Rocket 88 has announced the publication of “Singing In My Blood”, the first book by former NIGHTWISH singer Tarja Turunen.
Written and compiled over the past year of lockdown, Tarja has searched through scores of photos and memories to create a big, deluxe book about her life in music. There are contributions from friends and colleagues who’ve played a part in her music on stage, in the studio and at home, alongside lots of previously unseen intimate photos from childhood to the present day.
Tarja said: “Singing is in my blood. Ever since I was a little girl, I have enjoyed performing … but not being able to be on stage in 2020, I spent a lot of time looking through photo albums, seeing all those happy scenes of childhood, growing up and making music, getting to know my fans and travel the world recording and performing, having fun; those memories fill this book.
“In ‘Singing In My Blood’, I tell my story about making music and share lots of personal photos. It’s a big, 200-plus-page hardback filled with photographs that comes in two, deluxe versions.”
For more details, see tarjabook.com.
Turunen was fired from NIGHTWISH at the end of the band’s 2005 tour by being presented with an open letter which was published on the NIGHTWISH web site at the same time. In the letter, the other members of NIGHTWISH wrote: “To you, unfortunately, business, money, and things that have nothing to do with emotions have become much more important.”
NIGHTWISH keyboardist and main songwriter Tuomas Holopainen later called the decision to part ways with Turunen “the most difficult thing I ever had to do.” For her part, Tarja said the way she was kicked out of the group proved that her former bandmates were not her friends. “Maybe one day I’ll forgive, but I will never forget,” she said.
In 2019, Turunen dismissed Internet chatter about her possible return to NIGHTWISH after her December 2017 onstage reunion with the band’s then-bassist/vocalist Marko “Marco” Hietala during a “Raskasta Joulua” concert in Hämeenlinna, Finland.
“I know a lot of fans would love to see something happen, but it’s a very long distance away,” she told Kerrang! magazine. “Personally, I don’t see anything happening with me and them, to be perfectly honest. Marco 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 [NIGHTWISH keyboardist/leader] 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.”
NIGHTWISH‘s authorized biography, “Once Upon a Nightwish: The Official Biography 1996-2006”, was published in Finnish in 2006 and in English three years later.
Turunen‘s husband, Marcelo Cabuli, and his business partners later sued the parties behind the book for defamation. Named in the lawsuit were the publishing house Like Kustannus Oy and the author of the book, Marko “Mape” Ollila. Cabuli and his Brazilian business partners argued that the book includes false accusations and insinuations that have caused them suffering and financial problems.
The book blamed Cabuli for the events leading up to Turunen‘s dramatic expulsion from the band in late 2005.
In 2011, the Helsinki District Court dismissed Cabuli‘s lawsuit, ruling that the book — which criticized Cabuli on only a few of its 380 pages — did not detrimentally affect his work or reputation in South America. In addition, the court determined that Ollila did not maliciously portray Cabuli in a negative light.
