Un statement officiel est apparu sur le site officiel du groupe qui, pour l'occasion a pris l'adresse bizarre de
http://strato.jens.org, écrit par les 4 membres restants, c'est à dire Jens Johansson, Timo
Kotipelto, Lauri Porra et Jörg Michael. Ces derniers règlent leurs comptes à raison avec Timo Tolkki. Voici l'annonce officielle, que je traduirai pour vous dès demain :
Tolkki's main motivation was Greed
Timo Tolkki published a statement» on
on April 2 this year. The other members of Stratovarius would now like
to set the record straight. You can't argue with someone's perception
of things, you can just explain how you see things differently.
The confrontations, fights, incompetence, tensions, Negativity,
bitterness, Hostility, disinterest, bad musicianship, and unfriendliness
that Timo described were never there. He constructed this alternate
reality around these simple and for HIM painful facts:
1) The band's momentum has been slowing since 2004.
2) The media chaos of 2004 made HIM lose a lot of Trust and respect both within and outside the band.
3) Stratovarius' label Sanctuary had severe financial problems
from 2005 on. It forced us to start a legal process at the beginning of
2007.
If you Live your life through other people's eyes, declining sales or a
perceived loss of Power are matters of deep, stinging personal
humiliation.
Other sad facts remain. The legal Fight left us without a way to make a
new album, and financially strapped. Timo's main motivation for what he
did was Greed, not issues of friendship or art.
In the summer of 2007, he presented the Stratovarius/ Revolution
Renaissance demos we had all financed and recorded to Frontiers Records,
and signed a recording agreement for a solo project. Unbelievably, he
promised Frontiers that he alone could (and would) stop Stratovarius from
being active for the duration of the R.R. project, for marketing reasons. In
exchange for this, Timo alone was paid 154,000 US dollars.
He did this behind our backs, as we were deep in pursuit of Sanctuary
legally with a large legal bill. He still hasn't had the guts to tell
us what he did. We pieced it together from various press releases of
his and scattered email correspondence.
In October he sent us a mail saying he didn't want to continue, a quite
impersonal way after having been in the same band for 12 years.
He explained that he was tired of Stratovarius, and would concentrate on
things like his opera. We had known for some time he really hated
playing live.
He did not mention anything about his Frontiers deal, which placed
the rest of us at great financial risk. He very clearly asked that we
wouldn't contact HIM and try to talk HIM out of it, which we all
respected. He would later make much of the fact that nobody tried to
talk HIM out of it.
This year, Sanctuary agreed to settle, but Timo's announcement and Timo's
announcement alone ruined that, leaving us with a debt of 54,000 US
dollars. The total loss is around 346,000 US dollars. There was no
reason for the timing of his announcement other than some foolish belief
it would make the promotion of Timo's project record a bit easier. What
he did to the rest of us was stupid, selfish and more than disappointing
to us since we all stood shoulder to shoulder with him financially in
2004.
Then late January, surprisingly, he proposed us playing as hired guns on
R.R. (turning it into a Stratovarius record), and doing a tour with Jari
on bass. Apparently he again had financial problems due to his failed
opera project. He then quickly dismissed the idea himself.
In short it's not so much a story of simmering discontent leading to a
wise and respectable decision. It's definitely not a story of naivité.
It's the story of Faust, the story of madness, of a band's natural and
slow decline, but in the end something mundane: the story of a supreme
narcissist going broke and betraying friends of 12 years who helped save
him a few years earlier.
Hopefully this explains the situation a little bit. Sorry if it is long
on business crap, and short on humor or music. This was a terrible,
disaapointing blow to us.
We would like to thank our fans who make it all worth it, and despite it
all, we would like to thank Timo for the past, the nice music and the
good moments.
The rest of us want to make clear that we are doing
great and that we will continue making music together, because we care
about each other and we care about our fans. We have grand plans
indeed, and we will have some very interesting news in the months
ahead!
-TK JM JJ LP
the remaining members of StratovariusCela nous promet des semaines intéressantes...avec des news croustillantes!!
Stratovarius est bien vivant, Vive Strato!!!
.Enfin, faut voir, Savatage par exemple a sorti de trés bonnes choses sans aucun membre fondateur (Edge Of Thorns, Handful of Rain...), alors pourquoi pas? 
