Nightwish keyboardist and primary songwriter Tuomas Holopainen has permanently shut down any lingering speculation regarding a potential reunion with original lead vocalist Tarja Turunen.
In a new interview with Metal Hammer magazine, Holopainen reflected on the band’s highly publicized and bitter 2005 split with the singer. Turunen was famously dismissed from the Finnish symphonic metal outfit following their final 2005 tour date, via an open letter that was simultaneously published on the band’s website. In the letter, the remaining members of Nightwish wrote: “To you, unfortunately, business, money, and things that have nothing to do with emotions have become much more important.”
Looking back on the fallout, Holopainen told Metal Hammer that Nightwish “get blamed for what happened, for good reason” but insisted that “there was no future” for the band with Turunen.
“We were just operating in survival mode and plagued by these dark thoughts,” he explained.
He also recalled the severe media scrutiny the remaining members endured after releasing the open letter.
“It was like we were these evil neanderthals who’d hurt our wonderful ex-singer,” he recalled. “I got some really interesting letters, let’s put it that way.”
Addressing the persistent fan requests for a reunion, particularly following the departure of bassist and vocalist Marko Hietala, Holopainen was definitive.
“It was a divorce, and an ugly one at that,” he explained. “So I think we have our own lives now. Someone did say to me if we got Tarja and Marko back in, we could tour just South America for a year straight. That’s not gonna happen.”
Turunen recently shared her own reflections on the 2005 dismissal with Metal Hammer, expressing regret over not taking legal action at the time.
“It’s very sad how everything ended up [with Nightwish], but the thing that I would have done differently is, I probably should have put them through hell. I had all my rights, there were contracts, and they would have been in deep s**t for a long time if I had done that, according to my rights, but I didn’t. I just decided to move on and leave,” she said at the time.
“What followed was their really great planning, how they wanted to destroy me publicly. That was something I never expected. It was nasty.”
The singer detailed the intense media pressure she faced in her native country following the split, which ultimately prompted her to relocate to South America.
The scrutiny, she said, became unbearable in her home country, driving her to leave Finland altogether: “It was an insane period [after the split], and in a small country like Finland, my face was covering the tabloids for three weeks or so. I left my home country. I had to. I went down to Buenos Aires.”
The damage, by her account, rippled out well beyond herself: “It was tough, because it affected so many more people than just me. It affected my family, my friends. Everybody was destroyed. It took me a long time to gain trust in people again. But luckily, I have amazing relationships and a long-lasting marriage with my husband. My family, my friends were there for me in that very hard period.”
Holopainen later called the decision to part ways with Turunen “the most difficult thing I ever had to do.” For her part, Tarja previously stated that the brutal public nature of her dismissal proved that her former bandmates were not her true friends.
“Maybe one day I’ll forgive, but I will never forget,” she said.
The fallout from the separation extended well beyond the initial letter. In 2006, the band’s authorized biography, “Once Upon a Nightwish: The Official Biography 1996-2006“, pinned much of the blame for the band’s internal friction on Turunen‘s husband, Marcelo Cabuli. Cabuli and his business partners subsequently filed a defamation lawsuit against the publishing house and the book’s author, Marko “Mape” Ollila. The Helsinki District Court eventually dismissed the suit in 2011, ruling that the book did not detrimentally affect his work or reputation.
While Turunen shared the stage with Hietala in 2017 during a Finnish holiday concert, she has consistently downplayed the possibility of returning to Nightwish. Speaking to Kerrang! in 2019, she noted her limited contact with Holopainen.
“I know a lot of fans would love to see something happen, but it’s a very long distance away,” she told Kerrang!. “Personally, I don’t see anything happening with me and them, to be perfectly honest. Marko came a little later into the band; he wasn’t there since the beginning. He was always a guy I was close to. Me and Tuomas Holopainen, however, haven’t seen each other in a long time… but we have been in touch. It’s not bad. The past is what it is; we can’t change that. We can only change the future.”
Turunen recently released her latest solo metal album, Frisson Noir, in June via earMUSIC. Meanwhile, Nightwish has been fronted by vocalist Floor Jansen since late 2012, following the departure of Turunen‘s initial replacement, Anette Olzon. Jansen officially joined the band in 2013 and made her studio debut on 2015’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful.
