Epic Compositions with Luca Turilli

"I prefer to be a gardener than to be constricted to do something artistically."

J: I’ve heard you’re not really a fan of going on tour.
Luca: I'm a studio guy, a composer. I love those two hours where I get to present the music I created in the studio to the people, but the rest of the time on tour is boring, terribly boring. Some people drink to handle that boredom, or they find something to do. I don't drink, I'm not a big party guy, so the only thing left for me is to try to really channel that energy from the day and put it out on stage. It's a way of taking out the stress and the weight of those long and boring times.
For me, the time that I don't spend in the studio composing is terrible! [laughs].

J: You're now celebrating 20 years since the release of Symphony of the Enchanted Lands, a truly groundbreaking album in the genre. Take me back to the time when you and Alex were creating Rhapsody. What were your plans?
Luca: It was crazy, because we really didn't know what to expect, and when that happens, you're not realistic. You imagine all kinds of things. So, at the beginning, even though we had a success, we didn't know. We thought that it was OK, and the record company thought it was great, but we didn't know anything. We had no clue about what kind of numbers other bands were moving.

Helloween was our reference, that's how I got started in metal, because they were a bit more "poppy",or "easy". I don't say that in a negative way. Anyway, we read that they were selling millions copies... it turned out that these were numbers made up by those magazines, but we thought they were real. And so we thought that, based on the quality of our music, if Helloween was selling a million albums, we should sell about 500,000 [laughs]

We weren't even thinking about the money, because we didn't even know how much you'd get paid per album sold. At the beginning you really are totally ignorant. You sign that first contract, which, of course, is not a good contract, for five albums... So, in the end, it's true, we didn't see much money from that. Even if the record label was telling us that an album sold 70,000 copies in the first week, 110,000 in the second week, we didn't "feel" that success ourselves. Plus, we didn't go on tour right after the release of the first album; instead we waited and went back to the studio to make the second album. Our record label told us that it was crazy, since not many bands choose not to go on tour after releasing their first album. But we did that. And then with our second album we still didn't feel this "success" because the money wasn't so much [laughs] and us in the band were investing a lot of our personal money in the albums.
The story of Rhapsody is incredible. After 20 years, Rhapsody is just a hobby for me, because of the wrong choices I made, because of the legal problems, and because of all of that. So whatever ended up happening, even though we did a very good job when we were selling a lot of albums, it ended as a hobby because we had to spend so much money, and lose a bunch of money.
I never really enjoyed the "professional musician" world, because when you enter into this circle you're always told that if you invest "just a little bit" more money, you can bring your band to the next level, and then double or triple your investment. But if you focus only on that, you end up like a gambler, always putting more money into the game, and then one day you spend 150,000 just to make a single, just one song. You eventually look back on it like "what were we thinking?!". That's why this is just a hobby for me now.

J: Is that one of the reasons why this is labeled as a farewell? That the Rhapsody world ended up being just a money pit for you?
Luca: The basic reason is just the market in general. People ask me if I will do another Turilli's Rhapsody, but I don't think so, and that's why this is the end of the Rhapsody world for me. I mean, I'm a composer, and if I'm composing a Rhapsody album, with all the orchestration and all that, and then spend 4 months in studio for the production... in the end the cost is very high. Just for the Prometheus album, the cost was €110,000 euros, not all of which were put by the record company. So I had to put my own money. If, in the end, to make an album I need to put my own personal money, a band like Rhapsody, at least in the form of Luca Turilli's Rhapsody, simply cannot exist in this market… Unless you're a rich person or a philanthropist who just wants to give people a new Rhapsody album every two years [laughs]
This is why I now prefer to work on bigger projects, where a record company gives you a larger budget than what you can get as a normal band. The routine of going on tour, then back to the studio, then back on tour, simply doesn't work anymore. There are very few bands that can make it work like that.

J: When you say "big projects"; what do you mean by that?
Luca: Well, because of this crisis in the music market, instead of investing in a band like this one and let it grow, labels want something that can sell well right away. For that they need a composer, a good composer, and so they call me and propose something to me. Then, if we agree, I have a larger budget, and I can compose in the same way, and maintaining that same essence of being epic and symphonic, even if it's in a different style.
Of course, it needs to be something that I feel in my heart and soul that I want to do. At this age, that's my priority. I don't want to make more mistakes there anymore, because every mistake is two or three years of your life that are just gone.

J: When you mention not wanting to make more mistakes. Do you feel that you've made too many throughout your career?
Luca: Of course!

J: Also in musical projects? In the sense that you feel that you shouldn’t have been involved with some of them to begin with?
Luca: They're not artistic mistakes. I'm only speaking about the investments and the legal stuff that can really ruin your life. These things can last for many years, and they devour you, because you're an artist, not a businessman. In my experience, you're either an artist or a businessman pretending to be an artist.
Me, I'm an artist, and it's really a problem to also have to be a businessman. When you have a person taking care of those parts, someone that is a friend that really believes in you, then you are lucky, and you succeed. But most of the people that work with artists are just after the money.

J: Well, the more artists you meet, the more stories you hear about how they got screwed when they first started.
Luca: All of them! Even Queen; just yesterday someone told me how the song Death on Two Legs had been about a manager who stole their money. Same with Kiss.
it's funny; the first guy who trusted in Rhapsody was Limb Schnoor, of Limb Music Productions. He even admits that our first contract was not fantastic. He had been the manager of Helloween, then Angra, and then Rhapsody, so he was doing really well, having discovered all these bands. Anyway, we will meet with him soon in Hamburg, and we will hug him, because for us it's still a great thing, independent of the money that we could have made with another contract.

J: In addition to your work in Rhapsody (or Turilli's Rhapsody), you also released epic and symphonic music under your own name. Are you also done with those?
Luca: Yes. If it's metal, it will be modern metal, because that's the music that I like now. That's why, for me, playing these old songs is more a celebration for the 20th anniversary. But I don't see myself playing the kind of music that we were playing in 97 or 98 for the rest of my life. When I see bands of 60 and 70-year olds playing the same songs that they were playing when they were 20, and which brought them success... for me, it's sad. I respect them, but I can't see myself doing that.
Life is too short. I'm a composer, I'm not a live musician. I'm forced to be a live musician! I love meeting the fans and all of that, but I prefer to be in the studio composing and creating music. Having given 20 years to this music was incredible and fantastic, but it would be a burden to go on with that now. So it's great for me to close the chapter at this moment. Some bands want to keep going on for some more years, until they naturally end up going down, and then you're 70 years old, playing Emerald Sword at 6 PM at a festival. No, sorry, I can't do that. It's not what I am about.

J: I mean we've all seen it. You're at a festival and you see a band that USED to be huge, playing in the middle of the afternoon...
Luca: And they tell you how big they were....

J: Yeah, it's sad.
Luca: Sometimes it's just done for the money, because you need to make a living, but it's sad for me. I don't want that for myself; I prefer to be a gardener than to be constricted to do something artistically.
Music is energy, vibrations. So I feel very connected to that, and I don't want to be forced to do a certain style of music just because that's what gives me money. I prefer to do something else entirely.

J: When you started Rhapsody you had some objectives, including being able to cover the entire Emerald Sword saga. What objectives do you have now?
Luca: We're one of the few bands that in 10 albums were able to start and finish a saga. There aren't many in the history of music that have been able to complete an artistic journey like that. That's why the split was easy for me, because I felt that everything was done.
Now, of course, I have new things. I'm into yoga and meditation, and so through the music, I try to push a spiritual message. I've learned about energies and about what we all are thanks to meditation. So I started seeing things that I couldn't see before; things that even a scientist couldn't explain to me. There are some many mysteries in life that I want to express. I like to talk about them in music. So this is my new phase of life, and it's great for a composer to be stimulated like that.

J: So you're open to composing music like that, even if it's not a big project from a label, to promote that message?
Luca: In the style of Adele, for example. She is one of my favorite singers, and she really touched my heart and soul. Songs like Skyfall, Set Fire to the Rain... I love them. So I will also make a project in that style, but I don't know if you will even know about it, because maybe I won't not use my name or things like that.

J: Why wouldn't you use your own name?
Luca: That's a problem in the music business. When you use your own name (and that was my mistake), then you are known in the business only for a specific thing. If you want to start something else, you have to erase your identity and restart from zero. So it's very difficult, because people will always associate you with one style of music, so you are not free anymore, and it becomes a prison. For a person like me, who wants to compose in all styles of music, it can be very difficult to start new projects.
This can be a huge difficulty. Maybe you play at a metal festival like Wacken, and then you release something that could even allow you to play in larger, more "rock" festivals, like Rock Am Ring or things like that. But record companies and managers make assumptions with a new band from the very first demo. From that moment, a choice is made about whether you are in the good or the wrong side of music for a certain audience. And it's terrible, because although some bands can jump from one festival to another, because they've reached the kind of status that lets them be independent from their basic style music, it's very difficult to reach that status.

J: I get it. I see metal musicians whose non-metal side projects end up at metal festivals because that's the only place that will book them, precisely because of the "metal" association.
Luca: This is why it's so important to have a good manager from the beginning, someone that trusts you and your abilities as a composer. Because record companies will always want to ensure that they'll at least have a minimum level of earnings with a band, so they don't want to take the risk of having guys restart from zero. So you really want somebody that trusts you and is willing to put their energy to allow you to restart.
To restart in a different style of music is very difficult, but I have the fortune of having made the Prometheus album. That's what allows me to try. Because I made that album a bit different. It's not just metal, but also full of cinematic music, because that's what I really love. And then what happened was a kind of coincidence. Chris Heil, a famous record producer, heard when a friend of his was mastering Prometheus, and asked what it was. He loved the music, even though he's not into metal, and proposed to Dolby Yamaha to work with me. They are promoting Dolby Atmos as a new technology, and my album was the first ever promoted with that technology. This also opens doors, so that it doesn't end up being a "real" restart from zero. Because at a certain age it can be very energy-consuming to do that.

J: Sounds like a pretty lucky coincidence.
Luca: It's all law of attraction. if you really want something, you get it.