Dan Roth at Music And Art Interview recently caught up with TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA keyboardist/co-founder Bob Kinkel, who discussed various eras of his career including his time working with SAVATAGE. An excerpt from the interview is available below:

Photo by James Minchin

Q: The first Savatage record you were on was Hall of the Mountain King?

BK: "Yeah, Hall Of The Mountain King was the first record I played on with them. That's how I met Paul (O'Neill) and Jon (Oliva)."

Q: How did the band react to having a session player come in and play on their records, after so many albums of it being just the core band?

BK: "We all had a great time. Criss Oliva (guitars) in particular was such a sweetheart. I just remember the hours he spent with me showing me his guitar riffs so I could double things on keyboards. I was doing so much session work, and Criss used to ask me 'You wouldn't want to come on tour with this metal band, would you? (laughs)."

Q: There is one Savatage song that you have a co-writing credit, which of course is 'Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24'. I wanted to ask you a little about that piece. I understand it was around in some form before it became a Savatage song?

BK: "Paul had it around for a while and had some different ideas of how to work with it. He had this idea to take 'Carol Of The Bells' and start it with 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen'. It originally started with acoustic guitar instead of cello, with a nice blocked-out melody that Paul had for 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen'. But then the two of us got together and came up with the additional musical parts, I figured out how to put the two themes together in that whole center section. We worked on it together for about four days. We came up with the 'Bum bu-bu-bum' and said 'Yeah! That works!' (laughs).

It was great; we had a really good time putting that together. We came up with the original new sections and put it all together and gave it its shape. There were no guitars other than the acoustic at first. Then we realized that it would fit into the Sarajevo story on the Savatage record (Dead Winter Dead) and then Al (Pitrelli) came in and put all of his brilliant guitar work on top."

Go to this location for the complete interview.