Dear Stratovarius
Fans,
It is time to
stop the silence and announce what some of you have already been speculating.
Stratovarius is no more.
Last October I
told the guys that I am stopping the band and told them the reasons why. This
letter is addressed to you, Stratovarius fans, who have supported the band for
so many years. I first thought that I would write just a very generelized,
typical ”music business” statement that basically never says anything. Then I
decided that you deserve to hear at least parts of the truth what has been
going on behind the scenes so you will be able to understand my decision
better.
All the time,
since TK and Jörg joined the band, there have been tensions and negativity
flying around. This has been concentrating on me, TK and Jörg. The reasons Jari Kainulainen was fired
some years back were so absurd that I am not even try to explain them here. If
I write a book one day, maybe then. Anyways, I think the seeds were planted
already back then, something like 12 years ago. There were many confrontations,
Jörg has been complaining to me about TK and TK complaining to me about Jörg.
At a times it was a mess, although of course, it never would show outside to
the fans. It is not my intention to disrespect TK and Jörg here. They
are both fundamentally good guys. Things just sometimes happen and
relationships go to directions we don’t want them to go. It’s like a divorce,
nobody wants it to happen but sometimes it is best for all so everyone can
continue their own lives. Plus I want to tell how things have been behind the
curtains. You always only see the good side anyway, you don’t really know what
is going on.
We had amazing
years, 14 records, 6 world tours with over a thousand shows all across the
Globe, 3 gold discs, a Finnish Grammy and almost 3 million records sold. I have arrived to my decision after
careful, long and rational thinking of over a year and I know it is the right
way for me. I just felt so bad being in Stratovarius. Something was terribly
wrong in there and nobody seemed to care.
The countdown
really started from the last Stratovarius album in 2005. At that time the
atmosphere in the band was extremely weird. I had spent most of 2004 recovering
from my nervous breakdown in April 2004 when I was hospitalized. It was at this
point when things started to change. Jens supported me immensely during 2004
with his phone calls. We then did that ”Stratovarius” album, which I think is
an awful album and went for the subsequent tour production. By that time it was
apparent to me that things really were bad. Nobody seemed to care about
anything. I had the idea to use projection screens and for that, you need to
produce graphics. I planned those and basically the whole show. Nobody seemed
to have any interest in it. It was more like, the less the better. The atmosphere at the rehearsals was
awful. Lauri Porra who had just joined the band was wondering what is going on
with this band. Jörg Michael came straight from Saxon to this tour wearing a
Saxon shirt during most of the shows. His attitude for most of the tour was
extremely arrogant, pretty much towards everybody. But especially towards me
and TK. And TK’s attitude towards
me was lukewarm and polite, but I could sense the hostility. Of course we as
professionals put on very good shows but it was more craftmanship and rehearsed
performance than a great united band playing emotionally from the heart. I think TK was always very bitter about
that he could not get his songs and/or lyrics on Strato records. I did not
understand this really cause he had/has his solo band where he could do what he
wanted. It took me many years to learn to simply tell him that I don’t like his
songwriting and lyrics and that the main difference between me and him is that
I am writing songs that end up being Strato songs while he is trying to write
Strato songs that end up being Kotipelto songs, which means they belong on a Kotipelto record. It is not easy to
say to someone that you don’t like his music. You guys and girls dont like all
music, neither do I. Neither does TK. I am not anyone to tell what is good and
what is bad music, but I do can tell what kind of music I like. And TK’s stuff
just doesn’t do it for me. I do have to say that I think he has written many
great songs as well during his solo career. Plus he probably would say the same
things about my songwriting. We are just very different. He has a very
different sense of humor than I have. Maybe the weirdest thing in Strato was that we never really were friends
in the band. I visited TK in 12 years perhaps 5 times. To me Jens was the
closest in the band and lately Lauri Porra, who is a wonderful guy. But none of
use was really ever real friends. It might be surprising to you but that is the
truth.
The tour continued and Jörg’s drum
roadie told me drunk that Jörg is leaving the band after the tour but he is
doing the tour cause ”he is a businessman”. I guess you could say that Jörg’s
attitude pretty much culminated what he said to me in Seattle on that tour. He
told me that he thinks the band is over. We tried to record, 3rd time, a live
DVD in Sao Paulo but could not use the shootings because we played so badly. It
was just plain awful. Although we rocked lot of crowds on that 120 date world
tour, still the overall vibe was very much like ”going to work”. Not for me
though. Not still at that point. But it felt to me that nobody’s heart was in
the band and it was just for the money.
The tour came and
went, we survived and Jörg didn’t leave the band. But it was the weirdest tour
I have ever done. Very succesful, but still it felt like forcing something. It
was not fun. It was sad.
The next thing I
had in mind was to write a really fresh good old fashioned Power Metal album in
the vein of Visions. I felt our fans deserved it and I felt it was the right
thing to do. This was the infamous ”RR” album. The songwriting was flowing and
the songs sounded really nice and melodic and very much like old Strato. I was
all the time on my toes because of the situation in the band and I was
anticipating difficult recording sessions. Anyways in late 2006 we completed a demo
tape containing 10 brand new songs. I wasn’t too happy about
the demo, but it did serve its purpose, to present the songs to the record
company. I then booked 12 days from Sonic Pump studio in Helsinki for March
2007. This was the weirdest session I had ever had. Jörg was all the time
talking about that we have to get the ”Visions hunger” back, although I don’t
think he himself had that hunger. Nobody had. The session was nothing like the recording sessions before. Nobody had
rehearsed the songs really and everything sounded pretty awful. I tweaked the
drum tracks for a week and gave up. It was around this point when I really was
starting to think why am I keeping this alive when it’s so difficult. I remember
how much time, energy and money we put to Elements 1. There was nowhere to go
after that anymore without just repeating the past. I do know that TK didn’t like
that album at all, which yet again shows the difference between him me. It
doesn’t mean that he has to like it of course, but to me Elements 1 represents
the peak of the Strato evolution and perhaps I should have stopped the band
already then.
Last year, 2007,
was the turning point for me in many ways. I felt better, but regarding Strato
I felt worse. There were fights about everything, even about trivialities, which
really annoyed me. A lots of fights. A lot. I had to use a lot of energy to try to get
merch to Stratoshop, which was on
the shoulders of Jörg and TK, because there was no merch for people to order
but still they were ordering cause the items were on the page. The SSL
certificate that proves the site is secure was expired a year ago, I tried to
get that fixed, could not do it because I wasn’t authorized to do so. The most
popular items from the shop were sold out and Jörg refused to print more. I
could not understand any of the things that were going on. At the same time, I
was having more fun than in years with my rock opera Saana. When I was making
that, I realized what was lacking in Strato: the enthusiasm, creativity and
fun. It wasn’t like that in years. Saana gave me hope that there still could be something new for me to
learn at this age and it gave me a whole new world of things and a start for
something new.
We did have 8
festival shows during 2007 and it was then, when I was standing on stage in
Wacken Germany before 45 000 metalheads , when I fully realized that this band
is over. I remember clearly playing those same old songs we had played so many
times before and a feeling came to me that told me: this band has no soul
anymore. I looked around and I felt like I am part of a play that has a
script or machine and that there
is nothing fresh and exciting happening anymore. The band sounds awful.
Nobody’s heart was in it. It was just the same old song. Jörg worked at this
point full time in artist production company doing tourmanaging and he was
working at Wacken too. He literally came to play from production office and
returned there after. Everybody was polite, on the surface, but there was no
friendship, all I could sense were the underlying tensions of relatioships that
had come to an end. I had felt during that year that the band existed only for
one reason and that was the money. I had felt that this was the main motivation
what kept Jörg and TK in the band still despite of the underlying tensions.
While standing on Wacken stage to my absolute horror, I understood that also
for me that had now become a reality. I was keeping this alive for money. It
was then when I decided that I must stop the band.
So it was during
this show, I decided that it’s over. I was still thinking about everything but
I felt that for my future, it was the only logical thing to do. I did not want
to fire TK and Jörg because they are and have been as much part of Strato as I
have been and it would not be fair to the fans. I then decided that it is best
to lay rest what is already dead. I informed guys by email in October 2008
about my decision and explained in detail my reasons hoping they would see my
points and agree what is real. Only Jens and Lauri answered. TK and Jörg did
not even answer to that mail. Jens understood my decision, Lauri did not. I
understand him, he got a taste of what it is to be in a succesful rock band
touring the world. It is not easy to give that up. He did fail to see my side
of the story. That TK and Jörg did not comment anything really speaks for
itself. I did want to finish the Stratovarius saga with style and naive as I
am, in February 2008 I wrote a mail to the band and proposed that we would say
goodbye to our fans with style and do one more tour. I won’t go into details
here, but this time I did get a response from TK and Jörg. I wished them well
and wrote back that I can see there cannot be any more tours with this band
because of the hostile reactions.. So that was that. I felt good about my
decision, but not good that out of legal reasons I have had to wait for this
announcement for so long.
Then I thought that
since I have all these great songs
in my hands, I wanna put these out somehow. So I contacted a few friends, we
laid the basic tracks in the same place where the Strato RR session had taken
place a year ago and it was just flowing. There was happiness. There was energy. The songs
sounded great. My friends Michael Kiske and Tobias Sammet agreed to sing on the
album. I decided to form a new band called ”REVOLUTION RENAISSANCE” which would
continue the legacy of Stratovarius. In this first album I just wanted to
release these songs finally so I did not have time to search for a permanent
line up. I am now, so if you are interested, drop me a mail! The album comes
out 6.6.2008 through Frontiers Records.
I am excited and
happy…for the first time in years. I can hardly wait what the destiny has in
store for me with my new band, projects, songwriting. I am living a very
creative times. I have my production company and I am doing lots of different
projects and not only metal but basically anything that moves me.
First I would
like to, despite of all, thank Jörg, TK, Jens, Jari, Lauri, Tuomo, Antti and Jyrki
for these 22 years. It was a quite a ride. I wish Jens, TK, Jörg and Lauri the
very best with whatever they decide to do in their life and success with it.
Last but most
importantly, I want to thank you Stratovarius fans for your love and support
and for the great life. We will be
seeing each other in some ways, somewhere.
With Love, Timo