Jon Oliva (Jon Oliva's Pain)
February 2008
Congrats to the new album, Jon, it's really really great!
Ah, thank you. I appreciate that. It's a great record. It's got some of Criss' music on it again, which is always special when that happens. It's me. This is what I do. It's just under a different name but it's all the same.
It leads to the obvious question that you've probably been asked a hundred times and I have to ask again: can't you just call this Savatage?
I would call it Savatage but I don't because it's not Savatage. It's not Johnny Middleton, it's not Chris Caffery, it's not Jeff Plate or Al Pitrelli. It's me with other guys. If people want Savatage they should be buying the Trans-Siberian Orchestra albums because that's really Savatage now. That's what Savatage turned into. That's how that all happened. It's so obvious and it really gets me upset because it's so simple: if you just look at the CD and you read the names it's the same band with just a different name. Savatage is now the Trans-Syberian Orchestra.
I completely understand your point but the sad thing is that when you play as JOP you draw only a couple of hundred people while Savatage would attract a lot more, so many promoters in certain countries, like in Hungary, are unable to book you and bring you over...
Yeah, I know. It's really aggravating but there's really nothing I can do about it because it's not fair to call the same Savatage when it's not the guys from Savatage. I guess that's part of what I have to deal with. I would think it would do more damage if I called it Savatage because more people would be pissed off that I'm using the name and I'm the only person from the band there. I'm trying to show respect to the guys in Savatage by not doing that and showing people that I'm not doing it for the money. I'm doing it because I wanna put this music out and the money doesn't matter to me. I make enough money with Trans-Syberian Orchestra so I don't have to worry about it. I'm putting the records out because they're honest, they're good, it's got my brothers music involved and people who are real Savatage fans should know what JOP is, they should know the situation. It shouldn't be... if you're gonna go pay to see Savatage and you know that I'm playing and you know that I'm from Savatage and you know the whole thing you should go on to the show. What's the difference if it's just called Savatage, if you know what I'm saying. If I'm only gonna draw 500 people as Savatage, all 500 people that were gonna come to that Savatage show know about JOP. They know I'm gonna be playing tons of Savatage songs... I think it's just the words gotta get out a little more. I just have to do more interviews and explain what's going on and let people liste to the albums because the albums are really good. I knew it was gonna take a couple of records... so hopefully this is the record that will break me out of that problem.
As for myself, I can promise that this was the last time I asked you about this.
Ok, I appreciate that. But you have to do your job and you're doing your job. People wanna know that so that's okay. I also released a press release that explains things and everybody who's a Savatage fan can read it and they'll all know now that JOP is basically the new Savatage.
Yeah, I mean my personal opinion is that I don't fucking care of what you call this, you call it just Trash Box or whatever, to me it's the same music as long as you're doing it.
(Laughs) I'll call it Hungary. (Laughs) You know Zoltán, you can't make everybody happy. That's the way it goes, right? (Laughs) There'll always be somebody that is pissed off. It's so true, right? (Laughs)
Let's talk about your music then. You got very good reviews for the debut album of JOP. How about the second one?
The second one did a lot better than the first one. It sold a lot more than the first one did. SPV didn't really do anything with the first one so it really didn't sell that well. It did okay and it was good enough for me but the second one did a lot better and I'm expecting this one to do double what the last one did. I think this one is a far better record.
I think it's on par with the previous one. I really like both.
Great. Well, I'm glad you like it because I like the previous one a lot too. But I like the overall sound on the new one a lot better, the overall production and how it came out in the finished product. It's very versatile.
Btw, how do you see the evolution of JOP with three studio albums under your belt?
The first one was definitely a lot rawer and it was done a lot quicker and I've never really played with the guys before that first record so we kinda considered the first record as like a practise record. Let's just get together, I already had all the songs demoed up so they just basically learned the parts of the demos that I made. We got to tour a little bit and we got to play a lot together and I got to know them as musicians. And with the second album we kinda went back to what I used to do with the albums of Savatage, which is to write the songs (we had a nice rehearsal facility) and we were just going in and play. We're experimenting with every song. We've recorded 3-4-5 different versions of each song and some of the guys contributed music also on the second record, so I think that the second record for us was really like our first band album. The first record was more like Jon Oliva solo album with these guys coming in and playing on some songs. The second record was definitely the band working together as a band because we've known each other now for a couple of years of playing together. And this record was a lot of the same way; we rehearsed a lot, we demoed stuff up constantly. I've so many demos of the songs on this record it's ridiculous, probably 40-50 versions of each song. We just did everything, we just went through it and through it and came up with what we thought was the best. And then we recorded it in Morrisound and everything went great. Morrisound is the studio where we did a lot of the Savatage stuff at so I was very familiar with the people working there. We lost our star producer Greg Marchak. He suddenly died right before we went into the studio. That's why the album's a couple of month late than I wanted it to be because we lost him and we had to just stop and go back and re-do a lot of things. That kind of held us up for about 4-6 weeks. But I'm very happy with the final result.
Did Greg's tragic death affect your writing in any way or you were done by that time?
It would have probably affected me a lot because I don't write well when I'm really depressed like that but luckily the songs were written already. He actually started the pre-production with us so he had heard the whole album except for the one song that I added at the end, which is the little piano song I wrote for him called O To G. That was really the only thing I wrote after he passed away. We were very close friends and that's besides the working thing. I had worked with him since 1994 so I've known the guy for 13 years. We were very close friends so it was just like the Criss thing happening all over again. It was very difficult. But we dedicated the record to him and everybody just got together and said, "Look man, we gotta do this. We owe him something." So we decided to dedicate the record to him and everyone worked incredibly hard on doing it and I think it shows when you hear it.
The album is really varied and touches upon on so many different musical styles. Is it something you wanted to have this way from the start?
I like to surprise people and if they know Jon and Criss Oliva's music it's got its style but even back in those days we played a lot of different styles of music. We would play a song like Sirens and then play a song like Out On The Streets, which was a ballad type of thing. I'm at the age now where I wanna try some other things. I've said on interviews after the last album that this next album I was gonna have a portion of the album that was gonna be donated to me trying some stuff that I would just wanted to do that may not necessarily be heavy metal. But I never really concerned myself just a heavy metal guy. I've just figured I just do what I do. (Laughs) You could call it what you want. I call it Jon Oliva music. (Laughs) Different styles and I think that's good because it keeps the people from getting bored, from getting tired of everything sounding the same. With my records I don't want you to know what to expect next. You might get a heavy metal song you might get a weird song like the song about the computer called The Master. It's a thing I've never done before using tape loops and sound effects and writing the song around it. I've never done that before so that was one of my experimental songs. I was like, "Let's try it and see what happens." We did and we loved it. It was probably the funniest track to do on the whole album because we just threw everything up into the air. I mean we hit washing machines with hammers, slammed the doors and people burped into microphones. We used everything and you gotta do stuff like that to keep yourself challenging yourself.
Were you using a drum computer or real drums on that one?
It's real drums and then there's a loop of metallic noises that we triggered off the drums. There's a washing machine, a sink, and a couple of anvils . But the drums are real. They start with electronic drums at the very beginning and then when the whole band kicks in that it goes to real drums.
The album kicks off with a beautiful Savatage like intro…
Thank you, I like the intro song Global Warning. That was our big bombastic one. It's mainly instrumental actually but I love it. It's one of my favourite tracks. It's very different but it's in that Savatage vibe. It's got just a little singing at the end. I wanted to come out with something that was just dark and gothic sounding but was instrumental and was interesting musically. I really like that track a lot.
My favourite song is Firefly. What do you think about that one?
That's my masterpiece, man. That's my baby. (Laughs) That's parts of an old song that my brother Criss and I wrote. I think it was back in like 1980. I never really did anything with it. I went back to it and I wrote some parts into it. It's my favourite track on the album actually so… We're looking forward doing it live when we come over there for the tour. That should be a lot of fun.
You have recorded a bonus track No More Saturday Night, which was mean for Savatage...
Yeah, that's some of Criss' music again. That was gonna go on a Savatage record but we never finished it so I rewrote some parts again. I kept his parts and wrote some new parts of my own and joined them together and turned it into that.
The last time you told me about the "shoe box of Criss' riffs" that your wife found. How much of that you used on this album?
On this album I think he got music on 6 or 7 songs. The difference with this album is that more songs were based on his ideas. On the last album I used a bunch of riffs of his that I found. On this album, like the song Before I Hang, half of the music is Criss' and the song You Never Know, almost all the music of that is Criss'. Firefly's got a couple of parts in. Look At The World is got a couple of parts in too.The song Stories is a lot of his music again also. Almost everything except for the verse. The verse is my music but everything else on that song is Criss' music. So on this album he's got more full pieces rather than just riff parts.
And how much leftovers you have for the future?
I still got probably 20 tapes that I haven't gone through yet. I've gone through about 30 of them so far and if I keep going by that average with the 20 or so tapes I have left I can probably make another 6-7 songs out of stuff that's left. I'm gonna keep using the stuff until I run out of stuff. (Laughs) There'll probably be some stuff on the next record. I know that I'm gonna do some acoustic stuff on the next record. I might add like a bonus CD of some acoustic stuff and right there I got a tape of acoustic stuff that Criss and I wrote that's got 10-12 songs on it. But they're just acoustic songs, they're not heavy metal songs. I'm gonna do something with those. I wanna get all his music out. I think he deserves that and I think the real Savatage fans would like to hear what some of the stuff that Criss and I did that we never did get to do with Savatage. This is my avenue to do that now plus the stuff that I'm doing with the guys present day I think is really interesting. We give you the best of both worlds.
What will it be like running out of Criss' tapes?
Oh, that'll be like the end of it really. Right now we feel like Criss is almost like a member of the band because his music is on so many of our songs. Yeah, I mean he's not there playing with us but it is his ideas that we're using so there's a part of him that's a part of JOP. We call the band JOP because it's just easier than Jon Oliva's Pain. It's so long and boring. But yeah, Criss' music was very important to this album so I hope that'll continue as long as it can and when it's all gone then Criss' contribution to the world of music will be finished. I'm just doing what any brother would do. I had the opportunity to do that and I'm just doing what I think is the right thing to do.
It's so great that he can contribute to these albums this way...
I know. It's just amazing, Zoltán. It's almost like having him back. It feels so close to that sometimes. It's really weird. I'm so happy that I'm still doing this to this day and he still has something to do with it. That's good enough for me right there.
The album is called Global Warning, which is sort of a word game. You seem to be caring about the world we are living in and that we are screwing up lately...
Yes, you're right, I do. I have kids and they're gonna have kids one day. Do you have any kids?
Yeah, I have a daughter.
Okay, so one day she's gonna have kids and you know, rather than writing about dungeons and dragons that everybody sang about and that's okay with me but this isn't my way of making people aware what I think is going on. It just means more to me than making stuff up that doesn't mean anything. Every song on the album has a meaning to it. There's certain songs that deal with the world's situation and there's certain songs that don't. There's certain songs deal with different topics like a loss of a friend and there's a couple of songs about dreams. But there's definitely a theme behind the album as far as the title goes, Global Warning. Look at the world that's going on adding the cost because all the wars and everything, we're paying for it! You're paying for it, I'm paying for it and the people of America, we're paying for this war. Billions and billions and billions of dollars tat could be going to other things like making sure our kids can breathe air when they're born. Instead we're paying all this money to kill people. In my way without preaching I'm saying, "Look, this is what I see and this is what I think" and maybe it'll make some people aware of what's going on. Maybe it won't, I don't know but to me it's just obvious writing about what I see. Basically what I read in the paper, what I see on television, what I see when I go out on tour. When I go to places like South America where people are living in boxes and it's sad. It's so unnecessary. That's the frustrating thing about it. But anyway, that's just my way saying "Yeah, I do give a shit because I do want my children and my grandchildren to have a chance to do something in their lives rather than walk around with masks on and shit."
This is a year of presidential elections in the US. How much is that a daily issue for you?
(Laughs) I think they're all idiots. We have problems here. (Laughs) The best thing you can do for me is Hillary Clinton and this Osama something guy. I mean that guy, if he gets elected he's gonna make it a month before someone shoots him. America with a black president... there's just too many racists here in America to let that ever happen. I don't know. I don't like any of the people that are running for president to be honest with you. Don't like any of them so probably I won't even vote because it doesn't matter anyway. They're all idiots. I'd be a good president, man, right?
I'm sure about that.
I'd be the best one they could ever have, "All right everybody just chill out. Smoke a joint and just go to breakfast." (Laughs)
You mentioned about the upcoming European tour. Did you make up your mind about the setlist?
Yeah, we're gonna do about 5 or 6 songs off the new record, a couple off the last record and the rest is gonna be some obscure Savatage songs that I haven't done for quite a while. We're adding "Twisted Little Sister" from the first album, which I haven't done on stage in probably 20 years. We're gonna play "Unusual" from the Power of the Night album, which I haven't done for a long time. I think we're gonna do "Devastation" too from Mountain King. We could also pay a lot of attention to the Gutter Ballet record on this tour also. We're doing "Of Rage And War" and "Hounds" again because that's such a great song to play. I'm even gonna do a song off the Doctor Butcher record on this tour. It's gonna be a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to it.
What are the biggest hits with the crowd?
When we did the festival run "Believe" and "Hall of the Mountain King" seemed to be the ones that people liked the most but all the stuff went over very well so I didn't really have any problems. But those two kind of stepped out on the last tour. I always end the night with Mountain King so that always gets a big thing. And during the show Believe is probably the one that got the best responses. But I guess it's up to each crowd. I mean different nights it would be different songs. On some certain nights some of the JOP stuff went over better.
What do you know about the band supporting you on the upcoming tour?
I've heard about them. Someone is supposed to send me a CD and I'm waiting for that. But I've heard they're quite good. I'm sure it's gonna be a good package. As far as the tour I just hope everything goes well. I just love to play and I miss playing and I hope everything goes okay and people come out and enjoy it. There's gonna be a lot of surprises so they should definitely come out.
The last time I talked to Paul O'Neill he mentioned about a new TSO album in the works and a chance to bring the show over to Europe. Are these things happening?
Yes, they're gonna definitely get the band to Europe. They're just finishing up the Night Castle album now and it'll be done in about 4-6 weeks. And now that they have enough non Christmas material to go and put a tour together for wherever they want to take the band. That was really what was holding back the Europe thing. We only had Beethoven's Last Night that wasn't a Christmas album. But now we have two albums to play from so when we bring the band over there the show will definitely be this new stuff and stuff from Beethoven's Last Night.
You had this singer guy, Damond Jiniya in Savatage. What is he up to these days?
The last I've heard he was doing acting stuff. We actually had him down here in Florida to audition for TSO stuff. I don't know if Paul's planning on using him in the future or not, that's really his decision on that. But we did have him down and we did work with him for a couple of weeks down here 4-5 months ago. He's still around but he lives in Nashville and he got married and he's been doing some acting things, TV commercials and stuff like that.
You also had Jack Frost in the band for a short period. Are you still in touch with him?
I see him every now and then. I love Jack. Jack's a great guy. We had a lot of fun teasing him on the road. (Laughs) We really made his life miserable. (Laughs) But it was fun, man. He's a good guy, a great guitar player, a great showman on stage. It was a lot of fun with him. I always wish Jack the best. I helped him out on a couple of things he did. I haven't seen him for a year or so but I hope he's doing well.
For closing what would be your top 3 albums from 2007?
Oh boy, I don't even know if I've heard three albums last year. (Laughs) Let's see. I'll try to be as close as possible. I like that band from Norway but I'm not sure if they released their last album in 2007. I'm trying to remember the goddamn name of that band. (Laughs) I can't remember. A band from Norway, what the hell are they called?
Pagan's Mind?
Pagan's Mind, that's it! Okay, man, that's the one I've heard. I like that album a lot. There's a lot of good songs on there. I thought it was interesting. There's another band that we toured with called Elvenking. They are from Italy. Their last album is very interesting. I kinda like that one a lot. And then there's a really heavy band that I'm never gonna remember their name now... shit... just can't remember the name of them. There's another band that I really like. It was really really heavy stuff and I think they are from Sweden or Switzerland. Their name escapes me so I can only give you two. They sent me burned copies, they didn't send me the actual CDs, so it's hard for me to remember without having it right in front of me but it was really good. Whoever you are out there it was a great album. (Laughs)