On the way to eat turkey and I said to myself... Savatage?

Quote :

MI: So, what exactly happened with you and Savatage?



JO: Nothing really, we just kinda, … After Chris passed away
it was very difficult. I kept it going and we kept making records and
actually, Savatage, post Chris Oliva, was really the birth of the Trans Siberian
Orchestra. We were moving away from the heavier metal sound like the
Dead Winter Dead Record and The Wake of Magellan record, if you took a few
songs off there, that were a little bit heavier, that could have easily been
Trans Siberian Orchestra records. That was kind of what we were going
for. You don't replace someone like Chris.



MI: You can't.



JO: You can't. I didn't want to try to do that. I
had some great players play with us, Al Pitrelli, Alex Skolnick – guys
who were great guitar players but they still, as great as they are, they're
not Chris Oliva. So, I figured instead of trying to copy what we had
it was better than we tried to move into a new direction. It just got
to the point where we were getting frustrated because we had the song "12
24" which Paul O'Niel and I knew was a number one song. We
knew it was a hit song. No one would play it when we issued it as a Savatage
record. Not one radio station in the Country except for the three down
here in the South would play it. To prove it, the next year we re-released
the song and stuck a Christmas tree on the cover and called it Tran-Siberian
Orchestra and it was the number one song in the Country.



MI: Here you go from this big metal band, you put out this Christmas
album with Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and boom you got a hit record.



JO: It sold like millions and millions of records. The funny thing
is it's really just Savatage. Even Trans-Siberian Orchestra today
is Savatage. We evolved into Trans-Siberian Orchestra. I think
after you give the heavy metal thing 20 some odd years, and the guys from Savatage
we busted our asses for 20 years and we spent the best years of our life cooped
up in a bus or in a hotel room or in a recording studio trying to get Savatage
to that Metallica level. Which, I think we deserved to be there, but
it was just every time we would start to get ahead, something from our past
would come up and slap us down. You know debts and law suits. It
just became so frustrating that we just finally said we gotta do something. We
came up with the Trans-Siberian idea and we were gunna keep Savatage going. Savatage
is not a disbanded band, we're just taking a break. After 25 years
I figure we deserve to take a break. The Trans-Siberian is doing so
well for us that there really isn't any need to do anything else with
that right now except ride it out.



MI: They were just in Atlanta, the Trans-Siberian.



JO: Yeah, I was just there.



MI: I'm like, who are they? I've got to cover them;
I want to know who they are.



JO: It's certain members of Savatage with different singers. The
writing and the album is all me, Paul, Al, Chris Kathry, Johnny, Jeff Plate,
it's all the guys from Savatage are on the albums. No one else
plays on the albums but us. Live when we do the Christmas tour because
of the demand we have to split into two touring groups. We have some
of the guys in the East Coast touring group and some of the guys are in the
West Coast touring group. That's the only way we can do it. It's
successful and we've already doubled our sales from last year. You
know, God Bless, knock on wood.

Sounds like a mutual decesion, not a hostile take over. He doesn't seem to have any negative feelings towards Paul or of how later Savatage albums turned out. Of course that could be the money talking, but until Jon says otherwise, anything else IS speculation.

I never said it was a hostile takeover. I also said that Jon will never agree to it in public. But, hey, believe what you want. I know what I know.

I said I DON'T know for sure but you've made up your mind and either you will be proven right or you'll be proven wrong. Unless of course, you have proof to back up what you're so confident is the truth.

Either way, we're both Savatage fans and I think we can agree on more than what we disagree about. So the above will be the last thing I will say on the subject.

Why would ANY fan complain anyway? Now we have Jon Oliva's Pain, who are awesome, a bit of old school 'Tage mixed in with Jon's fresh ideas. There's Circle II Circle for that late 90's Savatage sound and Chris Caffery solo that I love that reminds me of Doctor Butcher. Add in TSO, even Machines of Grace and Johnny Lee Middleton solo - there's been closer to 20 CDs out after Poets and Madmen! Most of them real awesome. Do you think there'd be more than maybe one or two records if Savatage didn't go into hiatus?

We just got new JOP and CIIC this year. Machines of Grace and Caffery last year. Things couldn't be better. Does it really matter what the logo on the cover of the CD says? It's all just good music to me.

Lari wrote:

Why would ANY fan complain anyway? Now we have Jon Oliva's Pain, who are awesome, a bit of old school 'Tage mixed in with Jon's fresh ideas. There's Circle II Circle for that late 90's Savatage sound and Chris Caffery solo that I love that reminds me of Doctor Butcher. Add in TSO, even Machines of Grace and Johnny Lee Middleton solo - there's been closer to 20 CDs out after Poets and Madmen! Most of them real awesome. Do you think there'd be more than maybe one or two records if Savatage didn't go into hiatus?

We just got new JOP and CIIC this year. Machines of Grace and Caffery last year. Things couldn't be better. Does it really matter what the logo on the cover of the CD says? It's all just good music to me.

I'm with you there. I don't pretend to know what goes on behind the scenes, but ultimatly it doesn't matter because whether it's later Savatage, TSO CIIC, or JOP, I enjoy them all. I still need to check out the other solo projects (esp. Caffery and Middleton) but like other music collectors I get easily sidetracked.

I know a guy who is a VERY good friend of Jon's, so I don't pretend to know.

Another problem with bringing Savatage together is the line-up issues. After Jon found his current band, and especially Matt Laport, I don't think he is too keen on bringin back the last line-up of Savatage. That would have been too many hurt friends,

I am not complaining, as much as I regret the fact that Savatage today would have been bigger (and probably better) than all those off-shoot bands put together!

kmorg wrote:

I know a guy who is a VERY good friend of Jon's, so I don't pretend to know.

Why didn't you say so in the first place! Had I known you had the inside scoop I would never have argued with you. I think I've been here long enough for you to know that I am not an ureasonable guy.

DallasBlack wrote:

kmorg wrote:

I know a guy who is a VERY good friend of Jon's, so I don't pretend to know.

Why didn't you say so in the first place! Had I known you had the inside scoop I would never have argued with you. I think I've been here long enough for you to know that I am not an ureasonable guy.

I didn't find you unreasonable.

Playing Gutter Ballet right now. Man, I love this stuff!

Jon's screams on sirens and hall of the mountain king are majestic