About 42 streets north of Central Avenue in St. Petersburg, Florida, there is an industrial park which has self-storage units. One of those units is, as the Savatage members call it, ‘home away from home’. At first sight it appears to just be a storage room for the backline and drums, but above all it’s the place where Savatage rehearse their set list for each tour, and studies the songs composed by Jon Oliva. It’s also the place where yours truly met with Jon Oliva to walk through the history of his band.

Slowly but surely the band members trickle into the rehearsal room. Guitar player Jack Frost (at that time still a member) flew from New York to Florida and is happy to meet singer Damond Jiniya, drummer Jeff Plate and guitarist Chris Caffery. Jon Oliva, on a different flight from New York, arrives almost at the same time as Johnny Lee Middleton, who’s driving a van from a local carpet center. "I have to earn my money when I’m not on the road with Savatage", thus states the talented bass player.

The only one not having to watch his pennies is Jon Oliva. No, not because of Savatage, but because of his Christmas CD’s with the Trans-Siberian-Orchestra, that sell across the counters in the thousands. After the band played through the first part of the set, Jon takes his place behind the mic.

"We were mainly a cover band. We played songs off the first three Kiss albums, and finished with ‘War Pigs’, ‘Paranoid’ and ‘Smoke on the Water’. (laughing) Indeed a set list with a lot of variety. Criss (Oliva, his five years younger brother / MM) wasn’t in the band yet. He was the bassist at the beginning for a short moment, when our bass player broke his hand. I was thirteen, Criss was eight at the time. I was the solo guitarist, ‘God help us all’. I was pretty good back then, until a few years later when I heard my brother play the guitar. I gave my guitar to him. He was way more talented. I started playing another instrument."

"Yes, we called it our shack. Later we found a real rehearsal room, called ‘The Pit’, where it all started. That’s where we met Steve Wacholz. We often changed the band’s name. We played as Metropolis, but also as Avatar, Alien and Tower. We changed our name according to the line-up we had for a show".

"Yeah, Steve really was a sweetheart…. I made a demo together with Criss, long before we even knew Steve. He probably ‘found’ that demo somewhere and released it without even asking us for permission. I think he needed the money, because we never saw anything from it! As I said, Metropolis often changed its line-up. On a certain moment we had a singer, a bassist/singer, Criss and a second guitar player. I sang and played drums. Yes, three singers! We still mainly played covers: Queen, Scorpions and Aerosmith. We played a lot at schools and in bars. Although it was our only source of income, we barely could live off it. Besides, I was the singer/bassist/keyboardist in a side project, in which I played my own material together with Criss and Steve. Our cover band –at that time Avatar- almost split up, because two of the band members moved to another band, so we decided to baptize our side project into Avatar. We did some shows as a trio, but it was pretty hard for me to be the singer, bassist and keyboard player in Avatar, so we decided to take a bass player in the band. In 1980 the band was Criss on guitar, Tony Ciulla on bass, me singing and on the keyboard and Steve on drums. Steve was regularly thrown out of the band, but he always showed up at the next rehearsal. We also changed bass players almost on a monthly basis until our sound guy decided at the end of ’81 to play the bass himself. His name was Keith Collins. Back then we only played our own material. After we put out two demo tracks (‘Rock Me’ and ‘Minus Love’ /MM) on a compilation album of the local hard rock radio station 95YNF, we were approached by Dan Johnson who offered Avatar a record deal for a year.

At the end of ’82 we recorded the songs as well as ‘Sirens’ and ‘The Dungeons Are Calling’ in just two days. It was in the old Morris sound studio, and it was the first time we saw a studio from the inside. It was a good way of learning for us, and for Dan Johnson as well. It was our change to make a step forward, which we did. First we released an EP with ‘City Beneath The Surface’, ‘The Whip’ and ‘Sirens’. Officially they pressed 1,500 copies of that single, but just after the last tour I put my signature on a multiple of that. I mean those things are easy to copy. You take the music off vinyl and burn it on to a CD. When we heard that a European band was claiming the name Avatar, and threatened to sue us if we continued to use it, we changed the band’s name into Savatage. ‘Sirens’ in the meantime, was on its way to the press, but when we couldn’t get our logo there in time, so we called them and told them to put on the band name in a normal font. The songs that didn’t fit on the vinyl of ‘Sirens’ were released later as ‘The Dungeons Are Calling’. That’s a pity, because I wanted all songs on one album, but you could only get 45 minutes on vinyl. Much later, Combat Records put both albums on one CD."

"We played in St. Petersburg as the support-act for the Atlantic band Zebra. Some people from the label saw us and just two weeks later the first deal was in our hands. It took until the beginning of ’84 before we rose to the bait and were at the mercy of the first bunch of swindlers." (meaning the managers who invariably took off with the band’s money/MM).

"In November ’84, we dove into the Bearsville Studio in New York with Max Norman to record ‘Power Of The Night’. It was a pleasure to work with him. He wasn’t just a good producer but he was a good engineer as well. He placed the mics, tuned the drums, he really did it all. Meanwhile we wanted bass player Johnny Lee Middleton, but he didn’t want to leave his band Lefty, so we got stuck with Keith. He recorded the bass parts, but after he left the studio, Criss played his parts over, just because Keith wasn’t playing tight enough. Criss wanted a bass player that just did his job, and not the soloing Geddy Lee type. Half a year later, after the American Monsters Of The Universe tour, we asked Johnny again, then he agreed and didn’t leave us since.

"With ‘Fight For The Rock’ we were once more at the mercy of the second bunch of crooks. After ‘Power Of The Night’ we got rid of the first bunch and now we joined with two managers introduced to us by Atlantic, but they were even bigger bandits than the first. It’s just a pity. They didn’t care less about the band, they just wanted to earn a couple of hundred thousand dollars for the band and then run off with the money. They just needed somebody to pay for their coke addiction and we fell for it. The recording budget was consumed by the gentlemen before we even recorded one song. We thought we had $150,000 dollars for studio time, but when we got there it appeared that there was only $50,000 dollars available. Of course the album suffered from that. And that’s why the album leaves a bitter taste with us as well. We were just stupid. We were very young, and business was beyond us. That album almost was the end of the band… Until I got a phone call at 4 AM from John Goldwater and Paul O’Neill, and look how far we got with their help."

"Yes, the third swindler. Although Paul didn’t have anything to do with the financial aspect. We were swindled by John, but Paul lost even more money to him. We’ve learned slowly from our mistakes and are controlling the finances ourselves now."

"Yeah man, General Lee! We can’t do anything without him anymore! Anyway, because of the bad sales from ‘Fight For The Rock’ we were almost dropped by Atlantic, but Paul and John managed to convince the record company that we still had potential. Paul would also help us to write and produce the material. He’s the band member that isn’t in the band. Together with Chris Caffery he brought the band to the place we hold nowadays. Paul did a lot of things that fans don’t notice at first sight for us. He financed tours and other stuff at a time the band didn’t have money for it."

"At that time we didn’t know yet whether or not we wanted someone else in the band. Yeah, he also did the keyboards (laughs), and was doing that real bad. He was just there for the tour. We didn’t know him at all, and just wanted to stay a quartet. If we would have met Chris a year earlier, he might not have ended up in that situation. I mean, we always were a foursome, we just met Paul O’Neill and hired a total stranger to heighten the live sound a bit. After the tour we knew Chris was an asset and since then he stood next to us on stage."

"The album title changed almost every week: ‘Gutter Ballet’, ‘Thorazine Shuffle’, ‘Temptation Revelation’…. Until Paul O’Neill, like he always did at that time, convinced everybody and dictated that the title had to be ‘Gutter Ballet’. I was in rehab when I wrote most of the lyrics. ‘Gutter’ was a very good album for Savatage, the sales were good, the Video for ‘Crowds Are Gone’ was played often on MTV and we did a few excellent tours with a performance on Dynamo Open Air as well."

"That’s right. After the ‘Hall Of The Mountain King’ tour we more or less lost touch. He was busy doing other things. Once we got in touch with him again, all the ‘Gutter Ballet’ material was already written. But we just wanted him in the band and put him in the band picture in the booklet also. We just had to."

"We wanted to try another style, more variation in the music, and didn’t want to write ‘Gutter Ballet 2’. We felt too limited on the old strings. I, for once wanted to write songs like ‘Heal My Soul’ and ‘A Little Too Far’. I wanted to get out of that corner, in which Savatage was locked up. Paul O’Neill was concerned more with the process of writing, and Savatage was at its peak. ‘Streets’ and ‘Gutter Ballet’ are the absolute highlights of Savatage. ‘Streets’ still is the album which I’m the most proud of. It showed every side of the music, that the band had in them. Certainly it was mainly autobiographic. I still had drug problems. I’m not proud of that, it simply was something that happened. You come from a ‘nine-to-five’ job to the big arenas where it’s party time every day, and everybody is offering you drugs. It’s pretty easy for a young guy to give into those temptations. I learned my lesson the hard way. All sorts of negative things happened. Criss died- those kind of things just happen in human life."

"That was mainly to give me some more space on stage as a singer."

"My voice was fucked up. Wacholz was acting like an asshole. I just didn’t enjoy it anymore. I wanted a vacation from Savatage. I had some offers for other things, such as the Romanov-album (that will be released next year as a TSO album / MM). Meanwhile I was somewhat older, had a son, and this way I would be able to spend more time with him. Savatage started working without me on ‘Edge Of Thorns’. I was replaced by Zak Stevens (real name Zak Trussel ,MM) and got in touch only with Chris Caffery a few months later. We decided to write some material for a heavy project, called Doctor Butcher. Meanwhile ‘Edge Of Thorns’ was released. Zak had a more radio-friendly voice and the single ‘Edge Of Thorns’ did well on the radio, it even hit the Top-40. In the meantime, Wes Garren was the second guitarist/keyboardist of Savatage. The plan was that Caffery and I would return for the next album. Zak would sing, and I would sing. You could hear on the album that some of the pieces written by Paul were meant to be for my voice. Then, on October 17, Criss died, and that put all plans upside down. Nobody in Savatage knew where to go from there. When Paul O’Neill and I wrote the material for ‘Handful Of Rain’ there wasn’t a band at all! It was kind of a Jon Oliva solo album. Zak sang some songs and Alex Skolnick (ex-Testament, MM) played some solos, but the rest of the music I recorded alone. I wrote all the material on an acoustic guitar, I came to terms with the loss of my brother and thus arose ‘Alone You Breathe’. Actually, I wanted to release that song as a farewell song for Savatage. Paul supported me tremendously and kept me working constantly on other projects. That was clever of him, otherwise I probably would have gone over the edge of the abyss. Eventually, ‘Handful Of Rain’ was released as a Savatage album, and it did very well, especially in Europe. If that would not have happened there never would have been another Savatage album again. Because in America, due to the explosion of grunge, we hardly had a job."

No, it was recorded under not all too good circumstances. Although, part of it ended up on the Japanese Final Bell and the European version of Ghost in the Ruins. The management we had back then, dealt badly with a lot of things. I was told that I would have the opportunity to take the material to the studio to do some repairing. But as soon as I walked away, I was already asked about this album by the press. They had a promo CD already before I even had a chance to listen to the material! We had our lawyers stop it all. Later we found out that Steve Wacholz closed a deal with Metal Blade on his own because he couldn’t reach us to short-circuit. I don’t remember whether we were touring or in the studio with TSO. But when we found out we were pretty pissed off. The live album should be an homage to Criss and not some half finished recording that would be released without us even hearing the material, only because someone quickly wanted to line his pockets with $10,000. Because, that was what happened. Later we went into the studio and fixed some of it. No, we didn’t change anything of the music, but i.e. sometimes a microphone fell and on one part of a song there was no snare to be heard. Things like that were fixed. Or we let the guitar-sound come more forward. I’m very pleased about the final result of Ghost in the Ruins, because the album shows in the best possible way what an extraordinary guitarist Criss was. He is in top form on every song. That alone makes the album interesting for all guitar players. Besides, they are my favorite Savatage live recordings.

Right, Dead Winter Dead was released. The song Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12-24) began to get airplay, but not nearly enough. We wondered why not.

Exactly. Atlantic sent the single to every radio station, but it was played by only 20%. With every station that did play the single it was number 1, surpassing singles of Bruce Springsteen and Mariah Carey. Then we found out those other stations never even listened to the single. Savatage with Sarajevo 12-24? Thats a metal band from the 80s, we won’t listen to that. Later on it was proved. Because we sent exactly the same music with the bandname TSO to exactly the same people and the song went number 1 on 330 radio stations. That’s proof of how fucked up the American radio is. It’s about who you know and what you pay to who, and more of that happy crap. Because of the single’s success, the whole TSO idea arose. We recorded several songs in the 12-24 style, mainly based on traditional Christmas carols. It worked extremely well. Also for me as a composer it was very instructive. I could now do things I never would have taken to Savatage. It was material that had always been in my head. If the other band members already thought Fight for the Rock was bad, they would immediately give me the bullet for this material! I was saving the material for a possible solo album, but now it came in very useful for TSO. We recorded an entire album, Christmas Eve and Other Stories, and the album became platinum (1 million copies sold). And this while a Christmas album has a very short life. Look, when you release a normal album you can work with it for about 7 months. Christmas albums are in the picture for about 6 weeks.

But then people will go search for another, newer Christmas album. In 1998 the second TSO Christmas album The Christmas Attic was released. The album went gold. Meanwhile we were ready with the third Christmas album, but Atlantic wanted to continue with the second TSO album first. Hence why we started working on the Beethoven album. The first Christmas album had more impact, the second probably was too heavy for some. We didn’t have a hit like 12-24 but Christmas Canon got into the top 5. 12-24 was our magic moment, our Smoke on the Water. Everything about it was right. And that all started with that one riff I wrote

That’s a TV special we did, shortly after the release of The Christmas Attic, for FOX television. And that resulted in great record sales for the TSO albums. Of course it was also a good promotion for Savatage, because the whole band played in TSO, but TSO is so much more, the many singers, Mark Wood

Exactly, he is unbelievable. He already worked with Paul McCartney, Elton John, Billy Joel. The musicians used in TSO are all the tops. Not beginners we put into a tuxedo. We’ve had thousands of musicians auditioning. We’ve had many discussions about who to use for TSO. That’s why TSO is much more of a job to me than Savatage, where it’s mainly about having fun. Paul ONeill can put months into perfecting TSO. With me that iron patience stops at a certain moment and I want to have fun again and see a bar from the inside.

The music just asked for a smoother production, maybe for Savatage even too smooth. But a song like Anymore just needs another production than Beyond the Doors of the Dark. A lot of people don’t understand that. We like variety, and if that means that some fans don’t like some albums or songs as much as others, so be it. We just do what fits best to a song or an album.

It was just very hard to play that material live, with the orchestration and the hundreds of voices. Also we asked the fans, before the European tour, to send in setlists through our website. The only song that was suggested from Wake was the title song.

That’s right. He co-wrote the Hourglass, Turns to Me, and Another Way, together with Paul ONeill and me.

One of the best venues in the world and I have a right to say so, because I played almost everywhere. The audience has a good view on the band from everywhere, the way the whole sound aspect is being organized, the lay-out of the building, its just perfect.

In 1999 silence around Savatage.

Yes, I was busy enough with the writing process for Beethoven’s Last Night and besides I was busy organizing the first live shows for TSO. Chris Caffery meanwhile was busy in Germany with the band Metalium. When he returned halfway through the year, we started, in between the recordings of Beethoven, with the writing for Poets and Madmen, because we already were way too late with the next Savatage album. Paul ONeill encouraged us, so that Chris and I used every break to spill out guitar riffs on our acoustic guitars in the lounge. And when an idea arose it was put immediately on tape. No, the album was not planned to be another concept album again. I sang the song lines with words that meant nothing and gave the material to Paul.

No, he would sing half of the album. The whole idea behind the album title was that Zac was the poet and I was the madman, with a song as Morphine Child on the poets side and a song as Drive on the madman side. The songs would just be the songs, it was not planned that there would be any connection between them. When the songs, without the lyrics, were demo-ed off, I got a call at 5AM from Paul. And I knew it right that moment. Paul saw a concept album. I said, oh no, you promised not to make a concept. Then he explained the story to me, and at 5AM I agree to anything, whenever I can be left in peace. I had to come to Paul the next morning to look at a certain painting. Mail me a pic, I said. But no, I had to come. I walked into his living room and in the middle of the room there was the painting with a sheet over it. He took it off and I sat looking at the girl with the vulture for three minutes without saying anything. Paul, I think you completely lost it! I shouted, and I wanted to leave again, but he kept me from doing so, and he told me the complete story of that photographer, etc. He also wrote some chorus lines, and so the concept became clear. In the next two weeks we wrote the other lyrics together. When the album was near completion I got a call from Zak. He really waited until the last moment. I love you Zak but of course it was a hard decision for him to choose for his family and friends. Zak just didn’t feel comfortable with Savatage anymore for the last few years. He was fed up with travelling so much. If he stays to work for TSO? Whenever he wants to, the door is always open for him.

He could earn a few hundred dollars more a month. He played some solos for Poets.

Some knew guitarist Jack Frost from his bands Bronx Casket Company and Seven Witches. With his personality he fits in well with the band, and is a good supporting guitar player for Chris, and it looks brilliant on stage. Vocalist Damond Jiniya is still very young and learns a lot every day. I’m curious about the band’s future, especially how Damond will do in the studio.

We have the songs ready for about six years now, but we just didn’t have the time to record the material. I hereby solemnly promise that it will happen someday. You can keep me to that.

The main reason is that I want to keep the memory of my brother alive. I just do it for him.