Jon Oliva (Savatage, Trans-Siberian Orchestra) Interview

Jon Oliva is a man who needs no introduction. Alongside his brother, the late Criss Oliva, he founded and fronted one of the most important American metal bands of all time, Savatage. In the 90s, he went on to co-found Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Since their inception, 5 TSO albums have gone gold, with 3 of those 5 going multi-platinum. TSO has also become one of the highest grossing live acts of all time. We had the honor of sitting down with the Mountain King himself to discuss both bands and their enduring legacies. “Still the orchestra plays…”

So this is an interesting time. Ideally, you’d be getting ready for a two month arena tour with Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Instead, there’s going to be a livestream performance of Christmas Eve and Other Stories. Was the original plan to perform the album in full this year?

Jon Oliva: Well with everything going on, as you know, everything is scattered and weird. Right now, I would be sitting through another runthrough in Omaha of rehearsals. We get up there the day before Halloween and we’re there rehearsing until the 15th of November, which is usually the first show. So it’s really weird. The idea came when we said, “What are we gonna do? We have to do something.” The idea came through management, Al (Pitrelli), myself, and Desiree (O’Neill). “Alright, well what if we do this livestream thing?” We’re gonna do some different things. It’s not gonna be just like watching the regular show that we do every year. As far as the narration goes, we’re going to use different locations. And we’re going to use different cameras. 

We’re gonna try to put the audience on stage with the band. It’s like flipping a coin. If it lands on heads, it’s going to be sensational. If it lands on tails, then you will find me at a bar in Singapore drinking my life away *laughs*. I think it’s going to go really good. We’ve got some really good ideas. I’ve seen a lot of these other pay per view events and there’s no audience. Our idea was, what if we bring the viewers onstage with the band? And that’s what we’re going to try to accomplish. I don’t think it’s been done like this before, so of course we’re sticking our necks on the chopping block, but whatever. I think it’s going to be cool. 

TSO is known for having one of the largest productions around. Is there ever pressure with each subsequent tour to outdo the previous year?

JO: Yes, and that’s something that we’ve made our thing. We’ve been doing this for a lot of years. It’s tough beating last year’s performances, as far as lighting and effects and things like that. It gets harder every year. So this year is going to be filmed in a very large TV studio, but it’s not a sports arena. What we’re going to do is…our lighting people, who I’ve been on the phone with for about 2,000 hours *laughs*…we know that you can’t create an arena atmosphere. I think it would just be cheap to throw the band up there on a regular old stage and there’s no people there. Our idea was, let’s try to bring the people onstage with the band and have them feel like they are walking across the stage. They’re standing right behind or next to Al Pitrelli while he’s playing a solo. 

We’re also doing stuff with the narration. On the regular tour, the narrator comes out. He’s standing there onstage with a microphone and he talks. Well, we want to do it differently. He might be onstage for the opening narration, but for the other ones, we want to put him walking through a dark cobblestone alley with smog, like the old Phantom of the Opera or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde movies. That’s what we’re gonna try to do. 

At the core of TSO has always been yourself and the late Paul O’Neill. When did you and Paul first meet?

JO: Paul and I met in 1986 when we were performing what was supposedly going to be the very last Savatage show ever. My brother Criss had gotten an offer to audition for Megadeth and I had gotten an offer to audition for Black Sabbath. It got to the point where I actually had a plane ticket and a song list. We played a show in Ybor City, Tampa and Jason Flom from Atlantic Records sent Paul O’Neill there. I didn’t even know who he was. We did the show and it was great. I left because my wife was very sick that night. I went home and Criss stayed behind with the guys. Criss called me at 4:45 in the morning. He said, “Hey man, you gotta drive down to this Bennigan’s. I’m here with this guy and he wants to give us all this money.” We were flat broke. I said, “Criss, it’s 4:45 in the morning.” He goes, “Get your fuckin’ ass down here right now!!!” I got up and drove down there. It was a 20 minute drive. I walk in and there’s Paul O’Neill and my brother eating pancakes. He started talking to us and asked what we were doing. I mentioned, “Well, I’m supposed to fly to L.A. the day after tomorrow to audition for Black Sabbath.” He goes, “You’re not going.” “What are you fucking talking about I’m not going?” He goes, “Listen man. You guys have something special.”

I’ll be honest with you. If it wasn’t for Paul O’Neill, the last Savatage album would’ve been Fight for the Rock. Paul gave me and Criss $50,000 to pay all our bills, buy some equipment, get a rehearsal place. He said, “You guys don’t have to pay me back. All I want is to write and produce the albums with you guys.” I remember looking at him and my brother kicking me under the table *laughs*. I said, “Okay. What do I say to the Black Sabbath people?” He goes, “I have a singer that I know who I’ve been working with. I’m gonna send him instead.” And that person was Ray Gillen. So it was actually Ray who got my spot! The whole reason I was approached was…I don’t know if it was Tony Iommi or Geezer Butler, but somebody heard the Power of the Night album and they liked my voice. We had toured with Megadeth and we knew them. That’s why I think they were interested in Criss. Criss was an outstanding guitarist. 

But that’s how it ended up happening. Ray ended up getting into Sabbath. He did a tour with them. I actually own a cassette tape of Ray singing the songs on The Eternal Idol. Then he decided not to stay in Sabbath after he did the tour because Badlands was put together. And then Tony Martin came in. I was out of the question because we were already working on Mountain King. A lot of people don’t know that story. 

I didn’t know it.

JO: Yeah that’s exactly what happened. Paul O’Neill saved Savatage and I’m glad that he did it. Mountain King, Gutter Ballet, Streets, Edge of Thorns, Handful of Rain, Dead Winter Dead, Wake of Magellan, Poets and Madmen: Those were all great albums! And it was all thanks to Paul’s belief in us. Paul was my best friend ever. He loved me, I loved him, and we just had magic together. I don’t know what it was. He could be in the worst mood and I could come over to his house and imitate Bugs Bunny or the Three Stooges. I could always make him laugh. And then we would write a song. I miss Paul very much. Even though he was only a couple years older than me, he was like a father figure. He looked after me. He really saved my life. It was a lot of heavy shit back in those days, but it is what it is.

Paul gets a bad rap from a lot of Savatage fans and that bothers me. They have no idea what that man did for all of the guys in Savatage. When we put Trans-Siberian Orchestra together, what did we do? We took all the guys from Savatage and put them in Trans-Siberian Orchestra because Savatage wasn’t making any money. We were losing money. We were spending more money than we were earning. People say, “You should’ve never given up!” Well wait a minute. Savatage was together since 1983. It’s now 2001 or 2002. It’s not selling. It would do okay, but we weren’t breaking into the big time. In Europe we did. In Europe, we could sell out stadiums, but in America it was just like, “Oh it’s just Savatage. Whoop de fuckin’ do.”

When the TSO idea came out, I thought Paul was out of his mind. I thought, “Great. Now my best friend and producer has finally cracked up. He wants to turn me into the heavy metal Santa Claus.” But you know what? The guy was right. We knew it. We knew Savatage was never JUST a heavy metal band. Never. Our biggest problem was our name. The song “12/24”…we sent that song to 500 radio stations under the name Savatage. Only 30 stations played it. The very next year, we took the exact same recording. We didn’t even remix it! We put a cover of a Christmas tree and an angel and called it TSO. It was the number 1 requested song on over 500 radio stations. I made more money off of that song than I did in my entire career with Savatage.

That’s unbelievable.

JO: Yeah, so what are you gonna do? I always use this analogy. I’ll talk to some journalists and say, you work for this magazine and they pay you $500 a week. Now all of a sudden, some other magazine comes and they’re offering to quadruple your salary. And you have a wife and kids. Are you gonna stay with the $500 a week salary or are you gonna go to the $2000 a week salary because you have a family to take care of? They’d be like, “Uhhhh…duhhh…” Yeah, I thought so.

I got chewed out by so many people. “How could you turn your back on Savatage?” I’d get so pissed and say, “Well, you know, you love Savatage so much? Where the fuck were you when we needed you to buy our goddamn records? You weren’t there. You were downloading them for free.” So what would you do? You’re gonna tell me you’d stay with the $500 a week salary when you have two kids, 3 and 4 years old, and a wife and a mortgage? If you tell me that, you’re a liar. 

Yeah I’d have to go for the $2,000 a week salary. *laughs*

JO: Of course! It’s just common sense. I LOVE Savatage. It was my band! I started it. Nothing would have pleased me more than to see Savatage at the level of TSO, but it just wasn’t meant to be. But if you think about it, Savatage had a lot to do with the creation of TSO. The very first TSO hit was “12/24” which was on Dead Winter Dead. Even before that, on Handful of Rain. The song “Chance” was probably the first TSO song because Paul was like, “We’re never going to be able to replace Criss. We have to come up with another idea.” I was like, “Well *imitating Porky Pig* badee badee badee, what are we gonna do?” That’s when we came up with “Chance”. That really was the first toe in the water. “Wow, this is pretty cool with all these counterpoint vocals and all this stuff.” Then it went to Dead Winter Dead with “12/24”. Once it became a hit, because we changed the name, the floodgates just opened. I made $2,000,000 that year. I hadn’t even made close to a million dollars in 20 years of Savatage. It wasn’t even close *laughs*.

You have one of the most distinct voices in metal history. Which singers would you credit as your biggest influences?

JO: Well, first and foremost John Lennon and Paul McCartney because they taught me how to sing. They taught me the basics because I used to sing to Beatles records all the time. They are by far my favorite band of all time. When it came to heavy stuff, Ian Gillan and Ozzy Osbourne were my first heroes. Then Freddie Mercury blew me away. And of course Ronnie James Dio. I was sort of friends with him. We smoked hash in Italy. For such a little man, he had such a huge voice. 

We did a tour with them for Hall of the Mountain King. It was us, Megadeth, and Dio. I remember meeting him at a bar before the first show. The road manager brought him down to meet everybody. He sat next to me, ordered a club soda, and said, “You have a really interesting voice, but I don’t think you’re gonna last a week singing like that. How do you sing?” I said, “It’s like if you went to a football game, they score a touchdown, and you freak out. That’s how I sing.” He goes, “I hope you last, but I don’t think you’re gonna last.” I was devastated, but it fueled me. I thought, “I’ll show you man!” 

Later on, I did some festivals when I was doing my solo stuff. They were doing that Heaven and Hell thing. I was in a room with a balcony in Italy. I was sitting there smoking hash and all of a sudden I hear this voice, “Hey! What’s that over there?” He peeks around the wall and it’s Ronnie *laughs*! He goes, “Jon! It’s been a long time since you blew up my stage!” I gave him a big chunk of hash and he was very happy. I remember saying, “I really want to watch your show tonight.” He said, “You can sit next to Wendy (Dio) by the monitor desk.” So I did. And this guy…he comes out…where is this voice coming from? He can’t weigh more than a 105 and he’s three feet tall or something like that. All of a sudden you hear, *imitates Dio*. Wow! It just blew me away. 

I miss Ronnie. He was a very sweet guy. He could very easily have hated me because when I toured with him I did some fucked up shit. I got his whole band addicted to drugs, but he was a nice guy. I think he respected my voice, but he couldn’t quite figure it out. Which is the same with me. I couldn’t figure out how this little, tiny man could sound like that. 

So out of curiosity, say a song like “24 Hours Ago”. How many takes would that have been?

JO: “24 Hours Ago” was, believe it or not, less than 4 takes. “Believe” was 307 takes. And you know which take they used?

Which one?

JO: Take 7 *laughs*! The hardest song I ever had to sing with Savatage, ever, was “Morphine Child”. That was a very difficult song for me to do because of the emotion. When we did it live at Wacken, at the end of it I made a little mistake. I was just freaked out that I was able to do it live. I had only done it live a couple times. And “Hall of the Mountain King”, those screams *sings* “Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!” That was a pain in the ass. Paul would go, “Nope! You gotta do it again!” I’m like, “Paul, it’s 5:45 in the morning. I’ve done this for the last 6 hours. I don’t think I have it.” “Come on Jon! You can do it! I’m gonna send out some hot tea.” So they guy would come out and bring me hot tea and I would turn around and pour a half a pint of 151 Bacardi in the hot tea *laughs*. “Mountain King”, everyone thinks I probably did “Ah! Ah! Ah!” and they stopped the tape. Uh huh. I did all 32 of those in a row. Try doing that live every night for five weeks.

I couldn’t imagine.

JO: The Savatage stuff, I’ll tell you what man. That shit was hard to sing. Paul was a great lyricist, and he wrote great music with us as well, but he had no idea about vocalists’ ranges. He didn’t really get that. He’d say, “You can do it!” “Okay fine. I’ll try it.” *laughs* It was a joke. I’d go, “Paul, you need a 5 octave range to do that.” “Well you have a 5 octave range! Just do it!”

This year marks the 35th anniversary of Savatage’s second album, Power of the Night. What are your favorite songs off that album and what difference did it make being signed to Atlantic?

JO: Well the big difference that it made was we actually had money to go to Bearsville Studio where a lot of famous bands and people recorded. And we had Max Norman who was Ozzy Osbourne’s producer. Criss and I were huge fans, not only of Ozzy, but of Randy Rhoads. The big difference was we had four weeks of being up on top of this mountain with a barn. It was a rehearsal barn where we could just sit there all day, practice, and record demos. That was the big difference. 

There was a lot of weird stuff about Power of the Night that people don’t really realize. That place was haunted. It was very haunted. There’s some re-releases coming out where I did some liner notes. I actually dug through my old stuff and found notebooks where I had written down some of the things that happened there and original lyric sheets. When people see that, they’re gonna be freaked out. My favorite song on that album is “Unusual” because it was written about this. There were so many strange things. I got pushed down a flight of stairs by nothing. There was nothing there. I went to bed one night and when I woke up the next morning, my window was wide open. It was 2 degrees and snowing. And my shoes were gone. They were all the way under the bed. I would go to the bathroom and there was a hair dryer hanging on a hook. I would hear all this noise, open up the bathroom door, and the hair dryer would be turned on and rattling in the sink. I was the only one on the third floor of the cottage where we were staying at. There was nobody else there. It got so bad that me and my wife left. We went down into town and stayed with Max Norman and his fiancee because we were afraid to stay there anymore. 

And that’s how “Unusual” came to be. There was a pathway going to this barn and there were trees blowing all over. I kept seeing this foggy looking thing. That’s when I came up with “Walking alone on a cold night. Chills rattle through my bones. The way she looks, it shocks me.” It’s all about that. “Fountain of Youth” is another one of my favorites, as well as “Power of the Night”, obviously. “Warriors” is a great song too. That was written about the movie The Warriors about the gang from New York that has to make it back to Coney Island. I thought Power of the Night was a really good album. It did really well for us.

If I remember correctly, wasn’t that one of the first albums to receive an explicit label?

JO: Yes it was. “Necrophilia” wasn’t exactly a good idea *laughs*, but yeah, we got the label. Back then, we thought getting a label was good. That’s gonna make the kids go, “Oh what are they saying?” Everyone thinks “Necrophilia” is about having sex with a dead body. No it’s not. That’s not what it’s about at all. It’s about having sex with a girl who just lays there, that doesn’t do anything. “Are you done yet?” That type of thing. It had nothing to do with having sex with a dead body. It was one of those tongue in cheek things, but people didn’t get it that way. “What are we gonna call it? “Fucking a Dead Woman”? Let’s just call it “Necrophilia”.” We did and it was probably a mistake.

Then there’s “Hard for Love”, which was gonna be the single. The record company said, “Listen guys. You can’t call the song “Hard for Love”. You gotta call it “Hot for Love”.” I was just like, “Nope. I’m not doing that.”

It just didn’t work.

JO: It didn’t work. They thought, “Yeah man! “Hard for Love”! You got a boner going cuz you really like this chick.” Come on man! It’s 1985! Get with the program! I’m not saying I’m gonna stab her with my dick or anything. I’m just saying I’m hard for your love, basically meaning I’m hard up for you. I really want this girl. That’s what it’s about. I wasn’t saying, *sings* “I’ve got a boner for your love tonight.” A lot of it was misunderstanding. 

You mentioned Ray Gillen earlier, who happens to sing background on one of my favorite songs ever, “Strange Wings”. How did that collaboration come to be?

JO: “Strange Wings” was done for Hall of the Mountain King. I didn’t actually meet Ray until after he left Sabbath. They were putting Badlands together. They were doing stuff at the Record Plant while we were doing Hall of the Mountain King. Criss and I came up with the music for “Strange Wings”. We were doing the track and it came time to do the vocals. Ray showed up a little early because Paul had a session with Badlands right after we were done. If I remember correctly, I had done all the vocals except the ending. Paul comes out to me and says, “Why don’t we have Ray come in and do a harmony on the chorus and then you guys just scat a rideout together.” “Okay.” 

So Ray came in and on the vocals I had already recorded, *sings* “She flies strange wings.” Ray put harmony on those which I loved. I was like, “This is great!” Then, we had 15 minutes left before we had to leave and Badlands was gonna come in. Paul said, “Why don’t you guys just go out there. We can get it and we can finish it tomorrow. You guys just bounce off of each other.” Me and Ray went out there and we just started signing. It was done in one take and it was just magic. I remember when it was finished, we just looked at each other and started laughing our asses off. So we just did this whole ending. We didn’t write anything down. We were just playing off of each other. And we didn’t know each other really well. We walk into the control room and Paul is sitting at the desk with our engineer and my brother. Paul goes, “You know that was pretty good. I think we’re gonna try it again tomorrow.” Criss turns around, looks at Paul, and goes, “No we’re fucking not! That was fucking unbelievable! Are you fucking drunk O’Neill?!” *laughs* And that was it! We kept it. That was one take.

If Streets was ever made into a movie, who would you like to see cast as DT Jesus?

JO: Me. I was DT Jesus. Paul was an incredible storyteller. He showed me the whole thing for Streets after the Gutter Ballet album. We actually experimented on Gutter Ballet with a few songs because Streets was originally called Gutter Ballet. That was going to be the original title. So we experimented. We did the song “Gutter Ballet”, “Temptation Revelation”, and “When the Crowds are Gone”. Those were all going to be part of Streets, but we had cold feet. Paul was like, “I don’t know.” But in his mind, I was DT Jesus. And I didn’t know if I really liked that *laughs*. I didn’t want to be him. I’d rather be the drug dealer or somebody else. 

That was the original thing and then we decided we’re gonna do this. The Streets project took a very long time. We were in the studio for over a year. The song “Jesus Saves”…there were three versions of that song. There’s the gospel version and then there’s the version Criss and I wrote because this had to rock. So we did the rock version. I wrote the music. Criss helped me, but not much. Criss wrote the music for the song “Streets”. We just went to Paul and said, “You know, we love this stuff, but we’re Savatage.” We just now, after Mountain King and Gutter Ballet, were feeling like we were moving forward. “We can’t start the album with a fucking acoustic song.” “Well, what do you guys got?” “We have this song. You don’t have to change the words at all.” If you listen to both versions of “Jesus Saves”, the lyrics are the same. It’s just done differently. It’s done more like Savatage. 

That’s what happened with “12/24”. The original demo I got of “12/24” from Paul had no drums on it. There were no distorted guitars on it. There was orchestra, piano, and sleigh bells. “I can’t do that!” “Well Jon, can you make it Savatage?” “If you let me! Give me a day” I went into the studio with (keyboardist) Bob Kinkle and the very first thing I did was play drums to it on these DX drum pads. Then I added these heavy power chords. I didn’t write any of the lead solos. That came later, but I made it into a presentable Savatage song. Paul was floored. He said, “What gave you that idea?” I said, “Because I’m not releasing a Savatage song with sleigh bells.” *laughs* That’s how we worked. If I came up with a little bit, he could take it and run with it and vice versa. That’s why we worked so well together. Then he said, “We’ll put all these cool guitar runs in there.”, which he worked out with Al Pitrelli. And all of a sudden, the song was born. But the first demo I got of that was godawful. 

I can’t close this interview without asking the inevitable question: Do you think Savatage has anything left to say in a creative or live capacity? Or are you satisfied with the 2015 Wacken show serving as the band’s final chapter?

JO: Well I think the 2015 Wacken show was great for Savatage to go out live that way. It was a huge production and there were 100,000+ people there, even in the rain. I got lit on fire at that show, but that’s another story. We’ve talked about doing things in the studio and maybe doing another record. I have probably three albums worth of Savatage material sitting on demos, but our main concern is TSO obviously. I feel we owe it to Paul. Paul did so much for all of us. 

We’re working on the Romanov project which is, in my opinion, the best music Paul and I have ever worked on together. Ever. We’ve already got most of the singers casted for it. We’ve already got it all demoed up. Then this whole COVID thing hit and it threw a monkey wrench in the spokes of progress. We’re still working with singers and we have it ready to go. We’re just, with COVID and this whole pay per view thing that came about…this takes precedent right now. Let’s do this and then we can go back to work on Romanov. Chris Caffery and I have talked about doing another Doctor Butcher record. We have many songs for that. And we’ve talked about doing another Savatage record with everybody, even having (Steve “Doc”) Wacholz come in and play on stuff. 

This whole COVID thing has really fucked everything up in a serious way. All we’re trying to do is figure out what we can do to make the fans happy. Yes, we’ve talked about doing a Savatage thing and everybody’s in for it. We even talked about going out and doing a couple festival shows. But you can’t do a show right now. All the material is there and ready to go. We just have to play it day by day with all this stuff that’s going on. I’m sure the fans understand that because most of them are in the same boat. Maybe in a different way, but a lot of them have lost their jobs. A lot of them are dealing with this thing. I can’t go to Thanksgiving dinner with my family and stuff like that. All we’re doing is doing what we can do to give whatever we can give to the fans. 

Nothing is shut down. Savatage is a possibility. Doctor Butcher is a possibility. TSO is going to continue. Romanov is our next project and we’re working on it. We have a lot done on that. We just need everything to clear up to where I can fly people. I have people in Canada and Europe. I have to safely fly them here to Tampa and put them in the studio. I’m not willing to jeopardize anybody’s lives until I know everything is safe.

For more information on Trans-Siberian Orchestra, visit www.trans-siberian.com. For more information on Savatage, visit www.savatage.com.