Savatage News.....

[Dead Planet]

On the latest episode of the 80's Glam Metalcast, the legendary singer and mastermind behind Savatage and the Trans Siberian Orchestra, Jon Oliva talks about what he’s up today. He also tells some classic Savatage stories. Check out the interview below. 

On the Romanov project and new Savatage material

Oliva: "I’ve been very busy. We are working on the Romanov project. It’s very special to me because it’s the first thing that Paul O’Neill ever worked on outside of Savatage. We are making progress. It’s not an easy project because there are a lot of parts and a lot of great music. I have to be very meticulous. I’m being very bitchy about it because I want it to be perfect. Since the the Wacken show in 2015, Chris Caffery, Al Pitrelli, and myself have been trading song ideas for a possible Savatage thing. I’ve been writing Savatage material since 2003. I could do a quadruple double album if I wanted to. We are trading off things and looking at it. We are also looking at a Savatage live thing from Cologne Germany in 1997. We are putting it together for a livestream. I’ve been working on that. I had Al come down to Florida and we beefed it up just a little bit, mixed it. I think the fans will love it. If this Savatage album happens, we’ll make an official announcement. We have been working together, because we are all bored because of the pandemic. There’s nothing to do! So we are trading ideas through e-mail and over the phone. We’ll see what happens....I know I would love to do a Savatage album. Paul and I were talking about it before he died. We had a lot of meetings about it. All I can say is it’s very possible."

On the style change on Gutter Ballet
 
Oliva: "We were petrified. We had just done Hall of the Mountain King, and that album brought us back and had sold really well. We knew we had to top Mountain King. My brother and I had a meeting with Paul, and he told us we were more than just a hard rock band. He knew I was a big fan of the Beatles and Queen. Paul thought it was time for us to experiment. The funny thing is that we had already done 'Of Rage and War', 'She’s In Love', 'The Hounds'. It was all real heavy stuff. Paul bought me tickets to go see Phantom of The Opera so I went and watched it. I came back to the studio right after and sat where John Lennon’s piano was. I sat down and wrote all the music for the song 'Gutter Ballet'. Paul and Criss came running out saying 'What the fuck was that?' The three of us finished it right there. Paul asked if I had any other piano songs. So then I started playing 'Temptation Revelation'. Criss had an acoustic and just started playing riffs over it. Then I started playing the music for 'When the Crowds are Gone', but it had no words. Paul O’Neil wrote all the lyrics for that one in like 10 minutes. That whole session was like a lightning bolt to the brain. Like wow, this is fucking cool. Ultimately that lead us to Streets." 

Why he was out of the band for Edge of Thorns
 
Oliva: "On the Streets tour we were playing for 2 hours a night. Singing Savatage music isn’t easy. I just blew my voice out. The last show of the Streets tour, I was spitting up blood off stage. That’s how bad it was. I went to the doctor and he hold me I had nodes and shit all over. He told me I needed to take some time off. I told him I couldn’t. Then Paul had an idea for me to take a year off and work on this Romanov project with him. Then we would get a new singer for Savatage that’s different from me, more commercial sounding. I’m the one who picked Zak Stevens. I picked him because I didn’t want to get someone who sounded like me. He’s a guy with a really cool, smooth voice and we wrote the whole album around his voice. I was very involved with Edge of Thorns. I helped write all the songs with Criss and Paul. I was very happy with it. The last song the three of us ever wrote together was 'All That I Bleed'." 

On playing almost all of the instruments on Handful of Rain

Oliva: "The original idea for this album was that Zak and I were going to share all the vocals. We were going to double all the vocals. For guys in the band, it was just was just too soon after Criss died. For Johnny Lee Middleton and Doc Wacholz it was too soon for them and they both backed out. Zak had backed out too. It was just me and Paul. Once we got a few songs done, Paul asked Zak to come to the studio and check it out. He finally agreed to sing on it. For the instruments...it was just me. I played the bass, the drums, keyboards, rhythm guitars and some leads. The leads I couldn’t do, I brought in my friend Alex Skolnick from Testament. Criss had just passed and the album was like therapy for me. I was playing all of Criss’ guitars on it upside down because I’m left handed. Just holding his guitars in my hands all alone was really weird. I hadn’t played the drums in a long time. 'Taunting Cobras' took me like 4 weeks to perfect the drum parts. Like I said, it was good therapy for me because I was not in a good place at that time. Once everybody heard 'Chance' and 'Handful of Rain' they were all ready to come back! I’m not credited on the album for my playing at all. My manager thought it might be best to keep it that way and give the credit to the Savatage guys. I just wanted to do what was best for Savatage."

[AlphaMale]

More Savatage please!!

On a side note, Jon had covid-19 for 2 months. Glad he's doing better.

[KarpetRydOFunk]

@Dead Planet is the full interview available somewhere?

[Dead Planet]

45 minutes ago, KarpetRydOFunk said:

@Dead Planet is the full interview available somewhere?

I copied the info above from the Bravewords site and that is all there was I believe....although you could look around for the 80's Glam Metalcast mentioned in the article.....

[KarpetRydOFunk]

23 minutes ago, Dead Planet said:

I copied the info above from the Bravewords site and that is all there was I believe....although you could look around for the 80's Glam Metalcast mentioned in the article.....

Found it. 

It's a podcast. Here's the Spotifies link, though I'm sure it's on all the platforms. 

https://open.spotify.com/show/7H6RLcR7VsCVOJwbSNNQ8z?si=WSfdhkVBRMuy4YoidpEVnQ&utm_source=copy-link

[Dead Planet]

Latest info from BraveWords.....

Guesting on The Metal Interview podcast, Savatage frontman / co-founder Jon Oliva once again discussed the possibility of a new Savatage album. The band released Poets & Madmen in 2001. The band has remained largely inactive ever since, although core players Al Pitrelli (guitars), Chris Caffery (guitars), Zak Stevens (vocals), Johnny Lee Midleton (bass) and Jeff Plate (drums) are members of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. TSO was launched in1996 by Oliva, Pitrelli and producer / composer Paul O'Neill, who passed away in 2017.

Oliva: "There is no official thing that we're going to do a Savatage album beecause you know what? As soon as I say, 'Yeah, we're gonna do a new Savatage album... ' something will happen to fuck it up, and then I look like a liar. So all I'm gonna say is there are many surprises in the future. We don't know what's going to happen, we're not sure. But we're writers, and I have enough songs for three Savatage albums. But there's no deal with a record company to do it, there's no plan. All we're doing, as being musicians and songwriters, is we're compiling new material. If something happens where we say, 'Okay, we're ready to do this...' I will be the first person to make a professional press release to tell everybody. But I just don't want to, because it's not solidified in stone right now."

"Do we wanna do it? You bet your fucking ass we wanna do it. But do we have the material for it? You bet your fucking ass we have enough material for another 10 year run. All I can say is if we do a Savatage thing, it's gonna fuck you people up. It's gonna be fucking blowaway."

[DaHun72]

The problem has never been writing new music, it's always been about recording it, touring (TSO) and priorities.

I love the band but fear we may never really get much more out of either TSO or Savatage/Oliva.

I really hope we get Romanovs purely because this was written when TSO was still primarily Savatage so hoping for a darker and more metal edge. I loved Xmas Eve and Other Stories but Beethoven's Last Night easily beats all TSO releases. For me they became so safe that it got boring and repetitive and I never listen to their other albums anymore.

As for Sava we'll see. Finding and getting a decent label and $$ in this day and age ☹️. The commercial reality of releasing a Sava metal album over a TSO one etc.

[KarpetRydOFunk]

Get Frontiers and ADV!!

Solved. 

[AlphaMale]

On 6/13/2021 at 11:58 AM, KarpetRydOFunk said:

Get Frontiers and ADV!!

Solved. 

ADV????  

[Dead Planet]

From Bravewords....

It’s been well over 20 years since Savatage released their last album, Poets And Madman, in 2001. Of course the Trans-Siberian Orchestra took over and then we saw the tragic loss of leader Paul O'Neill in 2017.

Legendary singer, Jon Oliva, just spoke with Sakis Fragos, publisher/chief editor of Rock Hard Greece, for an exclusive update on the new record:

Oliva: “I just got home from the studio, where I was working on some Savatage songs. I was sending stuff back to Johnny (Middleton, the bass player) and Caffery. I'll tell you something. This Savatage record is going to fuck it all up! That's how good it is. I made a lot of mistakes like that before and I don't make them now. I'm in no hurry at all. I want to release it next April, so we can all come and play the summer festivals next year. There's no way we're going to rush it. For any reason. Because this will probably be the last record we ever make, ever. I want to make sure it's a 10/10 album. And the fact that Zak Stevens and I are going to be together on some songs and doing a duet makes me even more excited. Deliberately, I wrote six-seven songs specifically for Zak to sing. I worked on some songs with Al Pitrelli, which are definitely for me. There are a couple of epic songs where Zak sings some parts, I sing some parts, and we sing together on some of them. It's the best record I've ever written. Unless I kill myself!”

Who else is on the album?

Oliva: “I’ll have Steve Wacholz playing on a song or two (that was a real surprise), Jeff Plate on the rest, Johnny Lee Middleton, Al Pitrelli with Chris Caffery, Zak and me. There will also be Jane Mangini who is playing a few things and probably Vitalij Kuprij. Even (drummer Steve) Wacholz in two-three songs. For example, I send Johnny the songs and ask him to add something if he thinks it's worth it. I want everyone involved, from the beginning. I want it to be a full band record, where we all work together. It's going to be great.”

Do we have a working title?
Oliva: “The working title is Curtain Call. I don’t know if that is going to be it. The very last song that’s going to be on the album, is the song called ‘Curtain Call’. And it just me with a piano and it’s very deep. It’s a basically me singing to the fans, telling them all goodbye. And thank you. Every time I hear it, I cry. Everybody I play it for, cries. But it’s my way of saying goodbye to everybody. Thank you. I love you all. This is my final goodbye. Thank you. Have a good life. So I think I’m going to call it Curtain Call, but it’s not in stone yet. Between me, Al, Chris Caffery and my brother (Criss), we have like 40-50 songs. It ain’t going to be easy to trim these down. With any leftovers I’ll put out a bonus CD a year later. We'll start recording in June and we'll be working continuously until we go to Omaha for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra rehearsals. After the TSO tour, we'll be back in the studio in January and by February, we'll have it finished. My goal is to have it out next year, on Criss's birthday (i.e. April 3). Then we want to come back and play festivals. We have so many offers. Saki, I'm not 25 years old. I want to play Wacken, I want to play everywhere and then that's it. This will be my way of saying goodbye to the whole world. I want to tell our fans how much I love them. They provide my livelihood. I don't want to let them down. I'll be there next summer, too, to play the festivals and kick some ass!”

[auslander]

Thanks for posting. Had no idea we might get some new Savatage!

[Dead Planet]

From Bravewords...

In a new interview with Monsters, Madness And Magic, Jon Oliva talks about the early years of Savatage, the legacy of Criss Oliva, substance abuse, rehab, Halloween, haunted recording studios, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and more. Listen below.

It’s been well over 20 years since Savatage released their last album, Poets And Madman, in 2001. In the new interview Oliva offers an update on the new Savatage album.

Says Jon: "Well, we were doing a new Savatage record until I fractured my spine, and so we have to put that off now until the first of the year. I slipped on a wet marble floor, and I fractured my T7 vertebra. It's very painful... I'm actually in a lot of pain right now. I have to wear this kind of like a harness vest support thing for four months."

 

Edited September 21, 2023 by Dead Planet

[Dead Planet]

 

[KarpetRydOFunk]

The problem is I really want this to be good, so I'm already expecting to be disappointed.