Picture by James Minchen

GarageRadio.come recently hooked up with TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA / SAVATAGE guitarist Al Pitrelli to discuss his life as part of the TSO machine. The following are some excerpts from the story:

On touring with TSO:

"Touring is a weird thing. It beats working. I don’t want people to think we don’t work. We work harder than almost anybody in our country works at their day job. We have to work out for two hours every day just to contend with how grueling it is on the road. But, we’ve been doing this since we were babies. Everybody in this band started out playing the guitar, the bass, the drums, whatever, when they were little and it was never work ... it was fun. The fact that we get paid for it is a bonus. We’d be doing this for free. We’ve been doing it most of our lives for free. When I walk on that stage and there are 18,000 people in the audience and my wife is out-playing me, it’s a rush. I always tell people when they’re in a band or in my employ, and they sometimes get a little tired or a little cranky, I look at them and say ‘You know what, you’re doing the show for free. That’s a given. For two hours and forty-five minutes, you’re having the time of your life on that stage. I’m paying you for the other 21 hours a day when you’re fuckin’ bored to death. That’s the kind of job it is. You gotta travel. When you work on stage, whether it’s a club, a hall, or an arena it doesn’t matter. You could stand and play for somebody to throw you a dollar on the street and you’d love it. It’s the travel and the airports and the other stuff that gets tedious. THAT’S what I’m paying you for, so shut up!’ I have to think of ways to keep these people cranked and remind them this is the life that we chose and this is what we do. If you want to have the luxury and the wonderful grandeur of performing in front of people, well it does come with a price. The price is inconvenience. If you don’t like the inconvenience then put a dollar amount on it and that’s why you’re getting paid. I don’t pay anybody to be in the band, I pay them to put up with time in between when they get to play.”

On time management and the forthcoming Night Castle album:

“When you have a great writing team like Paul O’Neill, Jon Oliva and Bob Kinkel, there’s incredible music that comes out of it. But with TSO turning into the behemoth it’s become, it’s really difficult to allocate time to any other thing. When you have such a successful tour, how many other side projects can you devote your time to when everybody wants to do such a great job with TSO and its projects? In the 10 years since its inception, TSO has grown into this massive, massive undertaking with hundreds and hundreds of employees that takes three months just to get the logistics of the Christmas Tour started, then a month of rehearsals, then two months touring, then you put the monster back to bed in January and that’s seven months. There’s not a whole heck of a lot of time left for any other project that comes up no matter how much you want to work on it. Everything is gonna take a back seat until we can get TSO on auto-pilot, or at least something resembling a really well-oiled machine. The Night Castle record is the priority that everyone’s talking about right now and it’s mandatory that we get that record done. I gotta tell ya, the music that we’ve done so far is absolutely spectacular and it’s gonna be the best record we’ve ever made in our career. We’ve been working on and off on it for the past two years, but in the last two or three months we’ve really hit our stride and come up with some really incredible material we’ve been recording, so we’re hoping we’re going to have it done and in the can by Spring, 2007 and I know Paul wants it released by Fall, 2007.”

On the closing of CBGB's:

“I thought it was horrible. It was truly one of New York City’s landmarks and mainstays and that’s where we all cut our teeth growing up. There’s a lot of history and a lot of stories in that building. A lot of bands started there and ended there and it’s a sin because it was decision made based on the value of real estate opposed to the value of the art. Petitions are good to show the opinion of a cross section of the public, but from what I understand it all came down to a matter of dollars and cents. The guy that owned the place got behind the eight ball and stopped paying the rent and the landlord wanted to get it back for the black and white, dollars and cents definition of what it’s worth to him. It’s really, really a sin because it’s not just CBGB’s. There’s got to be 25 institutions in Manhattan that are no longer there. There are a lot of historic places where rock ‘n roll came into its own like SIR, The Record Station, The Hit Factory. All these places where records were made are all gone. The only one that’s left in town is the Electric Lady and I think that’s because somebody is funding that place. It’s certainly not making any money on its own. CBGB’s is done, they’re gonna put a lock on the door and they’re gonna turn it into some mutant geek style restaurant or something. It’s unfortunate, but that’s just the way it goes."

Advice for aspiring musicians:

"My advice is that you have to stick by your own integrity, be true to who you are and not get distracted. It’s like in the ‘80s, when the metal bands got popular and all the record labels wanted all the bands to be alike, so they ended up formulated. Then Curt Cobain and the Seattle bands came out acting like maniacs and not performing like everybody else. Soon there was Soundgarden and Pearl Jam and all the bands doing something different until everybody sounded just like them. You always have to break new ground. You always have to do something that will get you noticed. When we all sat down to write the first TSO record, we weren’t looking for what was fashionable or what would 'fit in.' We wanted to make a great record. We threw all musical ideas into the kitchen. We didn’t care what it was, we just said let’s do the coolest thing we could ever do. That showed us that maybe we were not gonna be popular, but what the hell, we made a great record, proving that the American people will gravitate toward something that is really good. This is a really long statement, but the bottom line is don’t conform.”

To read the entire story go to this location.