Nightwish - February 2005

Written by Silvia Deurwaarder

Published: 06 April 2005

When Marco Hietala (vocals and bass) became a new band member of Nightwish in 2002, the year 'Century Child' was released, the people were sceptic because they were afraid Tarja wouldn’t sing that much anymore. None of this happened; the clean vocals of Marco were a good contrast to the beautiful opera voice of Tarja.

After that it went very fast with the band, because the record was a huge success (within two days gold in Finland and in two weeks the album was platinum).  The band did a lot of shows and Marco became a good right hand of Tarja; it seems that everything was complete. The mega success of Nightwish exploded this year and with the “Once” tour the band is doing the longest tour ever to promote the latest album 'Once' (2004). In total more than 150 concerts in one year. In this hectic period I have the chance to speak with Marco before their show at the Heineken Music Hall.

Tour

At this moment the band just had one month a break to be at home, now they continue their tour. How can you go on, night after night, without the chance to see your family, that’s what I wonder. When Marco tells about it he’s very open, sitting behind the table in the cantina, but relaxed.

“It’s hard sometimes, but it isn’t as bad as, like Iron Maiden did for example, to be on the road for one year. So we basically take it for 3/4 weeks and than things get weak and we take some rest at home. We had whole January off so I could stay at home and spend some time with the family, so we try to concentrate on that, try to keep people like healthy, focussed, spirits and physics. You can break down and I have seen it happen to people. Also you get the symptoms as well when people start to stress out. I guess so far we’re still here together, so we been able to kind of recognise these things for what they are. It’s like standing by each other and when they talk about things sensibly, we come to see each other as well;  it’s something to look after for.”

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