Former Nightwish vocalist and bassist Marko Hietala had an interview with Mexico’s MB Live and discussed reuniting with the band. Leaving the band in 2021 due to mental health-related reasons, the bassist was recently asked about a reunion.
Upon being asked, Hietala declined and shared the one thing his former bandmates didn’t understand about him when he was a member of the band:
“I don’t really think so. I mean, the guys and the ladies, they weren’t really aware how deep my troubles [with depression] went. I did try to talk about them quite a lot, but also since I wasn’t totally aware.”
He touched on his mental health problems and symptoms, and continued:
“The only thing that I had was that I talked to my doctors and psychiatrists every now and then. And then we would try some different pill or a combo of these pills and all that. And they never just went all the way through. They would stop working at some point of time because, yeah, we were trying to medicate symptoms.”
The rocker talked about surviving depressing things and revealed that he had been dealing with medication and therapy for over 20 years. In addition, he confirmed that it has been hard for him and felt pressure while he was in the band:
“Yeah, [I felt pressure] about the business and the way, how it goes and the change of companies and daughter companies and all that. And how it goes is that everybody’s looking to get a penny from your ass. And it’s really boring. But then again, you kind of have to live with it if you’re gonna be doing this and recognize how much you have opportunities to influence and change things.”
Rather than feeling pressure from his bandmates, Hietala’s problem, according to him, was with politics and the companies:
“And so far the copyrights and musicians rights and all that, they are not up to the level. And, of course, with these days of the heavy right-winger populist politics and all that, they’re not really caring about those, but they do care about them companies who can, again, a penny out of my ass.”
Hietala has been open about his mental health, mostly after his departure from the band in 2021. Revealing he has been chronically depressive since 2010 in an earlier interview, the rocker needed time away with the hit of the pandemic. The rocker continues his career solo and is currently on the ‘Six Strings And a Voice’ tour with Anneke Van Giersbergen.
You can watch the latest interview below.
