to herself.
“Very much yeah, I think this band is very much based on friendship. Annette though always needs to have her own room c'os she has her own things and eh, everybody smokes so she needs to have her own room in that sense as well, yeah we are friends.”

But that goes beyond the band right, you have the same crew, same managers – do they feel like extended band members?
“Absolutely, I mean the technicians are like I would say equally good friends to me as the band and the managers as well, so it's really one big happy family. We know each other, we hang out on our free time. In about three weeks me and three of our technicians will go to Australia for six weeks on a road trip.”

You're kidding – that's so cool – proper backpacking style?
“We're going to fly to Perth, rent there a camper van and we're going to drive to Canberra, it's about 4000km. So it's just how close we are with the technicians, they're my best buddies. This is something that I wanted to do for the past fifteen years, I love Australia to the bone and I just want to see the whole country in my free-time and this is the time to do it.”

You're gonna do the whole Crocodile Dundee stuff?
“Absolutely, I have to go to shark diving, you know, when you go into the cage and they lower you down. I love scuba-diving and I love going outdoors I love hiking all this kind of Indiana Jones stuff.”

Wow, I'm kinda jealous. So, then it's back into the studio right?
“Yeah, well first, in about two weeks I'm going to go to the Mediterranean to do a sailing trip with my dad, with my uncle. Kind of like a family thing, yeah the boys at sea that's it. It's going to be fun, in the Mediterranean, in Turkey and Greece and after that it's going to be a week and then we go to Australia for six weeks, after that it's almost Christmas then in January I'm going to go to Orlando to visit Donald and Goofy and Mickey and the pals again after that...”

You're kinda obsessed with Disney, right?
“Aww, I'm a fanatic. It's going to be my seventh time in Disney World. I have to do it once a year, it's like a fix for me, I just love this world and I'm a professional Disney collector of memorabilia as well. I have film cells yeah I have a lot of books, comics, art, just crap [laughs]. I have a whole room in my house just dedicated to Disney so it's nothing but Disney stuff there.”
[I look at him with a raised eyebrow – this is so not metal]
“I am a child, yeah!”

So... after the annual cartoon intake, then what?
“Yeah after that I start working on the next album 24/7 and we have already booked a rehearsal place. That's going to be happening in July/August next year then we'll have September off and we're going to enter the studio beginning of October so that's the plan.”

Last time around you went into the new album with so much up in the air, who would be the vocalist on it being the biggest hurdle you had to get over. Does it feel like a different process this time around? Are you happier about heading back to the writing desk?
“Much much happier, so much more light at the end of the tunnel. I have a very clear vision of the next album already, which feels really weird but I have all the song titles. I know how many songs there are going to be. I have four songs done already even though it's still pretty preliminary, the whole album, but I have a good idea what it's going to be like and uh, it's still going to be metal but I thinks it's going to be a bit brighter than 'Dark Passion Play'.”

Brighter – more pop songs? No more long epic symphonic compositions? They must be a sod to write.
“No, they come much easier for me. I remember 'Creek Mary's Blood', that's eight-and-a-half minutes, that came out in two hours. 'The Poet And The Pendulum' in just a couple of days, same thing with 'Ghost Love Score', they just come up naturally, I don't know. But then again a song like 'Nemo', I couldn't get it together. I worked for months and months and it's only four minutes.”

That's surprising!
“I guess. You need, to make a song which is only four minutes and make it interesting and timeless, that's the ultimate challenge. And ballads, also I think ballads are the hardest thing to do because to make a really genuinely touching slow song, which is not cheesy, that is incredibly hard. I think 'Walking In The Air' is a good example of a perfect ballad, that's beautiful, I think the best song ever written, by Howard Blake, and it's not a bit cheesy.”

Well it is, a little bit. Actually it was suprising last night when you played it live – we'd not heard that for years.
“That was Annette's choice, she really loves the song and she just asked 'is there anyway we could do 'Walking In The Air' acoustically in Hartwall?' and I thought that's a really good idea, lets give it a try. And we tried it out and it was the highlight of the show for me last night.”

The snow was a nice touch, it was certainly memorable.
“The silence and the tension, it was 'cos everybody was so quiet it was magical.”

You played for a good few hours, how do you keep up that level of intensity and energy throughout a big production show like that?
“I've always thought that the most important thing is to keep the setlist interesting for yourself cos then you enjoy playing and the energy goes to the audience but, I also think that, even though I don't enjoy playing 'Nemo' or 'Wishmaster' any more it's good to put them in because the majority of the people mostly still wants to hear it.”

What songs do you think go down the best?
“'Ghost Love Score' and 'Poet and The Pendulum'. People still like this, it's nice.”

Are there some of the older songs you would love to bring back to the setlist? Maybe some that wouldn't suit Annette so would never be played again?
“I think she could do almost anything. We won't do the old stuff because that's, that just wouldn't be right for some reason. We tried 'Elvenpath' in the rehearsals but it just wasn't right.”

Any of your personal favourites you'd like to dust off?
“'Gethsemane' is one of my favourites, I'd like to try that, or 'Stargazers', something from the 'Oceanborn' album.”

The one thing to say of the show last night was that it was pretty spectacular, snow, confetti, guest musicians, rain, actual rain – what does it take to pull a show like that together?
“Well, it was the last show we'll do [on this tour], it was like the ending of a two year tour so we just wanted to make it look really good as well and it cost so much that we ended up having nothing from the show itself but it was definitely worth it. It's not cheap but it just needed to be done and we have the best technicians in the world so they made it happen really smoothly.”

Will it be available for a DVD?
“They filmed the whole show so maybe we'll use some songs as a bonus track or something but there will not be a DVD released.”

So, the tour is ending, and so is the decade, if you can believe it. It's been a pretty insane ten years for Finnish metal – what do you think the secret is to the success of yourselves and other bands from the country; Bodom, HIM, Lordi, Apocalyptica etc?
“I couldn't give you a reason, I wish I could. I think this is the most often asked question that I've ever tried to answer in an interview and I never was able to give an answer. Why Finland? Why now? I don't know but what I know is that Finnish metal bands succeed because they're unreachable, there's madness. Think about Apocalyptica; three cellos and drums playing metal, it's insane. Finntroll totally insane and just fantastic band you know. Finnish bands just have this way of creating madness and they're creating new styles, not being prejudiced at all, they're just doing it their own way. People during these times, they seek for originality and something genuine and maybe that's what they find in Finnish rock 'n' roll bands. I really think so because these bands are not copycats of anything.”

Ten years on did you guys think you'd be headlining Hartwall like you did last night?
“I never thought it, none of us did, for anything like this to ever happen. I was studying biology in university and I was supposed to be a mad scientist. Jukka was doing computer studies in the university and Emppu was working in a carpet factory or whatever. Everybody was doing it just for fun and we had our own pace and then everything just got out of hand. We dropped out of school and started doing it 24/7 and this approach has had its advantages and disadvantages, disadvantages being that we have always been really naive but the plus side is that it's always been really sincere at the same time because we haven't had any expectations there has never been any posing. You know it's not like we try to achieve anything else than just the pleasure of playing and free booze.”

Do you ever get pissed off with the fame?
“Yeah, I actually do, you have to be a bit more careful here than in other countries with what you do. I can't piss in the street publicly. Well, you can always say it's a matter of choice of career but sometimes, it's like two weeks ago there was a three-page story about my house and they had actually hired a helicopter to fly over the house and photograph it. This kind of stuff bothers me a little bit, and they have the directions of how to get to the house.”

Is this something that has affected a lot of metal musicians in Finland?
“I think that HIM and the Rasmus maybe, there was a big story about Rasmus getting a new car yesterday. But no the media has been quite kind to us actually, sometimes it hurts a little bit, especially this house thing when they had actually come to my house to film it with directions and everything, so that's a bit too much.”

So, the show's over, there's a big end of tour party tonight, are you ready? You bailed on the aftershow last night, you wimp.
“Doing a show is like running the marathon, you know it's a really exciting experience but also I just don't have the strength and I was saving my strength for tonight, tonight I'm going to party big time. My Mum is going to be there.”

Will she be queen of the dancefloor?
“I've never seen her dance actually.”

Are you a party animal?
“Every now and then but not so much any more. I never ever go to festivals though, I hate festivals. I like to party but as long as I know the people and there's not too much noise. Being in a noise with a load of people I don't know, that's hell.”