It really doesn't seem like it has been that many years since I was sitting in the dark at home listening to Nightwish while playing the RPG Secret Of Mana. I remember thinking that I was the only person in the world to listen to this weird European band with some wild opera singer. Actually, Nightwish was the first band that really broke down my "no chicks in metal" mentality. Songs like The Riddler, Bare Grace Misery, and Ever Dream resonated strongly inside of me. Fast forward several years and Nightwish have gone from being that weird European band with some wild opera singer to an established institution in the metal scene. Instead of thinking I'm the only person in the world enjoying this band I'm in a packed club with barely any breathing room while everyone around me is going insane for the four dudes and one girl on stage.
Seemingly overshadowing the Stratovarius soap opera of 2003, former singer Tarja Turenen has been ousted and the new smiling face of Annette Olzon has been included in the Nightwish ranks. How she came into the band and all the other drama surrounding that situation has been discussed to death. When I sat down and interviewed Marco I made a valiant attempt at an in depth interview on both the Nightwish side and his personal history.
Since I’m impatient and can’t wait, what exactly do you guys have planned for tonight and tomorrow with John Two Hawks?
Not that much but we will be doing Creek Mary’s Blood seeing as he performed on it from the album Once. There really isn’t anything else but it is nice to have him here. It brings a real authenticity to the song having the real live guy there playing his flute, singing, and doing his narration.
On Dark Passion Play you have much more of a role vocally in the band. How did this come about? Is it because some of the material is angrier and darker? Perhaps it is because since the music was in the can so for long your demo vocal arrangements just stayed?
I guess it’s because all of those things. First of all there’s the lyrical side which Tuomas writes and when doing so he found out that there were parts where I would fit in more. The album is long, over seventy five minutes, so there is more variety, more space for me to do stuff. I did the demo vocals and yes, some of that ended up on the album. For Master Passion Greed at first it was thought that maybe the new singer could do some background vocals or something. I had a conversation with Tuomas where he figured out that it probably wouldn’t be fair to give that kind of heritage to somebody who is totally innocent of the situation which it deals with. It was then decided that it would be better if I did the whole song.
Dark Passion Play also contains songs which you wrote in their entirety for the first time such as The Islander. How did this increased writing output come about?
Well, it really isn’t exactly the first time. I did write Higher Than Hope, the music for that one off of Once. For Century Child I wrote quite a long piece for the whole start, riff, verses, and chorus for the first part of… what the hell was that again…? Beauty Of The Beast of course. Yeah, this tends to happen when you don’t play something for along time. The Islander was something that I began with just messing around at home. I found out this nice riff on the acoustic and then wrote a verse. After that I began thinking that this might make a good song if I came up with a chorus, which I did. Then I demoed this thing and gave it to Tuomas who listened to it and said it was definitely going on the album. He then went and wrote some proper lyrics for the song.
While not your first tour, this is one Nightwish’s few tours over here. What is it like playing on a scale like this for a full tour as opposed to the big festivals and theaters you’re used to?
Well, it’s different. But I don’t mind playing clubs, with clubs you get a lot more of a tense atmosphere. You get so close to people, you can smell the sweat, and the beer, and I like that feeling quite a lot. Of course when you play a festival like Wacken Open Air for forty thousand people and have them going like they’re in the palm of your hand you get an enormous sense of strength from that, but there’s no intimacy anymore.
Dark Passion Play has many folk elements not heard from Nightwish since the Oceanborn Days. Songs like Last Of The Wilds, The Islander, and even a little bit of Sahara have these parts in them. What brought these back?
I guess it was just by accident. We write stuff that we want to write, we don’t make conscious decisions on where to take things. Tuomas wrote the Sahara song so it has that oriental touch. But we did have that before on The Siren from Once. As for The Islander, I’ve always like Celtic stuff and Irish folk music. My father, when I was a kid, he used to have these Irish and Scottish folk song albums which I always listened to. At one point we both got hooked on Jethro Tull after seeing a live show on TV. I have these roots and I guess these roots show themselves in The Islander. Last Of The Wilds, once again Tuomas wrote it and he likes these things too, Celtic folklore and stuff. It was just a natural thing to have, we just ended up writing songs like this at the same time.
Nightwish’s popularity is at a peak right now. With this success comes the realization that illegal music downloading deeply affects your music. What are your thoughts on illegal downloading, and what thoughts or opinions do you have on what record labels should do in order to embrace this new era?
We’ve got some computer geeks in the crew so what we’re going to do is collapse the internet tomorrow. Seriously, I do consider it to be a theft. Its like to go out and steal someone’s mental product. I don’t like it but I don’t have a very good idea of what we should do, or even could do. One of the best things in this case is that you can track down people which governments and companies are really trying hard to do. To be able to shut down that kind of thing totally is that we would lose the freedom of it. I guess the only thing I can really say on this is that people should just really be more responsible with what they do.
This question kind of has a sociological slant to it. When you were growing up a metalhead did you ever feel alienated or different form the rest of your peers?
For sure. When I was a kid in school there was a period of time in Finland where everybody was listening to punk music. Nobody was listening to heavy metal at all. I was alienated from all the other kids and everything and even though I did have some friends that I started a band with, I felt like I was an outsider. There was nothing much I guess I could do but take my “vengeance” on them this way (laughs).
At what point when growing up did you realize that playing music was going to be your pursuit in life?
Pretty early on. I started playing guitar by the time I was eleven, just basic rock stuff with my father’s acoustic at home. Almost immediately after that I started playing bass. I started singing also because in my first band we kind of drew straws to see who would sing and nobody had the guts to do it so I had to try.
You’ve been involved in a multitude of other projects. Tarot, which is your other main band, as well as providing bass for a couple of Sinergy albums in the past. As a musician today in 2007 do you feel that it is possible to start in one band and stay with them as opposed to providing session work for many artists to get your name out there?
Yeah, for sure. Now with Nightwish the situation is that, we all get our income from this band. If I wanted to I could just concentrate on this. I have this problem though. I write quite a lot of music and lyrics and I have to have an output for that. So that means I will always have another band or a side project going on at the same time. I have had to say no for quite a few things lately because they would have taken up most of my time. Occasionally I like to do some other work such as two of the last Amorphis albums. I’ve been producing vocals for the guys for those two. It’s nice work too because I like the music and I like the guys. They’re kind of a bit older, old school guys like me. It’s a really relaxed situation where I can do this so when I do have the time I am very glad to do it.
At the end of the day what is your least favorite aspect of dealing with the business side of Nightwish or even with the music industry in general?
The least favorite thing I can think of is going over contracts. That is something that you have to think of so many aspects all at the same time. You have to look at it from the company’s side and also your side too and then decide if you’re going to be screwed or not. You make a whole lot of compromises. That is something that I really would prefer to do without but its just so necessary that you will end up having to do so.
Speaking of the business side of things, Nightwish is signed to Nuclear Blast worldwide with the exception of the US where you are on Roadrunner Records. How did the US deal with Roadrunner come about?
There’s one guy at Roadrunner, Mike Gitter, who has been into the band for a long time and he’s wanted to get us over on the label. He’s pretty much responsible for talking to his people there at the company and getting us over and trying us out. We really tried to do things right with Once already. But then of course everybody knows about the situation with the former vocalist and her husband / manager and everything and that they managed to torpedo at least two of the tours we tried to get here [in the US]. Those were the last straws which made us decide that, “Hey, we need to let these people go,” because they became a huge hindrance there.
Now with Roadrunner on your side what are the benefits of being backed by a large label in terms of touring, promotions, and well, everything?
I think that the guys there at Roadrunner have the know how on building this band in the States. I really hope that they will use it. They already have done some really great things. The rate at which Dark Passion Play started selling was tripled or even quadrupled compared to Once. So that right there is one aspect where the promotion is definitely working for us. They have bands like Slipknot and Nickelback and Slipknot definitely is not something that is mainstream and they still do well. I trust the guys have the right “arsenal” to do good things for us.
What do you do to stay sane when you get your tour itinerary and basically go, “Yep, this is going to be my life planned out for the next one and a half years?” Do you break it down to smaller increments or just totally embrace the touring lifestyle?
You do break it down a little bit. We’re going to be five weeks in the States, then going home for a week, then heading out to Scandinavia, then a couple of weeks off for Christmas followed by some more shows and then we go off to Japan, China, and Australia and play there, come home for a week off. That way you break it down a little bit and get in touch with your wife and kids. While you’re away you just have to find things to do. I have a ton of books with me and also a handheld Nintendo DS. We also have a lot of movies, DVD’s and the cd player. And when all that gets boring you just drink (laughs).
What has been the best story you’ve heard from a Nightwish fan around the world? How your music has touched their lives or inspired them to pick up an instrument and go off and do their own thing?
I think the story of Tuomas and Marc Brueland was the most touching story. To relate to the music during his life and where it was going and to have it give him that strength. We met the mom and daughter Erin this time around. So yeah, that would be the most touching way in how this band has made an impact on somebody’s life or death so to speak.
At what point did you notice that Nightwish’s musical direction was going from the operatic style and moving towards a more a traditional / classical style of singing?
I think it started on Wishmaster when I wasn’t even in the band. There are quite a lot of songs there where Tarja used a lot more softer, popish approach to the vocals than the previous one. I think it started from there and just went on to Century Child and Once where we used it more and more. With the new album it wasn’t like an immediate decision to have a singer from a pop rock side. In the ad which we put on the webpage that we are looking for a singer but we are looking for a singer from anywhere. We would take on all newcomers and just see who has the personality and the voice. It could have been a classical singer, it could be rock, or it could be pop, just impress us. And this is the way it turned out that Annette was in our collective opinion the very best of the bunch.
Has there every been a point in your musical journey from beginning way back when to now where nothing seemed to go right and you seriously thought about packing it in?
There was. With the Tarot guys I think it was in 97/98 when we did the Glory Of Nothing album. The album title kind of reflects how we felt. We were banging our heads against the wall for a long time and then again like before, the album gets really good reviews but had no distribution outside Finland. The Japanese distribution was there but about two weeks before we were going to get royalties they informed us that the company was going bankrupt. So there goes that deal. I had some pretty bad things going on in my personal life at the time too. There was bad human relationships, I lost a home and everything. I went through a couple of years of really bad times and in that time we didn’t do anything with the band. When I got over that I really started thinking and figured it out. I could just do this for fun and maybe play a couple of shows here and there but get a serious job like a record company desk job. But that didn’t happen because these guys (Nightwish) called me and asked me if I wanted a job.
Do you remember the day where you realized that you were going to be one of the few people out there that would make a living off playing music?
It was sometime after making Century Child. I already knew that Nightwish was getting big when I toured with them when I was playing in Sinergy in 2000. I saw how big they were becoming on the European side. I wasn’t quite ready for the big wheel things that were going on and then after Century Child they just got bigger, and after Once it got even more bigger. By the time we were touring for Century Child and started getting income from the shows and royalties started piling up that I thought, “Ok, you can actually live off this. You don’t have to have a side job.” At the time I had a day job as a sound engineer at this place where they used to have theater shows and bands and that job ended so I was in a musician’s union getting unemployment money. I still kept that going for some while because I thought that it was going to be my fall back when there was a month without shows or anything. I kind of figured after a few months that I didn’t need to do that anymore because compared to what the band was bringing in it wasn’t that much. I also thought it was a bit unfair because it is a musician’s union and there are people who have been laid off from orchestras or whatever who would need the money more than me at the time.
With the internet now and the explosion of online music video viewing with sites like YouTube, do you feel any nervousness at all knowing that any show you play whether good or bad, has the possibility to wind up on the internet for millions to view?
I don’t feel too scared about it because its just a fact of life nowadays that you have to deal with. If you’re watching a band on a bad day well, it’s going to suck. If it’s a good day it won’t. It’s just something that people will be able to see. Usually though the sound quality on these sites are not that good so it’s not really fair to go off and say that “oh this band is total crap” when it’s just the sound that is crap. Bands have sucked on stage for decades already, albums are almost always better. That’s why you’re in the studio to lay down the absolute best that you can do. It just doesn’t work that way live all the time. Sometimes you surpass yourself live than what you did in the studio but that is very rare for any band.
In fantasy land what would be your dream gear setup?
Fantasy land of gear… I don’t know really, I seem to be able to deal with a lot of different equipment. The most important thing for me are the basses that I have. I have a Warwick Infinity bass that I love. I have a newer Warwick Vampire at home which I didn’t bring with me because I couldn’t find the right role for it in the live setting. That has a thicker, lower bottom end so I think I’ll be using that one for the slower [songs] later on.
What advice would you give someone that’s sitting at home right now listening to Century Child or Wishmaster with a six string and a dream?
Take off the ear phones and start playing that guitar! You have to have persistence and a vision. Like a vision of a personal style that you develop by playing and playing. My life story is that I was persistent. I wasn’t too young when Nightwish hired me, I was thirty five. It had been a long road up to that point of banging my head against a wall. I’m just thankful that the situation came up and I am here now doing what I know best, doing what I love, and that’s it.
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