Following is an excerpt from an interview conducted by Dan Roth with Edgar Jerins, the man behind seven classic SAVATAGE and TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA album covers:

Jerins: "The first album I did with them was Dead Winter Dead. Paul told me the image he wanted with the gargoyle and the city of Sarajevo. Again, with illustration you are kind of compositing something, so one thing you want when you are a realist is a lot of reference. So when he gave me the assignment, I had a friend who had all of these gargoyle statues, so I had that part covered. I went down to The Strand in New York and got a great book on Sarajevo – it was happening at that time - and got all of these images. I worked up a drawing of a gargoyle with the city behind it. Then I would go meet with him, go back and forth, and play with the image. Paul is very particular; he is a perfectionist and it shows. When you see a concert, he is involved in every single flame (laughs). I’m also a perfectionist so it works for me. Paul would bounce ideas with other people, but it really is him and his ideas. We put a lot of time in with the drawings going back and forth before I committed to color and oil. So I worked up the painting."

"The one thing I did that was different from a lot of illustrations was that I worked them up in oil on linen, using all the top materials, and they were pretty big, about 24” x 36”. This was stretched on linen like a real painting as opposed to a lot of illustrations that are done on illustration board. I did them like I was doing a commissioned portrait of the president, using the best materials and making sure they were archival. So I did that painting, which Paul now owns and that album wound up going crazy well when they pulled that one song off the album, and Trans-Siberian Orchestra was built out of that, and that was the start with me with them."

DR: That Dead Winter Dead cover really captures the devastation in the city.

Jerins: "Yeah, and if you look closely you will see I put a lot of crosses and minarets in the background. I was looking at reference at the time and minarets were all through-out the city. That was a cool cover."

DR: Were you already a fan, or familiar with Savatage’s music before you got to work with them?

Jerins: You know what? I wasn’t. I didn’t know their music. Of course I got to know it once I started working with them. I listened to a lot of music, I like a lot of metal music, I have a real wide range, I just didn’t know the band."

Go to this location for the complete interview.