Fugazi Posted January 12, 2021 Share Posted January 12, 2021 Ok I just woke up to this, and I'm... shell-shocked. I guess I'll take a few hours to digest the news before commenting further. But I'm sad for Marko and the group. Quote Dear people. I am leaving Nightwish and my public life. For a quite a few years now I haven’t been able to feel validated by this life. We have streaming company big guns demanding 9/5 work from artists of inspiration while unfairly sharing the profits. Even among the artists. We’re the banana republic of the music industry. Biggest tour promoters squeeze percentages even from our own merchandise while paying dividends to Middle East. Apparently some theocrasies can take the money from the music that would get you beheaded or jailed there without appearing as hypocrites. Just a couple of examples here. This past year forced me to stay home and think. And I found myself very disillusioned about these and a lot of things. I found out that I am in need of that validation. For me to write, sing and play, I need to find some new reasons and inspirations. ”My Walden” so to speak. And it’s even in my book that I’m a chronic depressive. It’s dangerous for me and the people around me, if I continue. Some of the thoughts a while back were dark. Don’t worry, I’m fine. I have my two sons, a wife, the rest of the family, friends, a dog and lots of love. And I don’t think that I’ll be gone for good. Conspiracy is the word of the day. For the people who like them I need to say that my 55th birthday is now on 14th of Jan and I’ve certainly done my time for now. Blaming for instance Tuomas is an insult to both him and my free thinking. This is a very sad thing to all of us too. Have a care please. But of course now we’ll know, if some go there on purpose. There are a couple of things agreed on that I will do on 2021. Otherwise I kindly and with respect ask the media, bands, artists projects etc. to not ask me for anything within the next year. I have some reinventing to do. I hope to tell you about it on 2022. It’s not a promise though. I am so sorry about this. Marko Hietala P.S. Tony Iommi is an exception to the “no contact whatsoever”. Childhood hero takes a precedence. Spoiler O Find out when Nightwish sacked booking agent John Finberg. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mabla Posted January 13, 2021 Share Posted January 13, 2021 Pfffff......wt#.......complete surprise......what to say........no words......disappointed......incoherent and strange letter to me........don't understand this.......what is really going on (in his mind)...... 🤘 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fugazi Posted January 14, 2021 Author Share Posted January 14, 2021 I'm very sorry for Marko that he was feeling so bad that he had to leave the band to find inner peace. I do hope that this will help him find answers and come back to music in a better state of mind. And I hope he finds all the help he needs to overcome his struggles. And I very much hope that he will come back to music eventually, it would be such a huge loss otherwise. I find it hard to swallow personnaly, as a selfish fan. Marko was such a huge part of Nightwish's uniqueness, charisma and character. I will miss the powerful voice, the banter and the quirky humour. In my mind he was a leader in the band during the difficult years when Anette was having a hard time keeping up. I definitely need to read his biography now and find out more about him. It doesn't seem like the band saw this coming, I mean if they have to postpone the streaming show announced only weeks ago it definitely wasn't something they were planning for. And I don't think that Marko is ever coming back to Nightwish, he didn't leave that door open. I mean, he could have decided to take a break for a year and consider his options but no, he resigned instead. Not to blame him, he had to do what he thought best for his mental health and moral compass. The tone of his letter is not what I expected though. No good words for the band he had been a part of for 20 years, I feel only disappointment and bitterness. It sounds like there may have been some bad blood brewing between him and the band (members? management?) Perhaps we'll know more a few years down the road, when things settle down. Part 2 of the the Nighwish biography is overdue... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fugazi Posted February 7, 2021 Author Share Posted February 7, 2021 New upload on the official NW channel: "A classic never uploaded on our official channel. In honour of @Marko Hietala's time with us. We wish him nothing but the best in his health and struggles. This is The Islander taken from the Tampere show of "Vehicle Of Spirit"." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciLVx51IZjM I'm not used to the song starting cold without the banter with the crowd! 🙂 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fugazi Posted December 25, 2021 Author Share Posted December 25, 2021 Here's an opinion piece about Marko's departure that I only discovered recently. It's an interesting, if somewhat pessimistic, view of the consequences of Marko's leaving on the future of the band. Reflections on the plight of Nightwish David Bentley, May 3 2021 https://www.nordicmusicreview.com/post/feature-article-reflections-on-the-plight-of-nightwish-finland I’ve sat on this article for several months while I weighed up the events of January when Nightwish’s bassist and vocalist Marko Hietala suddenly and unexpectedly announced he was quitting the band, on the eve of his 55th birthday. This is as big as it gets in the world of metal. It’s the equivalent of, say, John Lennon opting to part company with the Beatles, Robbie Williams walking out on Take That, or Ginger Spice bidding au revoir to the Spice Girls. I still can’t really draw any meaningful conclusions but I’ll give it a go. Time is of the essence now as Nightwish start their year-long delayed world tour with two 90-minute global virtual online shows on 28thand 29th May. It is conceivable, though I hope I’m wrong of course, that this could be their last tour. Hietala is a 20-year veteran of the symphonic metal band which celebrates its 25th birthday this year, and has become something of an institution, not only for his bass playing but his vocal contribution, both solely and dueting fiercely with his three female counterparts; most famously perhaps with Tarja Turunen on Nightwish’s cover of the theme to ‘The Phantom of the Opera’, one which even committed fans of the world’s most renowned musical respect and admire. In true Nightwish fashion Hietala posted his resignation notice online for all to see. In it he said he was not only leaving the band but also “public life”, complaining that he could no longer “validate” his life and taking a swing at the industry, targeting specifically streaming, profit sharing and “paying dividends to Middle East… (where) some theocracies can take the money from the music that would get you beheaded or jailed there without appearing as hypocrites” (sic). It’s a muddled message couched in fractured, creaky grammar which suggests he wasn’t really thinking straight when he wrote it. But there is much more to it. He acknowledges that it is common knowledge he is a chronic depressive, saying, “It’s dangerous for me and the people around me, if I continue. Some of the thoughts a while back were dark.” Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. Finland still has the highest suicide rate of all the Nordic countries and they are all bad. And that was before the pandemic. (Which begs the question of course, how many other musicians are in this state?). He ends, “I am so sorry about this.” It sounds like an epitaph. We just hope he has the support he needs. In a statement, the band said it left them with “some difficult decisions and choices to be made”. I’ll bet it did, and compounded by having to discuss them by Zoom with two band members located in Sweden and the UK. The most pressing question is who replaces Hietala on male vocals? Nightwish say they intend to use a session bassist for the tour and will make an announcement about that “soon”. Although technically a tenor - and an exceptionally good one, he won the Finnish version of the ‘Masked Singer’ competition in December (which doesn’t quite square with being depressed, I suppose) – he can also turn on a deep bass voice like a tap and can growl and grunt with the best of them; an essential part of the armoury for a metal vocalist. Possibly it could mean the Englishman Troy Donockley plays a greater vocal role. A full-time member of the band since 2013 his significance has grown and he can sing for sure as he proved on the latest album,’Human. : II : Nature’. (April 2020) on which he performed lead vocal on one track. Or perhaps band founder Tuomas Holopainen could help out. He added supporting vocals in the early days. Finding a full time singing bass player of Hietala’s quality might present Nightwish with a big problem and fortune can favour the brave as it did with Genesis when they had to replace Peter Gabriel in 1975. Having listened to hundreds of aspiring candidates they ultimately turned to their own drummer. Perhaps this is Donockley’s Phil Collins moment? But there is something deeper to all this. For years the prospect of losing their lead female vocalist (again) has haunted Nightwish’s global army of fans. After the final performance of their ‘End of an Era’ toursupporting the album ‘Once’ in Helsinki in October 2005 the male band members infamously and publicly sacked founder member Tarja Turunen, accusing her of ‘diva’ like behavior and of being more interested in herself and money-making than the band itself. That decision polarised fans in a manner that persists to this day and lo and behold they did the same thing again seven years later, this time to the Swede Anette Olzon, while she languished in a U.S. hospital bed with crippling stomach pains. Something tells me that if they repeated that today, in the age of female emancipation they’d be banished to the Arctic Circle forever. And yet the fear of current singer Floor Jansen going the same way has lingered throughout her nine-year tenure. Let’s face it, they’ve got form. Not that the strapping, physically impressive Dutch six-footer would be a pushover and even if they had any grounds at all to dismiss her (which they don’t); they’d have a fight on their hands to say the least. And that is why Nightwish fans have been blindsided by this shock, out of left field, Marko Hietala debacle; why they’ve been hit for six. It’s like an official announcement that the Covid pandemic is over, followed by another one five minutes later about an untreatable variant of Ebola sweeping the planet. The real possibility now is that Nightwish might be about to face up to its own ‘End of an Era’. Much will depend on the permanent choice of Hietala’s replacement and of how he (or she) fits into the overall scheme of things, including song composition. These are big boots to fill. And on how the other band members adapt accordingly. It’s not all doom and gloom. Many people believe Floor Jansen is the best thing that ever happened to Nightwish, and she came on the scene 14 years after they started. Who knows who will follow Hietala? They don’t rush replacements unless they have to and the next bassist might be better still. But the message is, see this band while you can, just in case, whether it is one of these two forthcoming virtual shows or an in-person one (they begin on 31st July). I was a latecomer to Nightwish, I’ve only seen them once and it was a slightly sub-par show by their standard, the 74th out of 75 across the globe in six months. I was still mesmerised. They are the biggest band in the Nordics, the only one I can think of which can fill arenas from Beijing to Buenos Aires and all points in between, except peculiarly, in the U.S., where many people don’t seem to ‘get’ symphonic metal. If they’d ever properly ‘broken’ North America they’d be the biggest band in the world, bar none. In the last few months videos have emerged of their 2018 ‘Decades’ tour, including this one from Buenos Aires, where the fans always behave as if Messi has just scored a late hat trick in the World Cup Final to crush Brazil. It’s a two-hour show, brilliantly staged and filmed. I point you to the final two songs, which are two of their three famous 10 minute-plus metal-prog ‘opuses’, namely ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ (about evolution and the future of the planet, and a celebration of life [“we were here”) – that’s Jansen grunting at 1:47:00 by the way, what a woman - and the show-concluding ‘Ghost Love Score’ (original sin), which for my money is the finest song written so far this century, by anyone. The ending is always fabulous and in this case it is orgasmic. Enjoy. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fugazi Posted September 26, 2023 Author Share Posted September 26, 2023 I almost had a heart attack, for some reason the Nightwish Twitter feed is scrambled today and the first thing appearing on top is Marko's resignation letter. I didn't notice the time stamp and I thought that this was another 'Open Letter' day. 😲 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fugazi Posted March 26 Author Share Posted March 26 Ibagenscast in Brazil has a new interview with Marko during his South American tour. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV9t0EZhVXE Of mention, he states that neither the music nor the band members caused him to leave Nightwish, but the 'business side' of the band. Also that he has kept in messaging touch with some of his former band mates, but that his job is socially isolating. Metal Injection quotes him: Quote "Hmm, I would consider it [reuniting with Nightwish]. But I think that the organization there would have to be looked very carefully into it and some of it would have to be dismantled. Because the business side and how the people there work, they are one of the big reasons why I left." "In all the bands that I've been [in], I found out that I'm probably the most kind of courageous person there is and therefore also I have the inner strength to be the most honest and most fair and the one who upholds the justice between the people and taking care of everyone most. And that is something that I saw, the last years, were lacking. So, these kind of things would have to be taken care of. "But I mean, [Nightwish] was a big part of my life and I always, always backed up the music that we did because I love to do music that is versatile and ambitious with a lot of all kinds of atmospheres of all the world, from sensitive and soft into the big and pounding metal and all that. "So, musically, I have no regrets at all. I'm happy and proud to have been a part of it. But, yeah, the organizational situation and the attitudes and who talks to whom and about what, those are things that I would totally dismantle and make into a transparent situation." https://metalinjection.net/news/marko-hietala-says-nightwishs-business-side-is-one-of-the-biggest-reasons-he-quit-the-band Also in an unusual move, Kai has commented on a similar report published on the Inferno Magazine Facebook page. Kai posted in Finnish saying that "Oh, that's how it went. I think we've been in different bands at the same time..." https://www.facebook.com/InfernoMagazine/posts/pfbid0yRhcwz1UkH9Rz9QmNErZDRbo7W9kiaRdBWPLJ12AmWd8Uc2FLEPV6BuaWyd98Xool Another recent interview with Tomar Uma: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36Q30N3W4wg 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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