Metal-Temple.com/Rock Hard writer Orpheus Spiliotopoulos recently conducted an in-depth interview with SAVATAGE mastermind Jon Oliva. In this interview Oliva tries to clarify hot topics such as Savatage’s fate, Jon Oliva’s Pain’s meaning, as well as the importance of the TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

Q: Since you mentioned the record label, I’d like to ask you why you left SPV Records and how better do you feel it is with AFM Records now?

Jon Oliva: "The SPV people are very nice people but I think what happened there is the top people there who are people whose acts we’re not really associated with... You know, we’re kind of pissy about the whole Savatage thing. When I did my record, they just took it and dropped it out, they didn’t do anything to promote it or anything at all. A lot of kids were complaining that they couldn’t find it. So I was like instead of doing this, I’ll take it to a smaller label, the guys from AFM and I like those people; I got to hang out with them already when I was writing songs for Zach’s (Stevens - Circle II Circle singer) record. I got to meet them back then, I got to talk to them and we had a relationship with them for a year before we made a deal. They actually paid me on time (laughs)!"

I like their attitude. The people there are all young and hungry to make a name for themselves and they treat the bands with respect! I wasn’t feeling that with SPV. I was feeling like a little fish in a big ocean. They have so many bands and I was just getting ignored because it wasn’t Savatage and all they cared about was Savatage. I was like "well, I can’t give you Savatage but here I’ll give you this which would have been the next Savatage album" The first JOP record was the next Savatage record. The only difference is that it’s a different name and different people playing the material but the material would have been the next Savatage record so... They just didn’t get that, they just didn’t understand."

Wow! But by saying that, Jon, you do know that there’s a lot of your fans, a lot of Savatage fans who wonder what’s going on with Savatage...

Jon Oliva: "You know, I’m glad you asked that because I can put that whole thing to rest. There’s nothing going on. The situation is very simple. You’ve got the Trans-Siberian Orchestra which is a multi-platinum, selling 30,000 tickets a night, band that is actually Savatage with a different name and different singers, that has become successful. And you’ve got Savatage which has a loyal core audience that is a lot smaller. You’re talking worldwide about maybe a couple hundred thousand people where you know, I’m sitting here, talking to you on the phone, looking at my wall and I’ve got 5 platinum albums and not one of them says Savatage. And that’s not saying anything bad about Savatage. We all loved Savatage but we gave Savatage its chance to get to the level where it was supposed to get to and it never did, for whatever reasons, you know - we had tragedies, everything like that.

But to me Savatage was never Savatage after Criss (Oliva - guitar) died. All these other lineups of the band that people heard from Edge Of Thorns (1993, Atlantic Records) on, to me was more like Trans-Siberian Orchestra actually than Savatage. Dead Winter Dead (1995, Atlantic Records), Handful Of Rain (1994, Atlantic Records), The Wake Of Magellan (1998, Atlantic Records)... those were the albums that spawned the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Because we knew we had that sound, especially with ’Christmas Eve Sarajevo 12-24’ and going in Savatage we were getting no sales and no interest! People don’t understand that whether they want to accept it or not, it is a business. I have mouths to feed, I have a family, I have bills just like everybody else and it’s kind of asinine for people to sit there and argue with me about why I’m not doing Savatage when Savatage never made us any money. I mean we spent far more money of our own, keeping the band together and putting the band on the road than we ever earned. And we did that for a long time! A lot of bands would have cashed it in after 3-4 years of not making any money. We kept the band together for 15-20 years without making any money! And it just got to the point where it was like well, what do you do? Do you go play a club in Greece for 2,000 people or do you play Madison Square Garden in New York for 25,000 people?"

Read the entire interview online at this location. Also available in the current issue of the Greek Rock Hard magazine.