Timo Tolkki (Revolution Renaissance)
May 2008
Hi Timo, how are you doing these days?
I’m feeling pretty sad today. I don’t know if you read the statement from the guys yesterday because that’s the reason I’m sad. It’s very aggressive and violent and affected me very deeply. It feels good to talk actually and do these interviews.
When you had the first break up in late 2003 many people thought that it was just to make media attention...
The thing is that I have a sickness called manic depression and if you don’t treat this sickness and if you don’t take medicines it makes you behave in very bizarre ways. You can be doing very strange things and you don’t feel any shame about anything. At that time I had one of those things going on and that’s why there were a lot of strange things happening. It was altogether with the new deal with Sanctuary because there was a lot of power fight in the band. It wasn’t any media thing. Apart from that of course media was very interested about that, which was very sad to me. I would have liked the media interest in us because of our music not because I’m doing crazy things. It seemed to me that the media was more interested about me doing crazy things than me doing beautiful songs. Of course many people thought that this was planned but actually what happened in that time is that I almost committed suicide because I had a total nervous breakdown in the spring of 2004. I was in a mental hospital for a week and they put me into medication for long to treat manic depression and that helped me to become more normal in this respect. (Laughs) Many artists have the same sickness. Kurt Cobain had this as well. It’s very hard for some people to understand.
Then you went on to reunite the band two years later. Was the atmosphere in Stratovarius ever good again?
I don’t think it was ever the same again after 2004. We had a contract and we needed to put an album out. The record we did was put together from so many pieces that it just didn’t feel right.
So you don’t really like that album, right?
I hate that record. It’s awful. It’s completely terrible. We should have never done that. It has nothing to do with Stratovarius. It’s a really pathetic record. This is how I feel about it. When I listen to that record there’s nothing about the message of Stratovarius. Okay, there’s a song called United but we were not united so it wasn’t honest in that way. There was a lot of fakeness there. Also the melodies are not that great. There are a couple of okay songs but when you compare it to Infinite or Elements Part 1 it’s miles away.
When did you realise that you can’t go on with the band like this?
The whole process took about a year for me. It was a gradual thing. It started from small things. There were always tensions since the beginnings but we could cope with them. Many times on tours I was isolated from everybody. Maybe the biggest problem in the band was that I am a spiritual person and all the other guys are not. This could be a problem and it was a problem many times because being a very spiritual person I always try to see things in a positive way and everything to me is energy. The tours just had a lot of bad energy, there was a lot of complaining about things. I felt that this band was not really thankful for what it has achieved because of complains like “What time we eat?” and stuff like this. I mean who cares when we eat? Then when we did the Stratovarius album it was a very painful and difficult album to make. I went through a lot of changes during that period. Then we did the world tour for that album, which was like 120 gigs and during that tour it started to get clear to me that something was extremely wrong in the band, which didn’t appear so much outside of the band. Everybody in the band is a professional musician and we did a good show anyway but I felt unexplainable sadness all the time. At that time I still didn’t know what it was but now I know that that tour was actually a farewell tour. At some level I knew it already back then. For instance… Jörg Michael came to Stratovarius from Saxon and his attitude at the time on that tour was very arrogant towards Kotipelto and me. He was very aggressive many times. He was wearing Saxon shirts when we played live. It was like this “fuck you” attitude. His drum technician was very drunk one evening and he came to me and he told me that Jörg will leave the band after the tour. And when we played in Seattle Jörg told straight in my face that he thinks that Stratovarius is over. But he went on with the tour and didn’t quit the band. After the tour I started composing songs for the new record, which was supposed to be this record called Revolution Renaissance. My idea was to write this very melodic power metal album that Stratovarius fans deserve. The songwriting was very smooth but there was this strange feeling in the band all the time. We did some summer festivals in 2007 and it was when we played in Wacken and we were on stage playing the same songs that we played a thousand times before and I looked around at the guys and suddenly realised that this band has no soul. That is a machine. It is no fun anymore. We are doing this for the money. When I realised that I’m doing music for the money that was when I decided to stop this band because that’s not the reason why I’m doing music.
How did you end up releasing these songs under the name of Revolution Renaissance? Why not Timo Tolkki solo?
The process was like this: we played our final gig in Madrid in August 2007 and I knew already at that time that this will be the last show. They guys didn’t know. That was a very hard show for me to play. Then in October 2007 I told the guys that I’m breaking up the band. I told them all the reasons. I was very polite and I explained that I just have to do this because I have to follow my heart. I told them that last year was really bad in that band and there’s nothing we can do because human relationships sometimes grow to places you don’t want them to go. Like with a wife or a girlfriend, sometimes you just have to have a divorce. At that point I was doing my rock opera and I have so much fun with that and that gave me another perspective of how art can be when there’s no restrictions, when there’s no tensions, when there’s no underlying hatred. They of course didn’t accept my decision, in fact they were so against it but I told them that this is what I have to do. After I finished my rock opera early this year I started thinking again about what should I do. Do I wanna have a band? Do I ever wanna play metal again? What do I want? I’m 42. What do I want to do in the next ten years? You are thinking about these things when you are pushing 40. (Laughs) I came to the conclusion that I want to have a band. I knew I had these great songs and mentally I was in that kind of a situation where I didn’t want to go through that process of finding new members that I’m doing now. So I tried to figure out that with whom I wanted to do that album. The first guy that came into my mind was of course Michael Kiske. I contacted him and I was very happy that he liked my lyrics and my music and he agreed to sing five songs. When you listen to him singing the title track the emotion he puts in there is unbelievable. This album was so easy to make because the energy was so good. There were no bad vibes because everybody was fresh. The drummer recorded everything in one day. I recorded my guitars in two days including the solos. I mixed it in six days. The whole album was done in two weeks. The Stratovarius albums always took four months. I usually don’t listen to my own records but when I listen to this album I just love hearing Michael Kiske singing my songs. Then I started thinking that I need to find a line-up for this band and I put some advertisements on MySpace and the emails started to come. Now I’m going through like a thousand emails from different musicians.
Why did you need more singers when you had Kiske doing the songs?
I wanted him to sing the whole album but you know how he is. He is very picky about what to sing. He told me that some of the songs he cannot sing because they are too metal and too heavy. This is one thing that I think has been made a little bit too big in the press because nevertheless Michael Kiske is telling to metal people I still think that we should try to see through that somehow and we should not take it too personally. I think we should give him a credit for what he has given to us with albums like the Keepers. He has given us so much. He’s on this trip or whatever that is and he needs to project this ideology that his to metal fans, I don’t know why. But I just don’t feel good about people talking bad about him nevertheless he has said many hard thing. He has given us so much that I’m thankful for that and I just love the guy and I love his voice. I think he’s a great singer.
The other singers you picked for Revolution Renaissance are Tobias Sammet and Pasi. How come?
Well, Tobi was another choice because he owed me a favour from the early Edguy days. I helped him a lot in the beginning of Edguy. I was producing Vain Glory Opera and he was asking a lot of questions about me at that time because he was just starting his career. At that time he was also playing bass and I told him, “Stop playing bass, you should be a frontman. Your band needs a frontman.” And he stopped playing bass and concentrated on the singing and it made hell of a lot of difference to the live shows. Now he’s one of the best frontmen out there. He’s a really good entertainer. I called him up and told him that I would need a little favour for the album. He was very busy so it was very difficult but then he did it. And I asked the ex-Thunderstone singer Pasi to sing the other songs, the little bit harder ones, which his voice fits better. He’s more like a Dio type of voice.
And how about you singing a song or two?
Yeah, that’s what many people ask. I don’t really know. It’s been so long since I’ve been singing. I don’t really see myself in a band situation being a guitar player and the vocalist because it takes a lot away from guitar playing. I have been singing on my second solo album but in a metal band I don’t see it because I think a metal band needs a frontman who is not restricted to an instrument.
The Revolution Renaissance album pretty much reminds me of the old Stratovarius albums. Is this how you envision the future of this band?
That’s a good question because I usually don’t envision the future of anything in music. (Laughs) Being honest to God, every song I’ve ever written I have never planned. When I was writing the Revolution Renaissance album for Stratovarius my only goal was to write a melodic power metal album. That was the first time when I actually decided on something before started writing. Before that I just went to my composing place and started writing songs and whatever came out came out. As for the future of Revolution Renaissance it will be the same. When I find the guys I will write the songs and make the record and it is what it is. (Laughs) One thing you can always count on with my music and that is that it has melodies because I’m very much a lover of melodies in music.
You are in the middle of finding your band members. What are the criteria for the singer? What kind of voice are you looking for?
I want somebody who is a very good frontman and who’s able to really work the crowd very well. I need somebody that has personality. I don’t want to have Michael Kiske clones or Kotipelto clones. I would like to have somebody with a personality. That’s tough of course. One of the criteria is that the musicians must be unknown, that is very important.
Are you looking for guys from Finland or it doesn’t really matter?
It doesn’t matter where they are from. I mean Stratovarius was from three different countries so it really doesn’t matter these days. I got several emails from Argentina to Iceland. (Laughs) I really have like over a thousand emails and read them all and listen to the samples all.
I bet you don’t want a female singer…
A female singer? Are you serious? (Laughs) No, I’m not.
Do you expect fans comparing the music of Revolution Renaissance to Stratovarius’?
I guess so because I wrote 99% of the Stratovarius songs so in that way it’s kind of natural for people to compare them to each other. People seem to have a need to compare. Some people compare this song to that song. People are telling these things to me, like “This sounds like Soul Of A Vagabond” and I don’t really understand that kind of a thinking. It seems to me that some people have a need to find faults in the songs like it’s a crime when you do something similar. It’s like a music police kind of feeling with some people, which I don’t really understand because music to me is art and I don’t want any authority having anything to do with my music. But of course people compare. I mean Stratovarius was 23 years of my life and I don’t deny that. I’m proud of that and proud of what we achieved. It was a long road and it gave us so much and I’m very very thankful for our fans because they gave us a great support. Of course I will always play Stratovarius songs with Revolution Renaissance.
Do you plan going out on tour as soon as you have the line-up together or you want to wait until the next album?
I’ll definitely wait until the second album. I don’t want to tour for several reasons but one of the reasons is that I want to give Stratovarius fans time to recover from this because this generates a lot of emotions and it’s the same with me. Some people might think that it’s easy for me but it’s not easy. I’m going through the same emotions. I’m very sad about this. I didn’t want thins to happen. I want to wait until I find the right line-up and then we make a new record and then we go on tour. I want to go to the studio very quickly, probably already in August.
Do you feel having the backing of the Stratovarius fanbase or they think that you destroyed the band?
As always in these cases it’s divided, which I never wanted because you shouldn’t divide, you should unite. I try to tell the fans that they should try to support everybody in Stratovarius through this difficult time. I try to tell the fans that there were reasons for this split. But after reading the statement of the other guys yesterday it is very hard that anymore. What they say there is very brutal and I’m very sad about that because I really didn’t want to have any fights and I’m not gonna have because my life philosophy is that you don’t respond aggression with aggression. I will never do this. The fans need some time to recover. Stratovarius has been around for so long that even the people don’t like the band are saying that it’s weird that it doesn’t exist anymore. People don’t like losing things in general, they feel kind of a fear of losing something. I’m going through the same emotions, one day I’m sad, one day I’m angry and I have to leave it behind somehow and move on. That’s the way it is.
Since 2004 you are considered one of the most troubled persons in heavy metal. How do you see your own personality?
I see myself as extremely sensitive human being. I see myself as a quite intelligent person. Without sounding arrogant I do think a lot about things. I deeply care about our environment, I deeply care about the future of mankind and I’ve always written songs about this. The Stratovarius message has always included love, peace, tolerance and these kind of things. On the other hand I’ve had a troubled life. When I was twelve my father committed suicide and this of course had a very big impact on my future but this also made me a musician. I have my illness maniac depression and I treat it with medicines, which helps me to live a sort of a normal life. The saddest thing is that my message, my personality and what I say, because I say things sometimes very straight, and some people kind of take this against me because I’m a very easy target for that. It is a very strange thing that I’ve spent about 20 years writing songs about love and peace and environmental issues and I get so much shit. There are people that actually laugh at values like love, human brotherhood and tolerance. This is something I don’t understand. But I think we are entering sort of a time where everybody think about these things because I think this time we will not get away with it that easy. I think we will learn the lesson that this time comes from nature and then it doesn’t matter anymore if Stratovarius is or isn’t. I’m really interested in these things and I know that for example three billion people that is half of the population of the world, lives with two dollars per day. That’s insane. While at the same time every year the government uses 800 billion dollars for armoury. These are insane figures. And this is what we should be concerned about and not if there’s Stratovarius. I’m really concerned about these things. Then you have to think, what’s the real guy? Am I the guy that the press has made me? Or am I the guy that you see in my songs and in my interviews? Many people are extremely surprised when they meet me because first of all I have a very soft voice and they think that I’m some kind of a monster. And then I start to explain my life philosophy about love and stuff and they are like, “Is this the guy we’ve been reading about?” But I can’t do anything about that because people and the media especially have a need to have the bad boys.