JON OLIVA, one of the founding members of SAVATAGE and currently involved with his solo project called Jon Oliva’s Pain, spoke with Metal Asylum in New Jersey about the latest album Global Warning, the next TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA album Night Castle, and the future of Savatage.

Metal Asylum: The new album Global Warning is a bit different from the first two Jon Oliva’s Pain albums Maniacal Renderings and Tage Mahal. Can you tell us what makes it different?

Oliva: "Well what I did was, what I try and do with lets say the thirteen songs I have, is I do a certain amount of those songs in the style for what I am known for doing which is Savatage type stuff, and five or so songs I will do differently where I will experiment a bit. Like on Global Warning you have 'The Ride' and 'Master'. You know you have to try and do different things because that keeps the other stuff fresh. If you keep locking yourself into the same mode your gonna write the same record over and over again. So it was time to try something different this time. And its cool because there was some music I found that my brother Criss had wrote and that’s on the album. 'Look At The World' was a song he wrote in the late 70’s after a QUEEN concert and it was the first time we tried writing a Queen style song. I had totally forgot about it and it was on those tapes I had found of music I had written years ago with my brother. 'Firefly' is another one he has a little piece in that we wrote together. 'Before I Hang' is another one and that is like half of his music."

Metal Asylum: I am also hearing some melodies outside of those recognizable Savatage/Streets ones?

Oliva: "You know like I said before I like to try and change things up. I have different styles of singing that I do aside from the screaming hard rock stuff which I like to do. But I am a firm believer in variety and versatility to keep people’s attention and doing the same tones all the time will make them bored. I guess that comes from the different things I listen to and most of my favourite bands are versatile, Queen, THE BEATLES, even BLACK SABBATH and like the song 'Changes' off Vol. 4, you know. So that was something I always tried to keep as part of what I do. And that keeps all those heavy metal songs fresher. You know on an album I can do the heavy metal, then a couple power rock songs, a couple that are more progressive, and even a couple acoustic like the song 'O To G' is just me and an orchestra and Kevin with the fretless bass and the six piece string section, you know. We almost cut the song live it was very cool. That’s how bands from my day use to do it like Queen. It gives the music a different kind of vibe instead of trying to nit pick everything, cutting and pasting all the instruments together. We used real drums, real piano, real strings. I use the keyboard stuff and shit but when I am doing stuff that’s orchestrated I like to have people come in and play the instruments."

Metal Asylum: Is there a future for Savatage?

Oliva: "Well actually if you look at Trans-Siberian Orchestra, that is Savatage. All the members from the Dead Winter Dead, Wake Of Magellan era are in TSO. So its basically Savatage under a different name and if you listen to Dead Winter and Magellan and the music of TSO, those Savatage records are very close to what TSO does. I mean look, we released the first Christmas single 'Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12/24' when it first came out on Savatage’s Dead Winter Dead, no one would play it. Then when it was released under the Trans Siberian Orchestra it went to fucking number one in the country. So we had to look at it as we took Savatage as far as we could take it. The name was dated and God bless those fans but that’s as far as it went. To the heavy metal faithful. The fans are great and loyal, we did Savatage for twenty something years but we are not twenty one years old anymore. We got this TSO thing that’s just great and very successful. And that’s hard for me to say because I started Savatage with my brother Criss and it’s the ultimate kick in the ass. But now I don’t have to worry about taking care of my family because of TSO’s success, ya know. People really get hooked on the name thing but at this point you get the best of both worlds. You have the members of Savatage going out doing the Christmas holiday thing with TSO, you have me doing Oliva’s Pain where we play all that old Savatage stuff like 'Sirens', 'Power Of The Night', 'Mountain King', 'Streets', 'Gutter Ballet', and Zak (Stevens) with his band CIRCLE II CIRCLE plays songs from when he was in Savatage like Edge Of Thorns and Handful Of Rain. I mean my live set is fifty percent Savatage fifty percent Oliva’s Pain. And I mean look at the success of TSO. We have people like Roger Daltrey from THE WHO, PAUL RODGERS (Queen, BAD COMPANY), possibly Robert Plant (LED ZEPPELIN) may play with us this year, I mean Geoff Tate from QUEENSRŸCHE, Tommy Shaw from STYX, IAN HUNTER, John Anderson from YES. I mean these people are legends and they want to play with us. To me that’s the ultimate compliment, it blows my mind."

Metal Asylum: So in the future, you don’t see the members of Savatage going out and playing shows under that name?

Oliva: "This is the thing…I could easily go out and do Jon Oliva’s Savatage with the guys from Jon Oliva’s Pain. But out of respect for not only the name, and the guys I played with in Savatage for twenty years and the guys I am playing with now in Oliva’s Pain, I don’t. It isn’t the same, its different with these guys in Oliva’s Pain. I am trying to do something different with them while keeping true to my roots in Savatage, plus I don’t want them to work in the shadow of the Savatage name. Because really this has nothing to do with money playing with JOP. I am having a ball doing this and its all about the music. That’s another reason why I didn’t want to use the Savatage name, I didn’t want people to think I was sucking the name dry, you know? I don’t have to work another day in my life if I don’t want to just off of what I have done with Trans-Siberian Orchestra. I could just sit around on my fat ass and watch football for the next ten years (laughs) but I don’t want to. I love playing music and that’s what I’m gonna do. Plus, there is so much of my brother’s music that people haven’t heard that I’m gonna make music until I put out every piece of music I have done with my brother. Then I will stop and do horror movie soundtracks or something on a mountain until I grow old and grey."

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