Oe @pona THE OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY MAPE OLLILAOnee Tpon a THE OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY 1996-2006 MAPE OLLILA Translated by Olga Pohjola PaDaggect Published by Deggael Communications Ltd. ‘Torpinkyli, Finland Second printing, January 2008 -www.deggaelcom.net deggacl@ deggaclcom.net Editor: Johnny Veil Production manager: Abdul Ganabullah Proof editors: Scott Broderick, George Lewis Graphic design: Tex Hiinninen, Bunny Duck Grafiks “@dg~ Front cover photo: Toni Harkénen Back cover photo: Hikon Grav Printed in Tammer-paino, Tampere, Finland ISBN 978-952-99749-2"4 Copyright © by Mape Ollila 2007 English translation copyright © by Deggael Communications 2007 llrightsreserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any informa- tion storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages ina critical article or review to be printed in a magazine, newspaper, or electronically transmitted on radio or television.Contents Acknowledgements Foreword Introduction 1.”1 Was Weak Yet Not Unsiessep” 2, ASSEMBLING THE PuzzLE 3. On To Tue Exvenratn 4. Pomp Ann Circumstance 5. Tae Upwarp Sprrat 6. Tue Farerut Tour 7. Tue "Nicut Owt Broapcast” (Anp Orner Acts Or Ranpom Lunacy) 8. CHANGES g. Harvest In Tur Vattey Or Sorrow ro. CaLm Berore Tue Storm ur. THE Finat BREAKTHROUGH 12. Deap End 13. Tue Countpown Brcins 14. Enp Or An Era 15. THE Journey Continugs List of Shows Nightwish Collector’s Guide Hospitality Rider 2005 Sound Tech Rider for Nightwish 15t 167 189 215 249 263 299 304 314 326 327ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS exactly what happened in the office of the newly established King Foo Entertainment Ltd. in the fall of 2002. I would have never even thought about writing a book if Nightwish manager Ewo Pohjola hadn't talked me into S OMETIMES YoU JUST open your mouth in the wrong place. That is it, I have sometimes cursed Mr. Pohjola to the depths of hell and sometimes thanked the higher beings for the fact that he kick-started the project, because writing this book has been a trip I never imagined I would experience ~ and one that I never intend to experience again. I am forever grateful to Ewo for taking the initiative and for all the help he has given me along the way. So here itis. If I were to say that the book came easy I would be the world’s biggest liar Numerous people have helped me in countless ways with the writing of &: Hirst and foremost, I want to thank my interviewees: Tarja Turunen, , Jukka Nevalainen, Emppu Vuorinen, Marco Hietala, a Hirvonen, Kirsti Renita Pentti adTiefenbach, Pip Williams, Petteri Kumpulainen, Georgene Brueland, Erin Brueland, Kalevi Olli, Timo Rautiainen, Jouni Hynynen, Tony Kakko, Mikko Karmila, Lenny Lindfors, and Jarmo Lautamaki. I naturally conducted many additional interviews, but the material did not fit into the book. A thank you just the same to Sakari Hietala, Susanna Wilen, Daniela Schweiger, Antti Toiviainen, and Eric Brueland. I want to thank Kristiina Sarasti, the editor of the Finnish edition, who shaped my cluttered scribbling into an epic, and graphic designer Eliza Karma- salo, who made it so pleasing to look at. A thank you to Antti Korpinen for his help in transcribing the interview tapes, and to Jone Nikula for his foreword. It was an honor. also want to extend my gratitude to Tuula Salminen, Janne Peltonen, and ‘Tuula Rossi, who had the unfortunate task of reading my brutally bad text sam- ples while the book was still very much incomplete. For the text and photo material that was found in all kinds of places, and for the enlightening comments, I thank Nelli Ahvenlahti, Timo Isoaho, Hakon Gray, Jan Carlsson, Micke Johansson, Kari Helenius, Ville Kauhanen, Jarmo Ka- tila, Keijo Lehikoinen, and Johanna Jarventaus. A big thank you to my beloved Riitta, who could handle staring at the back of my chair for months on end. I could not have managed without you. And thanks to Liitto. Honkaliitto takes care of business. ‘And for those that I failed to mention: thank you for your help. I will never forget you. This book is dedicated to Kurt Johannes Ollila and Demi. I miss you terribly. Espoo, March 10%, 2006 Mare OuttaFOREWORD Helsinki Ice Hall, December 2004 IGHTWISH HAVE MANAGED tosell out the Ice Hall as the first Finn mn ish band of their generation. It is the same venue where I once saw Iron Maiden, Dio, Metallica, and countless other bands as a little kid ~ bands that are responsible for my life turning out the way it did: stuck in the Rock business. Electricity is in the air. The managers pace around at the side of the stage. Kauhanen, with his dry sense of humor, comments to everyone who passes his way, and Pommi-Markku is busy checking the wires on stage. The rest of the crew have done their duties and are mostly killing time. The calm movements and smooth operation reveal that even though the Ice Hall show marks their official conquest of Helsinki, the band and their crew are at home in the vast surroundings. ‘As the band finally takes the stage, the expectant atmosphere changes to euphoria. With indisputable sovereignty and authority, they play a hit parade, whipping the audience into a frenzy, both on the floor and in the seats. Hair is flying and sweat is flowing as the hall full of fans celebrates the Kitee-born Metal band’s visit to the capital city. Tuomas pounds his keyboards and the rest of thegroup conjure up a heavy, melodic wall of sound with their precise yet relaxed playing. On top of it all, Tarja ~ a tall, confident, majestic character - commands the show. When you look at their awesome stage performance you cannot help but admire the band. They have gone through quite an evolution in the past eight years. Lepakko, 1997 I HAVE WoRKED as a music editor specializing in Heavy Metal at Helsinki’s Radio City for over eight years. I'm becoming quite cynical about the genre. The Nineties are interesting in the sense that there are a great number of subgenres and plenty of bands. The situation is not easy for the radio, however, as you have to successfully sell the program to the audience time and again, after each and every song. Metallica release a poor album every five years, and it seems like new, interesting bands that could take Metal to the new millennium are nowhere to be found. Obviously, there’s a new Metal generation on its way, but for the moment, any attempt to guess its future leaders is just a shot in the dark. European and American scenes are differentiated in a new way. British Metal has lost its domi- nance and the focus has shifted to Finland and other parts of Scandinavia, and while Europe strongly draws on the local traditions in different parts of the con- tinent, an urban hybrid of Rap and Metal is being developed in America. There are considerable differences between the continents even in terminology: Death Metal, Black Metal, Alternative Metal and Melodic Metal mean completely dif- ferent things on the two sides of the Atlantic. Some interesting Metal trends are evident, but a major, creative, genuinely inventive group that would have the power to raise one subgenre over others is nowhere to be found. The weekly promo package from Spinefarm Records arrives and I open the envelope with no special expectations. Usually, I divide the CDs into those I will listen to, those I will listen to shortly, and those I will maybe listen to in the distant future. Included in the package is the Nightwish debut. I immediately listen the whole album. . Although I couldn't predict that this band would sell millions at the start of the arst century, I am nevertheless impressed. Abounding in intensive sensitivity, the dramatic and melodic music does not always suit Tarja’s operatic singing, but when the pieces click together, there is almost ethereal enchantment evident. Listening to the songs, I chuckle at the press photos. The pictures of scraggy teenage guys and a girl in a Marimekko shirt lurking in the forest suggest a school biclogy class on a field trip, not a Heavy Metal band. 10However, in all their innocent sincerity, the sound and image of the band do work. Unlike most foreign atmospheric Metal groups, Nightwish seem to follow no rules, and that is appealing. The band is still a green fruit but one that might soon ripen. As years go by, the band’s sound thickens and the group grows more confi- dent. The press photos of Snow White and the seven dwarves are still horrible, but the band’s expressiveness and genius makes up for the shortcomings of their image. What started as a mere project appears to be welding together stronger and stronger. Tuomas writes better songs for Tarja (who sings them better), and the whole concept of the band begins to take form in the eyes of an ever widen- ing audience. Success in Finland and abroad grows after each album and tour. The boys’ hair grows and Tarja finds clothes in which she no longer looks like a ‘Tyrolean waitress. As form and content meet, the sky is the limit. Helsinki, February 2006 Ir’s Now BEEN A FEW months since Nightwish concluded their 18-month world tour in the Hartwall Arena and dismissed their singer Tarja Turunen. The situation has been widely commented on in the Finnish Broadcasting Compa- ny’s main evening news and in the tabloids. The subject was even brought up in an interview with the prime minister. It’s not my business as the author of this foreword — or as a fan of the band ~ to comment on the absurd proportions of the media circus, but I think that one thing is obvious: if the line-up changes in Nightwish made the FBC main news headlines, we can stop speculating about which Finnish band truly took Metal to the new millennium. As deplorable as the situation has been for the band, it has proven their status as Finland’s bona fide Metal messiahs. Nightwish is Tuomas Holopainen’s band and his life’s work. One of the most talented Rock composers of his generation, his actions decide how the band sounds on stage and in the studio — and so be it. When I sat in my cramped little booth, listening to the album that was refined from Nightwish’s first demo and snickering at the innocent looking goody-goodies in the promo picture, Tuomas already had the next Nightwish album playing in his head. And what a string of albums it has turned out to be. I want to thank Nightwish for the years past and wish them a brave future. Thave no doubt that they have only just begun to surprise us. Jone Nikula IrINTRODUCTION hands on each other's shoulders and concentrate together ~ a ritual they've grown accustomed to in recent years. Dressed in a suit jacket and shirt, guitarist Emppu Vuorinen hugs the fu-stricken vocalist Tarja Turunen whose husband and manager, Marcelo Cabuli, keeps frantically straightening the hems of her yellow costume. 11, 000 fans are screaming their lungs out and making waves behind the heavy, black curtain. They have been doing that since the supporting band Sonata Arctica from Kemi, Finland, finished their set. Today, October 21, 2005, Night- wish from Kitee complete their year and a half long world tour in Helsinki’s Hartwall Arena, in the biggest indoor concert they have ever played in Finland. This show will end an era in the history of the band. The mood is both wistful and relieved. The concert will be filmed and later released as a DVD entitled End ofan Era. The show will be followed by a year-long break during which the band members can unwind and concentrate on their families, solo projects and private lives for the first time since Nightwish rocketed to fame in 1998. IGHTWISH KEYBOARDIST Tuomas Holopainen tilts his cowboy hat and hits his cigarette. The band mémbers gather in a circle, put their BIn Germany, for instance, Nightwish have performed to audiences this big for a long time, but the Hartwall concert still made history even before it started, as no other Finnish group has been able to sell out the arena as fast as Night- wish. The 11, 000 tickets were gone in 65 minutes, and they were not even sold abroad. On their way to Hartwall Arena, Nightwish toured 4 countries, sold al- most 3 million albums and experienced the joy and pain this book is all about. But before we start, it is time to focus on the concert itself. The lights go out. The first to step on the dark stage is drummer Jukka Nevalainen. The rushing noise of the arena filled with Metal fans, Goth girls, businessmen, kids, and your ordinary joes and janes builds into a roar. In their native country, Nightwish is mainstream music, a phenomenon that brings all kinds of people together, and it definitely shows in the audience. ‘Tuomas, Emppu and bassist Marco Hietala march onto the stage, and we hear a whisper on the backing tape: “Once I had a dream, and this is it...”. The first notes of “Dark Chest of Wonders” burst in the air and the first bombs ex- plode at the 25-second mark. Tarja walks to the center of the stage and starts singing one minute into the song. A slight stuffiness can be heard in her voice, but the full house takes no notice. The audience rises to their feet and the people on the floor go mad. Tarja possesses the skill to make crowds go crazy with a single wave of her hand. Up next are the fierce “Planet Hell” with its heavy load of pyrotechnics, “Ever Dream” and “The Kinslayer” from the older albums, and “The Phantom of the Opera” from Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s musical. Before “The Siren”, Tarja changes into a dark outfit. A surging sea heaves across the LED screen designed by digital artist Mikko Pitkdnen. The background changes into a starry sky fa~ miliar from the new compilation album's cover, and the band starts the peaceful ballad “Sleeping Sun”. Meanwhile, Tarja has changed her outfit again: she is now wearing a white dress with a long train. Assisted by Marcelo, Tarja exits to rest in a small dressing cabin by the stage, while the guys perform the Pink Floyd cover “High Hopes” with Marco singing. During “Bless the Child”, the video hit from their album Century Child, the stage is once more engulfed by fire and explosions as Tarja returns to command atten- tion in a yellow and black Gothic outfit with high heels. One of the best-known songs of the band, “Wishmaster” gets the audience truly revved up. The bombs and flames seem to burn out most of the oxygen in the air. The furious “Slaying the Dreamer” hammers the audience even harder, reminding that even if Nightwish is a mainstream favorite, it is also a gloomy Metal band that discharges a lot of hate and fury in its music. 4‘As the rest of the band leaves the stage, Tarja sings the emotional “Kuolema tekee taiteilijan”, accompanied only by the backing tape. The song might be the most melancholic the band has ever written, and it sounds almost like their own obituary. The sense of finality is further reinforced by the view of the empty stage before the next song starts. It is their biggest hit, “Nemo”. The keyboard intro to “Nemo” makes the hall explode. The roar of the au- dience forces its way through earplugs and pierces the eardrums. An arena full of people sing together with Tarja through the entire song but quiet down for the next one — the band’s stunning tour de force, the ten-minute long “Ghost Love Score”. Burning candles and fragments of poems dance on the giant screen. ‘The backing sounds of majestic choirs and thundering classical orchestra fill the arena, and Tarja’s graceful dance enchants even the most self-possessed spectator. Halfway through the song, the band withdraws behind the curtain and lighting technician Tommi Stolt has a field day with his staggering arsenal. As the band returns to the stage at the end of this strongly classical work, confetti rockets from the sides of the stage, filling the air with colorful paper rain and blocking the band from view. For the first time ever, Lakota Indian John Two-Hawks gets on stage with Nightwish and performs his shamanistic, hypnotic dance and flute solo, after which he and the band join together for the world live premiere of “Creek Mary's Blood”. The band then plays Gary Moore’s “Over the Hills and Far Away’ one more time — even though Tuomas had previously sworn they would not. The Night- wish version of the song has become so familiar to the Finns that many think it is actually a Nightwish original. The Hartwall show, like so many other gigs on the tour, concludes with the Metal disco beat of “Wish I Had an Angel”, and the bombs go off all around the arena. After treating their countrymen to a world class show, the band takes a bow for the one hundred and eighth time — for the very last time on the Once world tour, Tuomas Holopainen’s agonized expression speaks more than a thousand words. Something will go down right after the show, something that the band has known would happen since February of 2005. Tarja Turunen, the singer who has come to be known around the world as the face and voice of Nightwish, will be dismissed from the band. Come hell or high water, after tonight, Tarja will no longer be performing with Nightwish. After the show, the band hugs each other backstage for the last time and Tarja is handed the letter that will later be read practically nationwide. She is advised not to open it until the next day. The letter says: 5Dear Tanya, It’s time to choose whether the story of Nightwish ends here or whether it will still continue an undetermined period of time, We've been working with this creation for 9 years and we are not ready to give up yet. Nightwish is a way of life, something to live Sor, and we're certain we can’t let it go. Equally certain is the fact that we cannot go on with you and Marcelo any longer. During the last year something sad happened, which I've been going over in my head every single day, morning and night. Your attitude and behavior don't go with Night- wish anymore. There are characteristics I would never have believed to see in my old dear friend, People who don't talk with each other for a year do not belong in the same band. We are involved in an industry where the business-side of things is a necessary evil and something to worry about all the time. We are also a band which has always done music from the heart, because of friendship and the music itself: The mental sat- isfaction should akways be more important than money! Nightwish is a band, it’s an emotion. To you, unfortunately, business, money, and things that have nothing to do with those emotions have become much more important. You feel that you have sacrificed ‘yourself and your musical career for Nightwish, rather than thinking what it has given to you, This attitude was clearly shown to me in the two things you said to me in an airplane in Toronto: ‘Tdon't need Nightwish anymore’, and “Remember, Tuomas, that I could leave this band at any time, giving you only one day’ warning in advance.” I can't simply write any more songs for you to sing. You have said yourself that you are merely a “guest musician” in Nightwish. Now that visit ends and we will continue Nightwish with a new female vocalist. We're sure this is an equally big relief to you as it is for us. We have all been feeling bad long enough. You told us that no matter what, the next Nightwish album will be your last one, However, the rest of us want to continue as long as the fire burns. So there’s no sense in doing that next album with you, either. The four of us have been going over this situation countless times and we have realized that this is the thing we want to do in life. It’s all we can do. In December 2004, in Germany, you said that you will never tour again for more than two weeks at a time. You also said that we can forget about U.S. and Australia because the fees and the sizes of venues are too small. In interviews I've mentioned that if Tarja leaves, that would be the end of the band. understand that people will think this way. Nightwish is, however, a scenery of my soul and I'm not ready to let go because of one person. A person who wants to focus 16her creativity to somewhere else, a person whose values don't match mine, We were never bothered by the fact that you didn't participate in writing/arrang- ing songs, you never in 9 years came to rehearse the songs with us before going to the studio, Not the fact that while on tour you always wanted to fly, separately from us with your busband. Not the fact that you are an undisputable front image of the band. We accepted and felt OK about everything except greed, underestimating the fans, und breaking promises. It was agreed by the five of us that Nightwish would be the priority in everything that we do during 2004-2005, Still so many things were more important to you. The ultimate example being the already sold-out show in Oslo, which you wanted to cancel because you needed to rehearse for your solo concerts, meet friends und go to the movies, Those were the words Marcelo used in an e-mail explaining the cancellation. This being just one example of so many. I couldn't think of a worse way of being selfish and dismissing our fans. Nightwish is a way of life and a job with many obligations. To each other and to the fans. With you we can’t take care of those duties anymore. Deep within we don't know which one of you drove us to this point. Somehow Marcelo has changed you from the lovely girl you were into a diva, who doesn't think or act the way she used to. You are too sure of your irreplaceableness and status. Its obvious that you blame your stress and misery on us four. And you think we don't respect or listen to you. Believe us; we have always had the uppermost respect towards you as a wonderful vocalist and as a friend. And very often during the past couple of years the plans were made according to your decisions only. You were always the only one who wanted more money from the shows. This ‘compensation and more money from everything” attitude is the fact that we are most disappointed of! We wish that from now on you will listen to your heart instead of Marcelo. Cul- tural differences combined with greed, opportunism and love is a dangerous combina- tion, Do not wither yourself. This decision is not something we are especially proud of but you gave us no choice. The gap between us is too wide. And the decision is made by us four unanimously. We are beyond the point where things could be settled by talking. All the best for your life and career, Tuomas Emppu Jukka Marco Ps. This is an open letter for everybody. 17On October 23, the letter was published on the band’s official web site and the media hype was on. What on earth had happened? Nightwish had never talked much about their troubles in public before, and their success had not shown the smallest sign of fading. On the contrary: the popularity of Nightwish had increased after each new album and spread to every corner of the world where Western Pop music can be heard. One of the four biggest supranational companies in the music world, Uni- versal Music, releases the group's albums practically everywhere in the industrial- ized world. Additionally, the band has separate record deals in Finland, Germany, the USA, and Japan. Nightwish albums have sold almost three million copies and their merchandising is a business worth hundreds of thousands of euros. The products range from the usual clothing articles, flags and posters to condoms, Nightwish beer, and even a custom line of soapstone stereo speakers. Like every pioneer of its genre, Nightwish have plenty of copycats around the world. From more established bands like Austria's Edenbridge and Visions of Atlantis to South Korea's Seraphim, numerous bands name Nightwish as their inspiration, Countless acts currently employ the combination of operatic vocals and melodic Heavy Metal that Nightwish made famous. There are also several Nightwish cover bands: Shades of Candles, Dark Sin, TheLastWish, and Silent Lagoon from Italy, Kinslayer and Wishmaster from Canada, Simbelmyne and Points of Light from Serbia, Nightwish Revival from the Czech Republic, El- venpath from Brazil, and Twilight Symphony from Hungary. One can find Nightwish fans in all parts of the globe. They come in all ages, sizes and colors, from Goths to connoisseurs of opera, from Metal fans in their leather and studs to children who enjoy the fantasy lyrics — and to people who just listen to Top 40. Nightwish is a phenomenon the likes of which has not been seen in the history of Finnish popular music since the hysteria around the teen band Dingo during the 1980s. But whatis it in Nightwish’s fantasy Metal that fascinates people all over the world? And what led to the dramatic parting of ways after the Hartwall Arena show? To find the answers to these questions, we must return to the beginning of the story. Let us start with the heart, brain and soul of Nightwish, Tuomas Holopainen. 18I. “9 was weak get not unblessed” —— vomas Lauri Jonannes Holopainen was born on December 25, 1976, with “a lucky cap” — a piece of fetal membrane — on his head, as his father Pentti tells us. At the age of only seven months, Tuomas was trusted in the care of a nanny, but the lighthearted boy just kept on smiling. The nanny was to play a considerable part in Tuomas’ life during the years the family lived in Pirttilé, Kiteenlahti, and Tuomas’ father thinks that “Granny Tyyne’s” intriguing stories must have had a lot to do with the development of the boy's amiable character and colorful imagination. Obviously, the child’s sympathetic parents have greatly influenced his personality as well. Tuomas, who at the time called himself “Too”, remembers his childhood as blissful. “Td like to be able to explain myself one day how tremendously much the first 13 years of my life meant to me. When I close my eyes, I can still think about some of those childhood Christmases, my childhood home, and all the lit- tle details about different occasions. I still get an incredible kick out of that. Cold shivers. That’s what my paradise looks like. When I die, I want to go there, return to those times. I have no words — and apparently not even music ~ to describe how much my childhood meant to me and how happy it was.” A writing exercise from 1985, complete with a self-portrait, speaks its own language about Tuomas’ happy childhood: 191AM Tuomas Holopainen. Tt is fun to be AT HOME. MY FRIENDS are in Kiteenlahti. SCHOOL is fun. I FEEL good feelings. MY PARENTS are happy people. ILIKE school. IDON'T LIKE to be raised. ILIKE TO DO crossword puzzles. I'M ANNOYED BY vaccinations. (From the Temperance League’s program for teaching of manners [!]) ‘Tuomas learned to read at quite an early age. His mother, teacher Kirsti Nortia~Holopainen, knew of a new way of teaching a child to recognize letters according to their phonetic characteristics — “:” is growled “rrr”, “s” hissed like a snake. Tuomas learned the names of all letters before he was two years old, and one of his favorite games was playing with plastic building blocks that had letters on them. Tuomas soon became interested in billboards and signs and loved to spell them out: not “bee-ey-ihn-kay”, but “b-a-n-k”. “I don’t know ifa person can remember that far back, but I think I do— I remember sitting on a hospital table as a 2-year-old with a cast on my leg. I had fallen and broken my leg. Mom says I read the word ‘X-ray’ from the wall, and the nurse was completely dumbfounded, like what on earth did that child just say!” After having learned to read Tuomas found the most faithful of friends in Aku Ankka - Donald Duck — who still enjoys incredible popularity in Finland with his own weekly comic book. “I guess I've had a subscription to Adu Ankka in my own name since 1979. I remember the games I played as a child consisted of two things: I either read my Aku Ankka comics or formed words with plastic letters.” Tuomas interest in the world of Walt Disney has marked his whole life. “I'm really deep into Disney's world, All the movies and Tolkien books take second place. I really can't say why it’s Disney. It’s just one of those questions — like, why is there a God, or is there. Disney is Disney. Ifas a 7-year-old Id had to say who my best friends were, I would have named my classmate Arjo, Kari Rouvinen, Huey, Dewey and Louie, and Frodo. They were all equally important and every bit as real to me. This Disney thing still hasn’t lost its charm. I still feel the same way about it as when I was seven. I still read Alu Ankka every day when I'm at home, and I still think that Wednesday — when a new issue hits the mailbox — is 20the best day of the week. Disney really is the shortest escape route from reality.” Telling a lot about Tuomas’ faithfulness to Disney is the fact that as he later put Nightwish together, his dream was that the band would someday be men- tioned in Aku Ankka, perhaps as something like “Daria Duckling and Nightcap”, uw the Finnish comic book is famous for its witty translations. Tuomas’ desire to escape reality through comics and later through music did not stem from sadness. On the contrary, Tuomas had a very protected childhood and he didn't really have to deal with the unpleasant things in life. Probably the most difficult episode was the move away from Pirttila to Potoskavaara, where the family still lives. Nowadays, Tuomas is very close to his parents, his sister Susanna and his brother Petri. “Our age difference is nine years, so it wasn't until later that we became close friends”, Petri reflects. “Tuomas was always a really good-natured, loving child, always smiling behind his angel curls. He’s always been a really emotional person, and things like Christmas with all its traditions have always meant a lot to him. Tuomas faithfully built the Christmas manger every year, and cutting the Christmas tree in our own forest was always an important ritual to him.” Petri did his best to educate Tuomas musically. “Tuomas read a lot when he was younger. He wasn't really into music that much back then. I tried to force- feed my own favorites to him, bands like Iron Maiden, Slade, and the Finnish Popeda and Eppu Normaali. I was successful to the point that when Tuomas was in the second grade, they had a Jukebox Jury’ in the music class [children bring their favorite music to school and the songs are reviewed in class, each student giving points from 4 to x0], and he took Popeda’s song ‘John Holmes’ there. If you've heard the song, you know the lyrics are pretty obscene!” ‘Tuomas was summoned to see the teacher for his somewhat “adult” musical choice, and though he tried very hard to explain that it was his brother's idea, it was of no use. The lecture was probably not very severe, however — because Tuo- mas’ music teacher happened to be his own mother. Tuomas also indulged in sports as a kid. Being a reflective type, Tuomas pre- ferred chess, but like practically everyone in Kitee, he also played Finnish base- ball, tried out ski jumping and finally found tennis, his favorite sport. Tuomas practiced with his brother in the family court and later went on to play in various competitions, even winning the third prize in the district championships once. His brother tried to make sure there was enough action in Tuomas’ life. “I remember having a moped when Tuomas was 6 or 7 years old”, Petri recalls. “I thought Tuomas might like to try it out. The moped had automatic transmis- sion, so when you twisted the throttle, it automatically shifted to a higher gear. ar‘We were on this field, and I lifted Tuomas on the seat and explained where the throttle and the brake were. Right off the bat, Tuomas wrenched the throttle wide open — and off he went. The moped kept going faster and faster, I was yell- ing ‘Hit the brakes!’ but he didn’t get the hang of it and crashed straight into a willow at like 40 kilometers per hour. It looked really scary. I can still remember the feeling of horror when I ran to him, as I was sure he’d hurt himself bad. Mi- raculously, he was pretty much okay, a few bruises but nothing serious. I guess this incident had something to do with the fact that he didn’t want a moped of his own when he turned 15!” Actually, Tuomas was not the least bit interested in technical devices, let alone mopeds. He says he is probably the least technically oriented person in the whole world and that he has never had any interest in gadgets and contraptions — except for keyboards. Unlike his big brother, Tuomas has always enjoyed living in his own private dream world. ‘I really didn't know anything about the evils of the world”, he says. “You could say I lived in a fantasy world for the first 15 years of my life. I remem- ber one incident when I was probably in the sixth grade and visiting my best friend, Kari Rouvinen. I heard his parents tell each other off in jest, like, ‘Screw you’, and I was in a complete state of shock for many days. I couldn't understand how anyone could say such an awful thing to another person! I was 11 or 12 years old, and I just couldn't fathom how they could hurt each other so deeply!” According to his mother, Tuomas never really had a bad case of puberty — in fact his calmness felt almost alarming. He never even complained about studying and thought it was perfectly natural to work hard for school. Tuomas’ English teacher considered him a great thinker who would go places, but he was later disappointed when the boy grew up to be ‘just a musician’. Tuomas might have skipped his teenage rebellion because he never wanted to let go of his childhood. “I guess I've never grown up”, he confessed. “I some- times feel I should try to be a little more adult, but I guess the fact that I’m not is an asset in a way, too. Of course I'm a mature, thoughtful person and an adult in many respects, but I think I’ve still preserved a good amount of childlike quali- ties.” In this case, the “childlike qualities” do not mean tantrums, moodiness, and narcissism, but naive innocence. Tuomas’ mother says he was never good at standing up for himself as a kid, as he had been taught not to answer malice with malevolence. If another kid took his toy away at the sand box, Tuomas would just look on perplexed. Even at the age of 15, Tuomas was still innocent enough to believe that people would be nice to him if he would just treat them kindly. “I was so naive 22,in everything, but then again... I wish I could still be like that. I was the kindest perwon ever.” ‘Today, Tuomas claims that he has become hardened to the world, even cyni- cul, but to an outsider, he still seems very unaffected and good-hearted. He lives hin life with passion, and one of his mottos, “The world is built on feelings”, indicates how small things have the power to make his day — or ruin it — and how he often makes his decisions just by listening to his heart. Being an empathic und friendly guy, Tuomas easily gives the impression of being a very open person in public. On a more personal level, however, he is a lot more introverted than he appears. It is important to him that the people around him are on the same wavelength. It is also interesting how Tuomas never seems to lose his temper and tell people to just shove it ~ if he has to face unpleasant or annoying things, he just quiets down and withdraws into himself. He does not like to talk about hin bad feelings but rather discharges them, along with other strong emotions, into music. Thankfully, Tuomas was encouraged to play music at an early age. “My mu- sical career started when my mom took me to piano lessons at the age of seven”, he explains. “I attended the music school of Central Carelia where I majored in clurinet and minored in piano. So in a way, I do have a musical background ~ I went to school, learned the basic theory, all that jazz.” His teacher in music school was Plamen Dimov, a Bulgarian gentleman of Greek origin who speaks Finnish with an exotic accent. A mainstay of Kitee’s music scene ever since moving there in 1986, Dimov is a teacher who doesn't count the hours (he even gives singing and playing lessons during the weekends), und itis hard to imagine there is anything he wouldn't do for his students. Dimov in a tireless promoter of his protégés and seems to love every minute of it, and it seems he is loved, too: in spring 2005, the North Carelian youth forum intro- duced the “Adult of the year” award and granted it to Dimov. “Plamen had a tremendous musical influence on me — after all, he was my music teacher for three years”, Tuomas says. “He invited me to join his Jazz band to play the sax, and I still have this fine silvery saxophone from the 1920's. If it weren't for Plamen, I might not have gotten carried away by music like that. He really pushed me in junior high, as well as Emppu, Tarja, and Jukka. He's a hell of a violinist too, you know.” As Dimov has taught all of Nightwishs’ Kitee members, he is the man to tulk to if you want to know about the early years of the musicians. “Tuomas studied in the Jazz program and he was doing really well”, Dimov recalls, “He often claimed he didn't know anything about music, and he still says 23that, but I always told him that it was a good thing. Why should you know a lot about music? There are people who need to know a great deal about musical theory, but Tuomas is doing his own thing, and that’s what’s important.” Dimov says that Tuomas is more of an inventor than a musician. “You don’t have to be a perfect musician or a perfect poet with three books published to be innovative. Tuomas has an inner eye for design, which helps him write his music.” According to Dimov, Tuomas kept to himself a lot as a kid. “He still stood out, however, because there always seemed to be something going on inside his head, even if he was quiet. There was always something happening there behind his eyes. I think I might've gotten more out of him than his father did back then because we could communicate through music. Tuomas was really good in Eng- lish, and I was having difficulties with Finnish then — I’m still not fluent, but T’m doing much better nowadays. In a way, Tuomas was cosmopolitan. I never thought of him as a Finn. He was a bit different from the other people I talked to. When he came back from the States, the first thing he showed me was an album by Dream Theater. And he always listened carefully when I was trying to explain something. Not just because he wanted to be polite, but because he really wanted to know.” ‘The 15-year old exchange student was mainly into Jazz Rock in those days. When interviewed by a local newspaper about his trip, he said that he could pretty much stand any kind of music — except for Heavy Rock. However, during his exchange year in Wichita, Kansas, Tuomas’ host family took him to his first Rock concert ever, a co-headline show by Guns N’ Roses and Metallica in Kansas City. The day was unforgettable — and Tuomas was completely hooked. “At the time, Gary Moore and Queen were pretty much the heaviest stuff I could bear to hear, but I decided to go along to the concert anyway. That two- hour Metallica gig changed my life. I bought all their albums the next week — on cassette, which was the standard format in those days. Through Metallica, I soon. got into Megadeth, Pantera, Ozzy Osbourne, all those bands, and I’ve been a true metalhead ever since.” In Wichita, Tuomas played in the school band that performed in football games and other events, but putting together his own band or even joining one never crossed his mind at the time. While Tuomas was in the States, his friends back home sent him a demo cassette entitled “Satanic Rebirth” by their band Carnification. The demo boasted a charming picture of Jesus hanging upside down on a cross on its cover, and proudly, Tuomas showed the demo to his music teacher. The teacher went absolutely berserk, gave the boy a sermon and even 24wrote a letter to his host family. When Tuomas got back from the States, the newly-converted metalhead wan quickly talked into joining his first band, Dismal Silence, founded by local Kitee kids. “The other members were Teemu Kautonen and Tero and Ilkka Leinonen. It was my first band experience and also the first time I played keyboards — basi- cully a whole new world for me, because I think that piano and keyboards are two completely different instruments. Yeah, I didn't start playing the keyboards until | was sixteen. The instrument was a Korg M-1, and our music teacher permitted me to borrow it from our school. I actually kept it for quite a while.” ‘Tuomas did not get his own synthesizer, Korg 364, until his future band was recording their second album. His big brother did not think it was a good idea at ull: “I remember giving Tuomas some brotherly advice”, Petri laughs. “It must've heen spring 1996, and Tuomas wanted to borrow several thousand marks from our dad to buy a new keyboard. I told him he couldn't borrow that kind of money to buy an instrument because he already had one, but Tuomas tried to explain that he wanted to try and compose his own songs. I said, Yeah right. Now listen good: you can't go through life just playing music and hanging out with your friends. You gotta go to school or get a job!’ Luckily, he stuck to his guns and dad loaned him the money.” Soon Tuomas was asked to join a band called Darkwoods My Betrothed. “I was never a real band member in Dismal Silence or Darkwoods, I was just usked to play with them as a sort of a session musician. I wrote my first song with Darkwoods, however: an outro to Heirs of the North Star. 1 think it was called ‘New Heaven, New Earth’.” A Gothic Metal band flirting with the infamous Black Metal influences of the time, Nattvindens Grat was another local project that Tuomas joined. “I was going through a phase that every metalhead is bound to experience”, he says. “I guess I was a bit darker than others and wanted music that was heavy as hell. Pantera’s Vulgar Display of Power is still one of my all time favorites.” According to Tuomas, the attraction of Black Metal lies in the way it of- fers an escape from reality. “Black Metal is pure escapism, a retreat into a fantasy world. That’s what’s so appealing about it. All in all, I think that out of all musical genres, the world of Metal is the most escapist one. Metal is also music for people who think for themselves. I think metalheads are smart people who possess a healthy dose of self-irony and a good sense of humor, and that appeals to me. I felt a strong affinity with the scene from the first moment on.” Tuomas recorded two albums with Nattvindens Grit, Bard’ Tale and Chaos Without Theory. “The band was basically a project of Teemu Kautonen. Kautonen 25and his crew were actually a pretty colorful bunch during junior high... The es- says they wrote in Finnish class are still considered legendary ~ I think it was Teemu who wrote a story called ‘The Butcher’ in the eighth grade. It was about a mercenary who does away with Jesus first and then goes to Iraq to hang Saddam Hussein by the balls. Stuff like that. The teacher read the story out loud in front of the class as a warning example. I can't remember how many weeks of detention that got him. Teemu was a bit like that, but he was also a really smart guy. He's got a Ph.D. in economics now.” ‘The teachers obviously couldn't see anything smart in Teemu’s satanic an- tics. According to Dimov, Kautonen was sort of a necrospiritual leader of the Kitee youth during Tuomas’ “Black Metal days’. “I wanted to protect Tuomas from Teemu. Not that Teemu was scary in any way, but I told him that this is the school’s studio, and if you think you can spread that Norwegian propaganda here — Mayhem and those bands ~ it’s not going to happen. You can do whatever you like and record your music, too, but you can't do it at school. Teemu said that I was abandoning him. I even took Tero Leinonen and Teemu to see the principal because I didn’t want the principal to think that Tuomas was into that stuff, too. I have nothing against Teemu, how- ever, everyone has that phase of rebellion at some point in his or her life, but that whole Norwegian Black Metal thing was getting so out of hand that I thought it{d be the best if I maintained my position on that one.” Another Nattvindens Grit band mate, Tapio Wilska, became a good friend of Tuomas, and the two have later cooperated on many projects. “My brother calls Wilska ‘Turre”, says Tuomas. [A popular dog’s name, it might perhaps be translated as “Furry” — consult a picture of this fine, hirsute ‘Metal giant and you'll understand.] “Wilska is one of the kindest people I know, the sort of person that no one can hate. He's really sympathetic and helpful and a really fanny guy. I really have nothing bad to say about him. He's not much of a singer, but he has a good understanding of music, an unbelievable recitation voice and pronunciation, and of course he’s got the right attitude. A great guy and a good friend.” Playing in Nattvindens Grit and Darkwoods did not fully satisfy Tuomas’ musical ambitions. “I was playing in two bands, but I constantly had this feeling that what I really wanted to do is to write my own songs. All I did was play the keyboards on someone else’s songs. I mean, it was great at first, but the more I did it, the more I wanted to create something of my own. Writing music has been my greatest aspiration since I first started playing in a band.” Tt soon became clear that music was to be the guiding light in Tuomas’ life, and an article he wrote in 1996 as an 18-year-old reflects his love for music in an 26endearing way. The article appeared in a local magazine called Sabis published in Kitee, Tohmajirvi, and Vartsila. Music, that timeless force, has known how to get the listener's hormones go- ing since the dawn of time, He who thinks otherwise should ask anyone, includ- ing himself, has there really never been a musical expression that touched bis soul deeply. The genre does not really matter: loud Heavy Metal is as much music as is Jazz, or Classical. If one wants to know the mysteries of music’ philosophy, there is one place above others where you can dive deep into this primitive pulse of life: our very own music school of Central Carelia. Some ignorant people may think of our school as an institute of theoretic mumbo-jumbo, a haven for violin-torturing snobs. Maybe each of us students ‘was suspicious at first, too, as the theory lessons must have been difficult for be- ginners, Even after several years, the tiresome scales or études do not make one's heart jump with joy. Been there, felt that... But for the non-believers and those with a short attention span, I can say that it is hard to find a school more versatile than this. You gain self-confidence through taking private lessons from some of the country’s best teachers. The lessons are fun and offer a sense of achievement to ev- eryone, encouraging students to get on with their studies. The goals are naturally specified individually for each student, but it is clear that without hard practice or patience you won't go far. I would also like to remind parents to keep in mind that if a child is not the least bit interested in a musical hobby, it is inhumane to force him to play just for the satisfaction of your own ambitions. It is good if you offer the possibility — those eager enough will seize the opportunity. You can always enjay music on some level (except maybe before the course Sinals). The most enjoyable thing is playing together in a group, from duos to whole orchestras. Right here in our neighborhood, we have an active brass music group, a chamber orchestra, and Plamen Dimov’ Brass Band, all creating top- notch music. The upcoming CD by the Brass Band is a fine example of our school’s achievements and will most certainly be one of next year's big successes — not to mention the numerous basement bands in Kitee that are also making great music _for the pleasure of all music fans. The music school has surely had an influence on these bands as well. Together with love, music is the most important thing bring- ing people together. Making music and listening to it demands the same kind of understanding. I think I am not jumping to conclusions when I say that learning music, be it by yourself or in a music school, helps you get closer to others and also to understand your own self. The brass instruments stayed in the picture even during Tuomas’ military 27service [compulsory for young men in Finland]. “Yeah, I was still kicking the clarinet around”, Tuomas chuckles. “I served in the music corps, 60 I played the clarinet for nine and a half months. I haven't touched it since I got out of the army. So I do have a theoretical background, sort of - I can just about read the notes and accompany someone on the piano if needed.” At first, Tuomas didn’t want to enter military service at all because he was not keen on taking up arms, but his big brother recommended it by saying it was an easier alternative than the longer civil service. Today, Tuomas says that if he would get drafted again, he would seriously have to think about other alterna- tives. Because of his pacifist views, getting in to the music corps was a matter of life and death for Tuomas. His mother said that she had rarely seen her son show his joy so openly as when he and his clarinet were finally admitted. Serving in the music corps is probably easy compared to a regular infantry- man’s ordeals, but it was no cakewalk for Tuomas either. While Tuomas was in the army, the county of North Carelia was discontinued due to nationwide mod- ernization of administrative districts. The governor held a reception in Joensuu commemorating the occasion, and Tuomas’ parents were invited as well. It was minus 15 C’ outside, the icy wind chilled the bones, but two military drummers — one of whom was Tuomas ~ bravely stood guard by the main door of the ad- ministrative building. It took almost two hours for all the people to get in, and for all that time Tuomas, standing upright and staring straight ahead, pounded his drum in the same monotonous rhythm over and over again. A similar trial was his performance of the marching song “Narvan marssi” in a solemn event in Sortavala, Russia, when the remains of 105 soldiers killed during the Winter War were being transported back to Finland in a long convoy of army trucks. After an hour of puffing, ‘Tuomas’ clarinet was pretty much filled with rainwater and snot. “Many people say they had fun in the army”, Tuomas grumbles. “And some people say that the army sucked but that they also have some good memories and made good friends there. Personally, I haven't got a single good memory from those times and I didn’t have fun for a second!” Luckily, the army couldn't kill his creativity. Tuomas kept writing songs in the evenings, embryonic ideas that very soon became of use. Among them were “Forever Moments”, “Etidinen”, and “Nightwish”. 28oe Assembling the puzzle — IN THE SUMMER OF 1996, Tuomas left to spend his army leave at his mily’s island cabin at Lake Pyhajarvi, Kitee. Both of Tuomas’ bands were still active, and the musicians gathered for a night of sauna on the island. “We were sitting by the fire, Teemu Kautonen, Tero Leinonen, the whole old gang”, Tuomas recalls. “It was there that I got the idea: what if I put together my own project? I hadn't yet come up with the name ‘Nightwish’, but the concept was already in my head. The band would be acoustic and its style would be mood music. It wouldn't be Heavy Metal at all — we'd have acoustic guitar, some flutes, strings, piano, keyboards, and definitely a female vocalist. It was clear that it had to have a female singer, because at the time, The 3rd and the Mortal, Theatre of ‘Tragedy from Norway, and The Gathering from Holland were a big thing to me. Ulver’s album Keeldssanger was also a big influence. I listened to Kveldssanger a lot and thought that maybe I should try to do that kind of stuff even better.” In other words, Tuomas is very much aware of the fact that Nightwish was not born in a vacuum. He also found influences closer to home. “Teemu Kau- tonen was sort of a role model for me because he’s the one I talked to about those songs. I gave him the lyrics and asked him to read them through and tell me what's wrong with them. I've always rated Teemu high as a songwriter. He's always pushed me forward in what I do, and I also got to thank him for inviting 29me into my first bands.” Tuomas asked Erno Matti Juhani Vuorinen, born June 24, 1978, to join his project band as a guitarist. The small blonde guy always seems to be in a cheerful mood and beams with joy as he plays — hardworking, extroverted and hyperactive, Erno, ie. Emppu, describes himself as a “yodeling midget” and “a tractor shovel of love”. “I cant even think of sitting around in the house doing nothing”, Emppu admits. “I want stuff to be happening all the time. I guess I have some sort of a perversion, like you have to keep doing something until you pass out. Bop ‘til you drop.” Emppu began his musical career with a guitar he stole from his brother. Music was not a priority in his life, however, not even as a teenager. “I did all kinds of stuff. I couldn’t stand still for one moment. I was an energetic child, lively and alert, but I had no will to perform. I just had loads of hobbies. One of the most important ones was Judo — I started when I was nine and kept practic~ ing until I was almost twenty. When I was younger, I was even on the Finnish national Judo team, so sports were the biggest thing for me until I got swept away by Rock'n'Roll.” Emppu holds two Finnish Judo championships and has a bronze medal from the Nordic Championships. “I was also in the Scouts before starting Judo, took part in the Finnish hiking championships and finally got into skateboarding and all that, but after I took on guitar as a ten-year-old, the music hit me hard. I think my first cassette was Twisted Sister, so Heavy Metal’s always been there, lurking in the background. My brother got his first guitar when I was ten, and I stole it from him. That’s how I started playing. We had an organ at home, too, but I didn’t care for it. I have never played anything else but guitar. My folks didn’t force me into playing — if they had, I probably wouldn't have been interested.” After having punished his brother's guitar for a couple of years, Emppu joined his first bands. Plamen Dimov was Emppu’s music teacher as well, but the boy was never part of the school’s band projects, as there was rarely a need for a guitarist. Still, Emppu acknowledges Plamen’s importance to his musical development. “Plamen babbled a helluva lot”, Emppu laughs. “It was hard to figure out what he was saying most of the time. Anyway, he got me to play some Humppa [type of Finnish dance music played two beats to a bar] gigs when I was in high school. It was quite an unique experience for an under-aged boy in a band of old men. First they drank some booze and then they played Humppa - it taught me something, all right. Plamen was quite a prominent character in Kitee, being a Bulgarian and everything. He's very enterprising and full of initiative, and I think those are great characteristics in a guy. I think it was in the seventh 30or cighth grade when I asked him what kind of stuff you should try to tackle if you think you have nimble fingers, and Plamen made me play some prelude by Hach, He’s always been really encouraging. I think he’s got the right attitude for teacher, Our music classes consisted of watching videos and playing Jukebox Jury, but when someone wanted to learn something, Plamen really took it upon. himself to teach it. He never forced anyone, though. I made him listen to a bunch of my own stuff” Emppu’s “own stuff” consisted of a wide range of projects. “I had some projects with Jukka as well, Punk, Finnish Rock [inspired by bands like Eppu Normaali and Popeda], and Heavy Metal”, Emppu recalls, “Just bands made up of local guys and school mates. The most serious effort was called Valhalla, but when we realized there already was a group by that name, we quit the whole thing, I still have some tapes, but they’re really nothing special. Back then, they wounded pretty good, though. I was in the same class with Jukka in elementary whool, but we didn't play in the same band until junior high.” Tuomas got to know Emppu in Kuopio when Nattvindens Grit played the Domino club, as Emppu ended up filling in for the missing guitarist in the hand, “Nattvindens Grit didn’t have a second guitarist”, Emppu elucidates. “I was 16 of 17 years old, so it was so cool to be able to play in a bar and drink beer for tree. The guys gave me the album the night before the gig and told me to practice ull the songs. The next day I was on stage. I guess it sounded tolerable.” It definitely seems Emppu handled the task well, because he was the first one Tuomas thought of when putting Nightwish together. Again, Emppu ac- cepted without hesitation — “if you get picky, life gets tricky”, as his motto goes. ‘True to his philosophy, Emppu has played in countless side projects ever since he first started playing. ‘Tuomas welcomed Emppu in his new band both as a guitarist and as a social stimulant. “Emppu is a funny guy”, Tuomas describes. “Emppu can't stay in one spot for long — he has the shortest attention span ever. If you teach him a riff, he forgets it in five minutes, no matter how many times you go through it with him. But you can't be angry with the guy for very long. He just has trouble keeping his thoughts together. He can’t concentrate on one thing for more than a minute.” Accordingly, it was hopeless to try and get Emppu to read a book at school ~ he just wasn’t capable of the sustained effort - but the guitarist was always cunning enough to find a shortcut to writing essays and summaries. “When we had to read fiction, I always chose books that had been adapted on film”, Emppu laughs. “In our last Finnish class, I finally confessed to my teacher Tuula Ranta that I had never read a single book. The incident was much discussed later and it 31became a sort of a scandal in our school, like how the hell was that even possible. Tbecame a cautionary example. I think I got the bibliophobia from being forced to read Winter War by Antti Tuuri and Unknown Soldier by Vaind Linna, stuff like that, books that a young boy could never understand filly. But eventually I did find a good book that got me hooked on reading, I've even read The Egyptian by Mika Waltari, even though the book doesn't have women or sex or anything like that. Now I'm always in the middle of reading some book.” Emppu always seems to be living in the moment, a fact well portrayed by Tuomas’ illustrative example. “Emppu may tell the same story five times and never remember he’s already told it before. He probably wouldn't know how to play our songs either, if we didn't go over them two hundred times. He’s like, ‘Okay, I got it’, and after a minute: ‘How the hell did it go?” However, Emppu has his darker side, and Tuomas has sensed that. “You get the feeling from Emppu that he probably doesn’t even know how to be in a bad mood”, Tuomas muses. “Nonetheless, it sometimes seems like he doesn’t forget anything and that even the smallest things keep bothering him for ages. I think he’s chewing upon things for a year or something. I don’t know if he’s the unfor- giving type, but I feel like he broods over old quarrels for a really long time.” Be that as it may, Emppu fit into Nightwish perfectly. It didn't take long to find a drummer, either. Hailing from Kitee, Jukka Antero Nevalainen, born April 21, 1978, was “a lively child with a good, loving childhood”, as he put it himself The Nevalainen family lived in a city-owned apartment building and led a steady, balanced life. “The way I see it, we were just your ordinary Finnish fam- ily’, he says. As a kid, Jukka was sociable, outspoken and jovial and excelled in music and sports. “I attended the music class at elementary school, but we didn’t much play anything. Mostly we just sang, so I didn’t gain a lot of musical educa- tion there”, Jukka recalls. “When I was in the fourth or fifth grade, the music school of Central Carelia started a percussion group. My teacher thought that it might suit me and suggested I'd try, so I went to the entrance exams. I couldn't play drums at all, I'd never tried it, but I guess I had some sense of rhythm be- cause I got in — even though there were many other drummers that already knew how to play. Alternatively, the fact that my teacher was on the admission com- mittee might've had something to do with it!” It was not long before Jukka formed a band of his own. “My first band was called The Highway. I was still in elementary school. We played at a couple of school events and performed some covers weld learned in band school, along with some Beatles tunes. I sang in the band as well - I did this song called Jain lukkojen taa’, which is a Finnish version of the Peter and Gordon song ‘A World Without Love’. I never wanted to see the videos our teacher filmed of our band 32practices or gigs, and for a long time, I didn’t want to confess to garnering any kind of musical experience whatsoever from those days. One of the reasons is thut in elementary school, I actually sang in a mini-opera that our music teacher td composed. I really sang a lot in those days. I've later gained some self-con- fidence, so it might be kinda fun to watch some of those tapes — even the opera on some drunken Friday night...” Dimov remembers Jukka as a clever and punctual student. “If we had a gig ut 7 pm, Jukka was on the spot at five to seven. Jukka was the first one of these metalheads to play in my Herbie Hancock projects. I'm not a drummer but I could hear from Jukka’s playing that he wasn't just stiffly beating away ~ he could instantly identify different styles and pick the most suitable one.” According to Jukka himself, he was only focused and punctual when it came toa select few classes. “I'm sure I was attentive in the music classes because those were the only classes that interested me in junior high. Plamen’s classes were re- ully nice, just how music education in schools should be like. In other subjects like Finnish, for example — you have to learn a lot of theory and stuff just to meet the minimum requirements. Music, however, is not a matter of skill for the average person, it’s a matter of feeling, a matter of understanding what you hear.” “Those who really wanted to get on with learning music had already started studying it before junior high and learned the theory even before that”, Jukka continues. “Plamen’s music classes were excellent because we just held Jukebox Juries, listened to all kinds of music and watched videos that had musical themes. You could play whatever instrument you wished to. Suddenly, we noticed we had 1 band, so we started to muddle through songs. That’s how it goes in a real teen- age band practice, too, you know, everyone picks up an instrument, and the next thing you know, you're trying to play Metallica’s ‘Nothing Else Matters’.” The Kitee music school had only a 30 minute weekly slot for teaching drummers at the time. “Nowadays, there’s a couple of rehearsal rooms in Kitee, but then there were none”, Jukka says. “It was really hard to improve your skills or develop your musical vision. I think I attended the music school from the fifth grade on. I didn’t have drums of my own and there was no place I could practice in a small town like Kitee, so I used to pound on my knees and on the back of the couch. Once a week, I would study theory for half an hour and practice for real. When you think about it, I might've become a technically better drummer if Td had my own kit back then. I'd have the foundation down better and might be able to utilize my instrument in a different way.” Many would argue that you can’t study music without learning the history, but Jukka could not have cared less about classical composers. “I don’t give a shit 33about Mozart or Vivaldi or Schubert or some damn German or Austrian and their compositions. I don't give a flying fuck. I was pissed off because I had to study trivial stuff that had nothing to do with Metallica's Black Album, or Guns N’ Roses’ ‘Civil War’, or Sepultura’s Arise! When the music school ended after eighth grade, I didn’t play for a year“ Dimov remembers how the young percussionist arrived at his musical crossroads. “Jukka was in the eighth grade, and one of his first tasks was to play ‘Humppa Funk, a song that had quite a difficult drum break. I explained it to him once, and he instantly played it correctly. But one day he just threw the drum sticks away. He lived near the school, so I went over to ask why he had stopped playing. ‘I'm playing [Finnish] baseball now’, he said. Jukka was extremely fast in his decisions. I told him he could play whatever he wants but that he should never forget the drums, because he’s a born drummer.” Jukka was actually very serious about baseball, and he still has a couple of trophies to prove it. Jukka didn’t get behind the drums again until ninth grade, when his friend asked him to join a band he had just put together. “He had heard that I play the drums, and there really weren't many drum- mers in Kitee”, Jukka recalls. “I thought Id try it out because I'd get to play ina real band and everything. Tero Kinnunen was on the bass and a friend of ours called Kurkola played the guitar and sang. It was a trio, though Tuomas played one gig with us. That’s when my musical career really started. We played Brit Pop or something like that, which I wasn't really into, but it was fun to bang the skins anyway. The band lasted for a couple years.” Jukka and Emppu lived in the same neighborhood and knew each other, so it didn’t take long for the two to start jamming together. The duo's repertoire initially consisted of Finnish Rock songs, but like so many young bands, they got the inspiration to play melodic Heavy Metal when they heard Stratovarius’ 1997 album Visions. “Emppu got interested in Metal through the likes of Stratovarius and Hel- loween”, Jukka continues. “He wanted to play heavier stuff and asked me to be the drummer in his band. Basically it was still Finnish Rock, but you could hear a Metal influence — guitar solos were pretty central in Emppu’s songs, you know! He wrote some brilliant, heavy riffs. The band was called Nidhro’t, and it lasted until the end of high school. We even played several gigs.” The band’s first performance outside Kitee was in a local band night in Ilo- mantsi. “We had an audience of three”, Jukka chuckles. “It was a pretty intense set. We even sent our demo to the Soundi magazine, and it got an okay review. It had potential. But then the gang moved apart, and Emppu and I started to get more into Heavy Metal.” 34Jukka was already well on his way to Metal perdition. “We formed another hand with Emppu, just the two of us. Sometimes someone would pop in and play the bass or the second guitar or the keyboards. We started cranking out Hellow- con tunes just for fun. Yngwie Malmsteen was a big influence, too. Basically we will had Nidhro't going, but gradually it just faded. The new band — Ambrosia was playing instrumental Heavy Metal because we didn't have a singer. Excel- lent songs, lightning fast guitar licks, and even double bass drums. It was so cool tw be able to play double bass — well, I wasn't exactly able to, but I did it anyway! Ambrosia did a couple of local gigs and recorded a few demos. I still have those lupes somewhere.” Jukka finds it easy to name his primary musical influences. “My first en- vounter with heavier music was in 1988 or ‘89 when my sister bought Metallica’s And Justice for All double vinyl”, Jukka recalls. “That album just hit me like nothing before, and I listened to it whenever I could. Back then, I was listening to all kinds of stuff, but this album was clearly something else. It’s still one of my favorite albums even though the list has grown longer over the years.” “Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Paradise Lost, and Sepultura were the bands that got me into Metal”, Jukka lists. “Though it wasn’t a bolt of out of the blue like it had been for Tuomas. I didn’t just realize in the middle of a gig like, “Yeah, s it!’ — I gradually got into Metal through my friends, and when I did, I pretty much stopped listening to Popeda and Raptori.” Acertain Finnish band turned out to be a major influence for Jukka, too. “In this 1994 or 1995, Emppu introduced me to Dreamspace by Stratovarius. It sounded really interesting, so we traveled to see their show in Virtasalmi on Midsummer 1995, The band was absolutely great and the trip was something else, too. To save on accommodation, we'd taken a tent with us, and basically we just set up camp in the forest right outside the main gate, free of charge of course. Emppu in always breaking my balls about how I got a bit ‘tired’ after the gig and went to sleep in our tent. When Emppu arrived at the camp a bit later, it turned out that Sir Nevanperd [one of Jukka’s nicknames] had fallen asleep with his head inside the tent, with the door naturally wide open and the whole tent full of mosquitoes. Apparently he'd had a damn pleasant night...” “In 1996, just after Episode came out, we made another trip to see Strato~ varius live”, Jukka continues. “Even though we had school the next day, we drove to Jyvaskyla, knowing full well we had to drive back after just a few hours of sleep. But it was definitely worth the trouble because I got in the front row and managed to grab a drum stick that Jorg Michael [Stratovarius drummer] threw in the audience. Using the barricade to propel myself into the air, I jumped and snatched the stick in mid-air. Everything happened as if in a slow motion scene, 35and afterwards, I felt like a king! For a long time, that stick was my most valued possession.” It didn’t take long, however, ‘til another drummer caught Jukk’s ear. Images and Words by Dream Theater became his favorite album of all time. “For quite a while, Jorg was the drummer for me. He was so damn good, but luckily I realized there were other good drummers out there, too. A friend of mine teased me about Jorg and told me that the world’s greatest drummer actually plays in a band called Dream Theater. As a steadfast fan, I naturally objected, but eventually I gave in and bought Images and Words and A Change of Seasons.” “I remember that my dad was doing something on the computer when I put Images and Words on. Soon, I was in a total state of shock — the album was so good and the musicians so great that it was simply unbelievable! I sat at the end of the table listening to the album, completely mesmerized, and every now and then Id comment on it to my dad, like, ‘Goddammit, what a band!’ I’ve listened to that album through and through a thousand times and I'm still not tired of a single song. That's when I really began to appreciate Mike Portnoy’s style. I bought all their albums and live videos and kept rewinding them back and forth, trying to figure out how the fuck he played that stuff.” In 1997, the fully converted metalhead got the phone call that was to turn his life upside down. “Emppu called me one night after rehearsals and asked if I was interested ining a project band as a drummer”, Jukka recalls. “He told me a guy called ‘Tuomas Holopainen from Nattvindens Grit wants to try and create music on his own. I was naturally enthusiastic, and Emppu told me they're even planning on getting a record deal and releasing an album. I was thrilled to pieces, almost fell on my ass!” “Tt might've been the next evening when Emppu and Tuomas came to visit me and I met'Tuomas properly for the first time”, Jukka continues. “He had made keyboard demos of the songs that were later released on the limited edition of Angels Fall First. The guys played the demo for me and tried to fill in the missing parts with Emppu’s guitar. Going through the songs, I can still remember how ‘Astral Romance’ hit us. We all dug it, as it’s a really good song. ‘The Carpenter’ was impressive, too. I think we started practicing the next week — we played through all the seven songs and ended up recording them all in one go.” Somewhat surprisingly, the Metal influence is almost non-existent on the demo. “You know, Nightwish was supposed to be an entirely acoustic project”, Emppu says. “We didn’t have drums or distortion or anything like that on the first demo. But we all had Heavy Metal in our blood, so it gradually just took over. And I think Tuomas was already nurturing the idea about going for a bigger 36sound, as he’s always been a movie music buff.” Along with Aku Ankka comic books, movies have fascinated Tuomas from the time he was a child. Personally, he sees that his love of cinema and cinema scores stems from the desire to escape everyday life. “Movies are a part of that es- capism I've been ranting about. If you want to define me with just one word, the word is ‘an escapist’. That's the reason why I read books and make music and go hiking — to get away from this world for just a little while. Maybe the world is not such a bad place as you sometimes think, but anyway... In fact, I don't know any- ‘one who doesn’t like to watch movies. In movies, sound and image merge in an extremely interesting way. Maybe that’s the curse of the songwriter: when you see something beautiful or ugly or inspiring, you immediately want to paint it with music, paint it with sound. That's what movies are about, too, you know. There's a beautiful image and a story, and they are painted with sound and music.” Accordingly, Nightwish has later been dubbed “Landscape Metal”, “Sound- track Metal” — or even “Andrew Lloyd Webber Metal” — even though their initial, acoustic concept was very different. The right musicians had been found, some songs were in the works, but what was still needed for creating a demo was a studio. It was only natural that the musicians would first approach their music teacher Dimov. “Our school was renovated in 1997 at a cost of 19 million Finnish marks”, Plamen Dimov recalls. “I rarely attend meetings, but that time I did — I asked the principal Erkki Kontro if we could build a studio for the school. A decent studio cost some 200,000-300,000 Finnish marks in those days, and I convinced the principal that I knew a group that seemed very promising.” A permission to build the studio was granted, but the band still needed the necessary equipment. “Emppu and Tero Kinnunen came to me and told that they had asked Raimo Kettunen at the open college for the mixer that’s been used in the Monttu club, but he had refused.” Irritated, Dimov headed off to demand it from Kettunen himself, Explaining that the apparatus cost 18 marks toward every taxpayer in Kitee, Dimov threatened to write into the local newspaper Koti-Kar- jala to publicly inquire what the expensive gadget was being saved for. They got their mixer. Tero, Emppu and Dimov took the mixer to the studio at Huvikeskus [a lo- cal youth center/dance hall], which was later to become Tero’s Caverock Studio. Over the course of years, the studio has gained almost legendary reputation, but in those days, it was just the center of everyday work (and a second home) for the Nightwish guys. According to Dimoy, “they /ived there in Huvikeskus”. The town of Kitee soon understood the importance of supporting the musi- cal ambitions of its youth and authorized a grant of 25, 000 marks to the studio, 37allowing Dimov to furnish the place with proper equipment. “The town of Kitee deserves credit for building the studio, and for my part, I want to thank them for understanding our cause”, Dimov praises. “I side with the young and work as an icebreaker —I go first and clear the way. I see the paths and clear them for the young and let them walk along them as they please. They know how. Kitee is a small town where you can easily suffocate if you have nothing to keep yourself busy with. These boys just had to get a place to work in.” Dimov was the first to notice what the teenage band rehearsing in Kitee’s Monttu club was up to and also the first outsider to hear the outcome of their labor. When Nightwish later rose to world fame, Dimov was immensely proud of his protégées. One can clearly sec that he has become a dedicated fan of his former students. Dimov is eager to tell about the school projects he’s been involved in. “We recorded two projects with Tuomas. The first one was Chameleon, and the other was Jimmy ‘Bluesman’ Lawson's Play That Funky (Humppa) Music. 1 don’t know why, but I even sent out tapes of Chameleon to some US radio stations. I didn’t get any feedback, but I can see through Teosto [Finnish Composers’ Copyright Society] that they have been played. It was a bold step which I perhaps shouldn't have taken.” “The other project, Jimmy Lawson and Friends’ Play That Funky (Humppa) Music, was mastered by Mika Jussila at Finnvox Studios. Emppu came to show mea song he had written with Jukka and Sami in the Monttu club and asked me if it was alright for the project. It was a great song, but as it had no name, I asked if I could call it ‘Karelian Night’. It was fine with Emppu.” A melodic, Stratovarius-inspired Heavy Metal instrumental complete with galloping double bass drums, “Karelian Night” is an oddity that simply jumps off the Jazz Rock album. “The style of that song doesn’t by any means hint at what the boys would later achieve, but it’s the first record where the original Nightwish staff — minus Tarja — plays together, though in two different line-ups”, Dimov continues. “A few years ago, Emppu told me that the single costs 25 euros on the internet, which makes it a small collector's item. I don’t know what the price is now —~ maybe you could get good money off it!” Continuing with his rather unique metaphors, Dimov likes to compare Nightwish with Nokia shares. “Nightwish is a bit like Nokia shares during the time when they rose from five marks to 1, 500 marks and more. I was the first to see the valueless shares, but I knew that one day they would be worth a lot!” Whatever their stock market value, the “shares” kept Emppu and Tuomas busy. “Emppu and I recorded the backing tracks for the demo together at the legendary Huvikeskus studio”, Tuomas recalls. “That’s when we got to know Tero 38Kinnunen, although he was already a sort of a casual acquaintance because he'd iweorded some of our earlier bands like Dismal Silence and Nattvindens Grat. We liscovered he was a competent guy, so he became our studio engineer.” “I think it was December 1996 or January 1997”, Tero Kinnunen muses. “We probably started in December with the keyboards and wrapped the whole thing up in January. I was asked to engineer it because I'd recorded stuff with a 4-track i Kitee for a couple of years. I had done all sorts of demos ~ I did the first two demos for Darkwoods My Betrothed, too, they were in fact recorded at my place. Sumi Vanska, who later became the bassist for Nightwish, had gotten an 8-track, und we put it to good use in December 1996. After the first session, there was a leuk of almost two months during which I kept on recording stuff in a room that was no bigger than a closet. On the door it read ‘Produktio Tuomas’. At that point, it had become clear that Emppu would play acoustic guitar on the songs und that Tuomas would play the keyboards, but neither of them knew who would he the singer.” Tero turned out to be a real pick-me-up for the Nightwish clan due to his double nature — when the time is right, this calm, professional engineer trans- forms into an infectiously funny nutcase, to whom no obscenity, indecency or insanity is unknown. (In)famous for his immoral adventures and his passion for liwwt horses and even faster women, Tero has a phenomenal ability to create ac tion-filled situations and make shit happen - mostly to himself. “Tero is a very ambiguous person”, Tuomas later characterized. “He’s really culm ~ a total opposite of Emppu, for instance. He loves animals, and horse- tucing is his passion. He’s usually really patient, easy-going and sympathetic, but the next thing you know, he can prance around with a strawberry stuck in his dick, proudly showing it to everyone, or do the helicopter [swing one’s dick in « circular motion] backstage in the middle of the gig, as if it was a completely normal thing to do. Tero’s an extremely funny guy. He has that certain glow - I wouldn't call it charisma, but a sort of glow — so that he can always get laid when- ever, wherever. He's not choosy.” Tero became one of Tuomas’ best friends. “Tero is a sort of a vent for me, a spiritual brother, and I guess I'm the same way to him. We share the same sense of humor and we get along real well in every way. Our humor can be coarse, or childish, or old, but if someone doesn't get it — well, it’s his loss!” Tuomas thinks that Tero understands him and the spiritual landscape of Nightwish better than anyone else, making him indispensable for the band. Hence, another piece had found its place in the puzzle. The musicians had been found, but the “atmospheric music project “ was still short of a vocalist. Tarja Turunen, an acquaintance from Arppe Junior High, 39came into Emppu’s mind. Known for her talent and her ardent desire to perform, Turunen had left Kitee to study in the Sibelius Academy. Born August 17, 1977, Tarja Soile Susanna Turunen’s ambitions and her sense of drama became evident already in early childhood. “I was three years old when I had my first performance in the Kitee church hall”, Tarja recalls. “I can't remember it myself, but my mom told me that I had sung ‘Enkeli taivaan’ [a Protestant Christmas choral from the r6th century] and they'd lifted me up on the table to sing so that people would see where the voice was coming from. Mom almost died of shame when I forgot the lyrics and kept on singing my own words, rumpling the hem of my dress. Mom was watching on in horror, like, ‘My God, how high will that hem go!” ‘Tarja Turunen had a happy childhood, too. Her mother worked in the town administration and her father was a carpenter. The family had three children and often traveled around Finland in the summertime with a mobile home. They sang together a lot. Humming along didn’t satisfy Tarja, however — she wanted to be the center of attention. “Whenever we had guests, I would take the women to see the ward- robe. I would change my clothing three times a day, maybe dress in mom's old curtains and pile up all kinds of rags on myself. I was the only girl in the family, a true princess. At the age of 3, I already understood the power of drama!” Tarja giggles. Singing was in Tarja’s blood. “I always wanted to sing. I sang in the local children’s club and had my own puppet theatre in front of TV when we had guests. I’ve always had this tremendous sense of theatricality and drama in me. I was always making a big fuss about myself and music wherever I went. I enjoyed getting the leading role in a play. I wanted to be seen and heard. I wasn't a very lively child, but I was very temperamental, and I’ve always had a strong desire to be out there and perform. I would get angry if my friends got an opportunity to sing somewhere and I wasn't asked to. When I was in children’s club at the age of four or five, I always had to get the leading role or a singing part — if I didn’t, I would get annoyed and angry. If things didn’t go my way, I would stomp my foot to the ground!” No wonder that her colleagues later thought Tarja was a born drama queen: “She has a great sense of drama, both in a good sense and in a bad sense”, Tuomas described years later. “Her charisma stems from the fact that she understands what is dramatic — she intensifies a strong feeling and makes it even stronger. Unfortunately, that also means she can exaggerate the negative things. It’s like the story about The Princess and the Pea: ‘There’s a pea under eight layers of mat- tresses — I can feel it and I feel it bad! Now take care of me, I’m a woman!” 40When Tarja was six years old, her parents enrolled her at the open college for piano lessons. The involvement with music continued through her childhood and teenage years. “My piano teacher was a really sweet lady, the former cantor of the Kitee Lutheran parish, and, of course, Tuomas’ mother. [in Finnish context, the term cantor is the historic designation for the vocation of the Lutheran Church musician, Among other things, the cantor leads the singing during services, plays the piano or organ and works as the choir leader. S/he has an important job in liturgies, commemorative services, weddings and other church events.] I went through the Blue, Red and Green Michael Aaron Piano Courses but quit playing classical piano in elementary school. I also started musical theory and ear training awa kid. Later, I began free accompaniment. At the time, the music teacher in our school was more like a Rock musician, and he set the kids to play in bands. I would play the piano and sing in the band through junior high.” For her teachers, the parochial prima donna was a dream come true. “Tarja was in a school that had some very musical people”, says Kirsti Nortia~Hol- opainen. “Even then, she got to perform a lot. I think she sang in every school function there was. When she wanted to take piano lessons, she came to the open college because it was more affordable than the music school. That’s how I ended up teaching Tarja. She was always tremendously charming and kind and learned things really quickly. Once I even asked her if she practiced 5 to 6 hours a day - I mean, how else could she play so nicely? Tarja’s talent was already evident. She left to attend the Senior Secondary School of Art and Music in Savonlinna and then moved to Kuopio. Tarja was a well-behaved, talented student.” It seems that Tarja was prepared to commit herself to music very compre- hensively right from the start. “I guess my musical hobbies slowly lead to the point where I withdraw into myself”, Tarja muses. “At the time, I used to write lot. I wrote down my thoughts and stuff, the whole teenage turmoil thing. I couldn't bear to read those texts now — that view of myself would probably make me puke and my self image would shatter instantly!” ‘Tarja was Plamen Dimov’s student, too. “I think a teacher's most important task is to see how music makes a student’s eyes shine”, Dimov expands on the goals of his teaching. “Emppu and Tuomas were in my class, too, but Tarja’s situation was a bit different because we sang a lot outside the school. Tarja was outstandingly good even when she was young. She was already an artist. It was my job to even out the differences so that the rest of the class could accept the situation. Tarja was a true vocalist; she had a will to perform and to stand out. She needed the attention.” “In 1992, even my own wife asked me why Tarja Turunen performs in every project when there are plenty of other beautiful and talented girls in the school”, 41Dimov continues. “In 2004, I was finally able to answer her: ‘That's why!’ My wife asked me what was I talking about but finally understood that I was refer- ring to the success of Nightwish. If you gave Tarja just one note, she immediately got it. With the others, you'd have to practice three, four, five times. You could immediately tell who was the fastest learner. Tarja was a demanding student, but I want to underline that I haven't taught her anything about singing. I just gave her the opportunity to show what she’s got.” Even though the talented girl had to work hard to excel in school, she was often called a teacher's pet. Other girls bullied her because they envied her voice, so Tarja decided it was better to hang out with the boys, as they seemed to treat her more fairly. Because of her brothers, she had already gotten used to being around the opposite sex. In junior high, Tarja started studying the flute. “I can't play it anymore, even though I sometimes look at the instrument wondering if should still try. I won’t, and I could never play it anyway. I did one concert that was videotaped, and I'm about to dic of laughter every time I watch it. It sounds awful, absolutely hor- ible”, Tarja says. Nevertheless, she learnt something from playing the flute: “It made me train my breathing technique. It was hard, but it has helped with sing- ing.” Tarja’s future plans started to take form in her adolescence. “I was 14 or 15 years old when I seriously realized I wanted to sing. I started attending the Kitee open college group for classical singing as an auditing student. In the end, the teacher ended up taking me in as a regular student even though I hadn't paid for the course.” The next stimulus came from the world of opera. “One day I found Andrew Lloyd Webber's ‘Phantom of the Opera’ on cassette. When I heard Sarah Bright- man sing that last note, I was like, ‘Hell no, how can someone sing like that? I wanna learn to sing right, too!’ I hadn't really heard opera or classical singing before that. I thought that Whitney Houston was the best there is!” Dimov had no disrespect for Top 4o stars like Houston, however. “The way Isee it is that with a young girl, you just have to sing all the Whitney Houston ballads and other contemporary stuff, whatever happens to be fashionable at the time. If some teacher from along the way thinks he or she has made Tarja Tu- Tunen into a singer, it’s just not true. Tarja Turunen is a born singer. The teacher's job was just to acknowledge it and guide her forward.” Dimov was happy to see Tarja charting her own musical course. “In my opinion, singing Heavy Metal preserved the personality in Tarja’s voice, the per- sonality that has become her trademark. If Tarja had studied classical the whole time, her voice would have lost its personality. There are five different vocal types 42in classical music, in which five different singers can sound almost identical, but il I listened to a thousand different sopranos, I could tell Tarja right away. In Nightwish, she’s known for her classical singing, but there’s more to it than that. Iv's something special that Tarja has, something that suits the music perfectly.” The teacher wanted his students to develop in their own direction, and Tarja understood it soon. “Plamen got so damn pissed when I started taking those classes”, Tarja recalls. “He feared that my voice would change or that I'd ruin my voice so that I could never become the second Whitney Houston I was sup- posed to be. But the reason why I attended those classes was simply because I didn’t have the resources to sing even two songs by Aretha Franklin or Whitney Houston! If I tried, I couldn't talk afterwards. I was just screaming like a little piglet! There was no one to guide me how to use my voice. People would just tell me how forceful and beautiful my voice was, like, ‘Oh yeah, your voice has such a good color — just go for it, girl” Plamen urged me to sing, too, but I didn’t get that much guidance for using my voice from him. When I realized I wanted to sing for real, I understood that I had to learn how? Tarja admits that Dimov is right in some respects. “I do support Plamen’s view on one-sided education. I would have a much less individual singing style if I'd just studied classical music and nothing else. I'm sure I would’ve learnt to sing as well as possible in the classical style, too, but I might have just stopped there. I might not have found other nuances in my voice.” Dimov remembers a funny episode from Tarja’s youth. “Tarja and I were supposed to sing Peabo Bryson and Roberta Flack’s song “Tonight I Celebrate My Love’ in a concert in 1993 or 1994. I called Tarja’s dad and said: ‘Hey Teuvo, we're going to sing this love song that’s a bit over the top — you know, maybe a teacher and a student shouldn't be singing these kinds of lyrics together, so I'm basically asking for your permission.’ Teuvo said: ‘Go for it, no one in Kitee un- derstands a word of English anyway!” Tarja was at least as ambitious about singing as Dimov was about teaching. “T've always demanded a great deal from myself, Even in school, I was never satisfied with an A minus”, Tarja points out. “When I started to get on with my singing, I could really sense that this is my thing. In a way, I was really lucky — there are students who've had to work twice as hard, but then again, I’m really self-critical, and that’s why I've never let myself off easy. I’ve had to live with my own dissatisfaction, and that’s made me want to train my voice.” Tarja’s training continued in the open college and the Savonlinna Senior Secondary School of Art and Music. “I got a private teacher who gave me so much support. And I got to perform plenty, too. My voice changed an awful lot, irreversibly. For the first two years in Savonlinna, I still sang in Pop groups, but it 43wasn't my thing at all. I was a soprano, so it felt like I just couldn't sing Pop music that high. Anyway, the school was great because it was so versatile: we did theater, recorded stuff and got to try many different things for the first time. There I started concentrating seriously on singing and completed the basic exams. I was the first to pass singing with excellent grades in the history of the college. It was pretty cool — the teacher cried and I wept, too!” The next stop was Sibelius Academy in Kuopio. Playing the piano had pre- viously been just a hobby for Tarja, but now it became serious work: “I had to start from scratch with the technical exercises. During my first year, I completed the piano examination with perfect marks and the teacher said that if I'd started playing the piano earlier, I could've become a pianist”, Tarja recalls. “But that didn’t interest me as much as singing. Singing was always my top priority.” According to Dimov, Tuomas Holopainen was the most crucial influence on Tarja’s singing career. “Tarja really started progressing only when she started singing with Tuomas”, Dimov notes. “Up until then, she had mostly been col- lecting influences and just singing what was requested in the gigs we had outside of school.” Even though Tarja didn’t know Tuomas personally, she knew of his musical talent from Dimov’s Jazz Rock groups. “We had the same background. I even sang in some of their Jazz bands”, Tarja recalls. Tarja had instantly made an impression on Tuomas. “We got to know each other when I was x3 and Tarja was 12”, Tuomas later said. “From the very begin- ning, Tarja was a very charismatic person, even if she seemed like the ‘girl next door’. There was just something about her: she radiated charisma and probably every boy in Kitee junior high had a crush on her at some point. How could I describe it...? Radiance.” Tarja remembers considering Tuomas a brave person. “We knew each other, all right. His mom had been my piano teacher, and obviously we always said ‘hi’ at school. Tuomas liked to keep to himself — still does, I guess — and he was always the odd man out. No one really knew him, and those who did kept it private. Tuomas was a really unusual guy, in a positive way: he did really well at school but never talked about his own business. He seemed like a very reflective person.” In 1996, Tarja was on her Christmas holiday in Kite. “I had spent the se- mester in the church music department of the Sibelius Academy in Kuopio. It was a really cold day in Kitee. Tuomas rang our doorbell. I remember him wear- ing a green parka and combat boots. He modestly told me he wanted to talk to me about something. He had brought a couple of cassettes with him and asked me if I could maybe listen to them. The music turned out to be really beautiful.” 44"Tuomas remembers that Tarja immediately agreed to join the band, Having tno clear idea on the vocal melodies,'Tuomas basically gave Tarja the task to figure them out herself. “There were three songs on the demo, and one of them was culled ‘Nightwish”, Tarja recalls. “Tuomas gave me the lyrics and backing tracks und said that he had a certain melody in mind, but I was welcome to come up with my own interpretation.” At the time, the goals were not set too high. “The whole thing was supposed tw be just an experiment — we'd record a demo and maybe send it out to some record companies”, Tuomas says. “There were no plans whatsoever to play gigs or to aim towards anything more serious. Tarja figured it would take maybe two duys for her to sing the songs in the studio.” “Tuomas called me and said that we have a vocalist”, engineer Tero Kin- nunen recalls. “I remember the Saturday morning we sat there waiting for her. A car pulled up to the yard, and out came a woman wearing a fur coat. I thought it was some granny in her thirties, but then I saw her face and noticed that it definitely wasn't the case. I believe Tarja was 17 or 18 at the time. The Huvikeskus studio in Kitee wasn't anything like it is today. The control room was in the theater, so we set up a mic there and started recording.” Tarja went through the vocal melodies with the boys, and when the time came for her to start singing, the guys’ jaws dropped to the floor. “It was such a shock for us when she first started to sing”, Tuomas thinks back with awe. “I thought we were going to hear a clear, young, beautiful, girly voice in the style of Kari Rueslatten or something ~ instead, Tarja had a high-pitched, bombastic voice that was already very dramatic and classical. She surprised us completely.” Tarja had more musical training than the boys, but working in the studio was a new experience for her as well. “For the first time in my life, I really had to give it my best shot in the studio. I was like, “Wow, I’m all on my own here and no one’s gonna help me!’ I was so nervous and excited. Then when they told me, ‘Everything’s gonna go on tape from now on’, I was shaking in my shoes ~ although it was just a demo and we had no future plans or anything. Oh, it was such an exciting time.” “Tarja’s only concern was whether or not her voice would suit the music, because we'd been expecting a somewhat poppier voice, you know, maybe some- thing like Sarah Brightman’, Tero recalls. “Tarja kept asking if it’s a bad thing that she sings pretty loud at some points, and I had to admit, ‘Yeah, I'm having slight problems with the compressor...” After the initial shock, the guys pulled themselves together and realized what a treasure they had in their hands. Tarja’s grandiose, dramatic sound im- mediately found its biggest fans. 45“Yeah, we were pretty psyched”, laughs Tero. “I guess ‘Etidinen’ turned out the best, and it was also recorded on the latter demo that was released as Angels Fall First. Tasja's performance was even better on the first demo. We also came up with the idea of using the ‘orchestra hit’ sound, a new thing in Metal at the time. Children of Bodom adopted it right in the beginning, too, but we did it before them. There were a couple of theme changes with really weak arrangements, so ‘we put some orchestrated buzz there to make them flow better. In fact, we added all kinds of bomb effects to the parts that didn’t seem to work — acoustic guitars, keyboards and bombs! There were three songs on the demo with the average duration of about five minutes. We worked on the project over a long period of time, but the keyboards were done in maybe a month's time during the weekends. ‘Then we recorded the guitars in a couple of days, and finally Tarja came in and did the vocals in a day. I think we mixed the demo during that same day — not that it was mixed that much, we just added some echo and stuff.” Tt seems that Nightwish had a fair share of good luck along the way. “People often think that the whole concept was carefully planned”, Tuomas says. “Like, take some Heavy Metal, add some atmospheric sounds and throw in some opera vocals, but I can honestly say it was just pure luck. We just did that three-song demo and it turned out pretty nice. Three songs of acoustic guitar, flute, Tarja’s vocals, keyboards, and nothing else. These two girls, Anni Summala and Anna- Mari Pekkinen, played the flutes. Everything Nightwish originally strived for can be heard on that demo, but personally, it was a huge accomplishment.” The first Nightwish demo was never officially released, a fact that makes Emppu sigh with relief. “Fortunately, we didn't send them anywhere! I guess the demo might've been decent enough for distribution if we'd recorded it all over again. I mean, it definitely was something different, with the opera style female vocals and everything, but production-wise, it just wasn't very good.” “The master was recorded on a cassette, and I think there are less than ten tapes in existence”, says Tuomas. “They had no covers or anything and we never sold them anywhere. Three or four tapes were sent out — probably to Century Media, Massacre and Spinefarm — but we didn't get a single answer. We also sent one copy to be reviewed in the Finnish music magazine Soundi, and their analysis was pretty legendary.” The demo review read: This is some sort of Prog Rock, combining ethereal elements with partly clas- sical singing. The vocals are great and there's no criticizing the playing either, but whether the songs in their cleverness and abundance of atmosphere actually work is a trickier question altogether. 46‘The band writes: “We hope to attract the attention of record companies’, but Lam quite sure that the labels concerned with selling records are not ready to take a risk with such marginal stuff. There’ no chance of airplay, which, in a way, is a shame, ~ Juxxa Junt rita, Sounpr 4/97 In the band’s jargon, the basic content of the review was immortalized in the line “shitty band, shitty equipment, no commercial potential!” As soon as Tuomas got out of the army, the band returned to the Huvikeskus xtudio. On April 19, 1997, they started working on a demo of seven songs, a pro- cess that lasted for “probably a month”. When the demo was ready, Tuomas was ulready busy with his other band. “Tuomas went on tour with Nattvindens Grit und Babylon Whores”, Jukka says. “And while he was on the road, we got the word that we'd gotten a record deal.” 473: Onto the Elvenpath —— HEN Tuomas LEFT for the European tour with Nattvindens Grit, he hadn't thought of shopping for a deal with the Nightwish demo, and it seems that the fact that they got signed was yet another stroke of luck. Touring with Nattvindens Grat was the band Babylon Whores, in which then- Spinefarm Records A&R and current manager of Nightwish, Ewo “Meichem” Pohjola, played rhythm guitar. After much hesitation Tuomas finally played the demo for him. “The first time I heard Nightwish was on the Babylon Whores European tour in May 1997”, Ewo recalls. “The headliner was the Dutch Electro-Goth band Wish, and the support bands were Babylon Whores and Nattvindens Grit, in which Teemu Kautonen was the guitarist and Tuomas played keyboards. There were some other guys too, some of them still total teenagers.” One of the above-mentioned “teenagers” was the quiet and shy bassist Sami Vanskii, who later became the bass player for Nightwish. According to his band mates at the time, Sami was already a legend in his twenties when it came to drinking. Antti Litmanen of Babylon Whores had to play the bass once dur- ing the Nattvindens soundcheck because no one could wake up Sami, who had passed out backstage. He always handled his job on gigs, though: Tapio Wilska, the Nattvindens Grit singer at the time, remembers Sami could play so well even in the most unbelievable state of intoxication that you would not even notice anything was out of the ordinary. 49‘A quiet man in other respects, Sami was usually the only one telling the truth if the arrangements or the playing itself were less than satisfactory. On the Nattvindens tour, Sami quarreled with drummer Ilkka Leinonen over some in- significant thing, and the two ended up settling their disagreement with a punch- up. After the conflict was resolved, they got on with the tour as if nothing had happened. As the nightliner bus made its way through Europe, Ewo had ample time to do some talent-scouting for Spinefarm. “I had taken a big cardboard box and a plastic bag full of demos with me”, Ewo recalls. “Several hundred demos. There were 28 of us in the same bus for those two weeks on the road, and we were kill- ing time by listening to the tapes. The jury knew no mercy: if the first 20 seconds didn't convince us, someone would shout, ‘Shite! and the tape would fly out the bus window. Then we'd listen to the next one. The highways of Holland and Germany were fucking abounding with those demos! I probably shouldn't reveal this, but I think Theatre of Tragedy was one of the bands getting the window treatment.” Witnessing the ruthless A&R actions made Tuomas almost abandon his plans to play the Nightwish tape to the bus inquisition, but luckily Wilska man- aged to spirit him up enough to present the child of his mind to the others. “I remember how we had to prep Tuomas into it. He was just completely down about it and thought he couldn't risk playing it to Ewo because he was sure he wasn't gonna like it”, says Wilska. “It took maybe three hours for us to convince him to walk to the front of the bus, play the demo and face the music. ‘Tuomas kept on saying he hasn't the nerve, that he simply can't do it, but we finally persuaded him into mumbling out the words, ‘We've made a demo’, and putting the tape in the player.” Ewo remembers the incident well. “Tuomas came to me all shy and cau- tious and said he has a tape, too. Three songs of acoustic stuff. I listened to it and thought it was pretty all right. The majority of the demos on board were Black Metal, and Nightwish was so different from, say, Kurzum, the German Burzum clone that had just flown out the window with the others. During those two weeks of demo hell someone would often cry, ‘Fuck no, I can’t take any more of this shit, let’s listen to Nightwish’! So we listened to the demo almost daily, and finally I suggested to Tuomas that they make an album for Spinefarm. Tuomas was like, ‘Really, an album? I don’t know if we have enough songs!” ‘Wilska remembers how everyone on the bus listened to “The Carpenter” for days on end. “Ewo sat on the bus drinking beer and musing, ‘Mmm-yeah, spin it again... Mmm-yeah, there’s something here. Pretty good stuff, pretty good stuff’ During that tour we probably listened ‘The Carpenter’ over 200 times. I haven't 50much listened to those first Nightwish songs afterwards, but I think I know every rustle on that three-song demo by heart!” In the end, the hopes of many budding bands were cruelly crushed along with their demos. “We had a gig in Bischofswerda, and Ewo still had 200 demos left to listen to”, Wilska laughs. “We were loading the bus with the Babylon guys when Ewo just blew his fuse. The East Club in Bischofswerda is located on top of this damn big hill, with a highway stretching under it. Ewo went into some kind of psychosis, and yelling, ‘'ve had enough!’ he hurled the whole box down into the middle of the highway. It was like from an American movie: as soon as the pile of demos hit the asphalt, a truck came and- WROOOOM! - drove over and crushed the box. I guess the only songs that we listened all the way through on the tour were Nightwish’s ‘The Carpenter’ and Egotrippi’s ‘Unihiekkaa’. A terrifying page of my existence!” The three songs Tuomas had with him on tour were “The Carpenter”, “As- tral Romance”, and “Angels Fall First”. “It was specifically ‘The Carpenter’ that caught Ewo's ear”, Tuomas recalls. “That convinced him to propose us a deal, naturally depending on if the Spinefarm boss, Riku Paakkénen, agreed.” Returning home, Tuomas couldn’t have brought a better souvenir for his band mates. “Tuomas arrived in Kitee happy as a clam and said we have to make another demo”, Tarja laughs. “You never know, we might even get a real record deal!’ he enthused. ‘I’ve been talking to this Ewo-guy about it’. Well, a record deal had never even crossed my mind. We agreed to have rehearsals in Kitee, and there I was, a church musician, waiting for the band guys to arrive. Tuomas already knew the others better than I did, but of course I knew of them, the way that everyone in Kitee knows everyone else.” Emppu was stunned, too. “It definitely felt good to land that deal. You couldn't really think any further ahead when you were that young — it was just cool to be able to play on an album. Today, bands examine their contracts very carefully, but back in the day, we just went straight for it. We didn’t know any better. We hardly even read the deal before scribbling our names on it. It’s a good thing everything went well, because it could’ve gone straight to hell for all I know!” Nightwish started to practice in earnest. Even in those early days, Tarja felt the band was extremely serious about their music. “That’s maybe the one thing that held us together and the reason we kept doing it. There was always a twinkle of humor in our eye, and on the surface, we did everything kind of playfully, but deep down we took the music very seriously. When I saw how serious Tuomas was about it, I braced myself, too, like, ‘Damn, we're not fooling around anymore!” Tuomas has always put his whole heart into what he does, and that’s something 5rI really appreciate.” ‘Tarja admits she was scared at first to give herself up to Tuomas’ musical vision. “At that point, I really didn’t know Tuomas, but I completely put myself on the line, the inexperienced git] that I was. I had no clue about Heavy Metal, and that whole scene was so alien that to even think about it was strange. I'd only just begun as a classical singer and I felt very lonely. I had to approach everything cautiously and solemnly, and it took years before I could act natural on stage. In some ways, I was so alone with everything — I got no support whatsoever from the guys. I was just this naive girl from Kitee, and for many years, I didn’t know what I was doing or what this Nightwish thing was all about.” Time has not dispelled Tuomas’ self-criticism regarding their first songs. “I eventually sent the whole demo to Spinefarm, but because those three songs were the best, I sent them first. The later stuff included ‘gems’ like ‘Once upon a ‘Troubadour’, ‘Return to the Sea’, and ‘Lappi — Lapland’, Ewo listened to them and said that I'd still have to go back and record a couple of more songs. He told me that it’s a good start, but the stuff doesn’t quite cut it yet. According to Ewo, some of the songs on the full-length demo were “from a different world altogether”. If you were about to record for Spinefarm — a Metal label — the songs simply needed some oomph. As it turned out, Tuomas had already written some heavier stuff, includ- ing “Elvenpath”, “Beauty and the Beast”, “Tutankhamen”, and “Know Why the Nightingale Sings.” “Those four songs were totally different from the rest”, Tuomas recalls. “It wasn't intentional, they just came out that way. We found our naive yet healthy ambition then, like, ‘Let’s do one better and knock ‘em dead!’ That’s why the tranquil, acoustic sounds gave way to more bombastic, dramatic stuff. We re- corded the new songs as requested and scrapped the two weakest tracks, ‘Once Upon a Troubadour’ and ‘Return to the Sea’.” The recording sessions at Tero Kinnunen’s Caverock Studios entailed ex- tensive distress for Emppu. “We had already done demos there with our earlier bands, so I wasn't too nervous, but it definitely was a new experience, you know — having someone constantly watch over you while you play and having to play so damn good because we were doing an album. I already knew Tero but when I was recording some solo for the hundredth time, I started worrying that maybe he’s pissed off at me. Of course it’s his job and he’s got lots of patience — I’ve never seen him blow his top — but still it’s so much more fun nowadays when I can record stuff all by myself. I’ll just roll on the floor and let it rip!” ‘The second studio session took place in September. “Jukka screwed up his leg during that one”, Tero Kinnunen recalls. “We were doing “Tutankhamen’. 52We'd gone through it maybe once when Jukka came running down these really evil stairs. I guess he was in too much of a hurry, because soon we heard a horrible ning and Jukka shouted, ‘Fuck!’ You could see it right away that his ankle wasn’t ukuy — it was swollen to the size of an orange. We tried to give him first aid and poured ice-cold water on the leg, but it didn't do shit. We had to take him to the honpital.” Undiscouraged, the band decided that they'd cut the rest of the tracks even W they had to roll Jukka behind the drum kit in a wheelchair. “We went to the Joctor’s to bandage my ankle and started wondering what the hell are we gonna lo now’, Jukka recalls. “In the end, I played ‘Know Why the Nightingale Sings’ with that cracked-up leg. When the pain became too much, I decided Td play everything but bass drums for ‘Tutankhamen’ ~ I did snares, hi-hats and cym- uals, and afterwards we did bass drums with keyboards. It was really desperate, necause we had to find a usable bass drum sound and capture that on tape. Sur- prisingly, the final mix turned out pretty good, as we managed to trig an alright round to it” Still, there was plenty of polishing to be done. “The tom breaks in “Tut- unkhamen’ kinda sucked, so Jukka cut the drum track once more ~ except for the uss drums”, Tero remembers. “We did the kick drum with keyboards, and of course we didn't have ProTools or anything at the time. We just edited it with a 16-track. If you listen closely, you can hear that the final outcome doesn't sound no hot” “There’s one spot in ‘Tutankhamen’ where Emppu and I play the keyboards”, ‘Tero continues. “ Tuomas was still in the army, and I had to mix the songs togeth- er with Emppu. In this particular song, there’s an oriental-sounding wah-wah guitar lead, and we thought it needed some kind of ornamentation — some weird noise in the background ~ so Emppu played a melody with the keyboards and I added some warped chords. We actually managed to create a damn big sound.” In those days, the Nightwish gang was quite free to experiment with things. “Back then, Tuomas didr’t have the nerve to open his mouth even if the guitars totally sucked ass”, Emppu laughs. “Later he picked up on it though. He won't let us get away with ridiculous stuff anymore.” Tarja remembers how their musical style changed overnight. “I don't know where Tuomas found the ingredients for the new songs, because they sounded no different from the early material. I really liked them from the very beginning. Such beautiful melodies. You could hear by the second demo that the boy truly had a gift.” “Another fanny thing about the demo was that we put the click tracks down first”, Tuomas says. “I played all the keyboard parts on top of the click, and the 53