Timo Tolkki reveals the only reason for him to make music nowadays

Timo Tolkki, the former guitarist for Stratovarius, was asked if he is currently working on any new music in a recent interview with The Dark Melody. This is his response, as reported from blabbermouth.net.

It doesn’t make any sense to make new music anymore, really. Because it costs money, and there are no CDs anymore. Nobody’s buying them. You make new records, basically, to tour, but I’ve been doing maybe 25 records. So I don’t consider that at the moment. To me, I wanna have a good production and it costs money. And the music business has changed so much.

The question of whether he would think about creating songs “just for the love of music” and “not so much for the money side of things” was then thrust upon him.

For the love of music, it’s the only reason to make music. But something like album production is so much work, it takes months. And really, I don’t wanna make these so-called bedroom recordings. For me, you’ve gotta rent a studio. And Finnvox, the studio [in Helsinki, Finland] where we did Strato albums, is 500 euros per day.

He also revealed his current relationship with his former bandmates.

We’re very good friends. I go sometimes to see their gigs here in Finland, which is weird because they still play a lot of my songs. And then [to] hear those from the audience, it’s, like, this is really weird. I liked the last album very much. I think they deserve the success. They worked very hard after I left. So nothing but positive [vibes] there — nothing but positive.