When I last spoke to Jon Oliva he has just released his last album Maniacal Renderings and he hoped to support the album in limited gigs across the United States. Sadly that didn’t happen but he was able to promote the album abroad where he has a fanatical following. I recently was granted the opportunity to speak with Jon once again this time he’s promoting the follow up to Maniacal Renderings the new album is entitled Global Warning and it too is a solid effort. I asked about the new album, a North American Tour and the 2008 Presidential race. As with the last time Jon was a joy to interview and a genuinely nice guy.

 

Jon is Global Warning a Concept album? There seems to be a theme am I off here? What the significance of the title?

 

The album definitely has a theme to it, each song is different it’s not like it’s not like it’s a whole story. There is a recurring theme. The title was inspired from Global Warming but I changed it to Global Warning.

By changing it to Global Warning I could talk about all sorts of stuff, not limited to the environment, that’s how that all came about. I was looking for a title that was identifiable. I was watching T.V. one night they were talking about global warming and the environment. They were doing a feature on the ice caps melting and stuff. To me that was title that people all around the world would know. I didn’t want to write an entire album about weather, so I changed it from warming to warning so it became a global message on the state of the world, I could write on terrorism, this and that and all of the topics that I touched on.

 

Jon from the Criss Oliva tapes what parts of these were used on the Global Warning album?

 

Yeah the box of Criss Oliva tapes… The stuff that I used on this album is a much more substantial that what made it onto the last album. On Maniacal Renderings it was a handful of riffs and stuff. On this album there pieces of songs that we had demoed up during writing sessions for Savatage but we never finished or weren’t happy with in the form that they were in. I took them and wrote around them. A good example is “Before I Hang,” “Stories” is another example, also “Your Never Know” and “Look At The World.” I liked a lot of the pieces of the stuff that I picked out when it came time to write for this album.

 

Will there be more of Criss’ stuff used in the future? I recall when I last interviewed you there was a lot of material discovered. Is this enough to do more than two albums worth of riffs and ideas?

 

For the next album if there’s stuff on there that I can use, then he’ll be on there too. I think it’ so cool that I have that you know. It’s just so weird how that all happened. It’s nice to have him still be a part of what I’m doing now. I still have about 20 to 25 tapes that I haven’t even heard yet out of the 40 or so that we found. So when I get ready for the next album I’ll just reach in and grab a handful 4-5 tapes and sort through what’s on there. At this point I think I have about 3 -4 more handfuls that I can grab. Who really knows what’s on the tapes, there may not be anything that I could use on there you never know.

I look at it as a surprise, that the reason why I haven’t gone through every tape yet you know? I don’t know what I’m gonna get from him for the next record. It’s just the way that I wanted to do this, I didn’t want to listen to all the material and use all the best stuff for just one record. This allows Criss to have some contribution on the records in the future.

 

Any chance that any of the stuff that doesn’t make it onto a J.O.P. album will make it onto a T.S.O record or anything?

 

You never know. If there are riifs or music that is a lot lighter it could be used on T.S.O. There’s some acoustic stuff and things like that, but I’m gonna hog them for myself first! (laughs) If there’s something that is in the T.S.O. vein sure I’ll play it for Paul (O’neill, producer). If he wants to do something with a piece Criss wrote we’ll see what happens you know?  Currently T.S.O. has no shortage of material we’re already backed up two albums deep. (laughs) That whole thing is crazy.

 

Ralph Santolla played on this album how long have you know Ralph? How did you get him to work on the album? He’s been busy playing with Deicide and Obituary.

 

Well, he lives near us and he’s a friend of ours. I have known Ralph for like for about 20 years or close to it. He happened to be at the studio one day when he was working with Obituary. Ralph and my guitar player Matt are very good friends also. We were working on a track and we were sitting outside have a cigarette. I believe the way it happened we invited him to check out what we were doing. We played him “Adding The Cost” we had two solos that were going to be on there. One was an organ solo and the other Matt doing a guitar solo. My attempt wasn’t really what I had in mind so we asked Ralph if he wanted to throw a solo in. He said “sure” so he came in and played, it was a lot of fun. We had a few friends come in on this one, we had the owner of the studio Tom Morris played some acoustic guitar, which I could not get right. For two hours I tried and tried and just couldn’t nail it. I was frustrated and handed the guitar to Tom and he played it and nailed it the first take. I wanted to kill him! (laughs) We go way back with Tom to the Sirens album. We have another friend that plays hammer dulcimer this is an instrument that I’ve never played before and we were working on this song “The Ride” which was in a weird Egyptian tuning. And this friend that plays hammer dulcimer came in and we were like “let’s see what you can do.” We wanted this “Battle Of Evermore” like sound like Led Zeppelin had on Led Zeppelin IV they used that on that particular album and it in perfect. So we had a few friends come and throw a few things in. We had a lot of them do back up vocals, we called ourselves the tall and fat choir! (laughs) we had like four big guys and four tall guys, it was a lot of fun. You have to keep things fun you know? Or you’ll go crazy….

 

The tracks you mentioned are some of the standouts on the album “Adding The Cost” I love that track.

 

Thank you Jon Lord was a huge influence on that one. I wanted to drawn from Deep Purple and give it that kind vibe. That happens from time to time if there is a certain vibe to it I’ll go all out. When we did “Adding The Cost” I was like “let’s throw in the Deep Purple organ in there and see what happens! (laughs) I really like it, when it was done I listened to it had a little bit of Queen influence too.

 

Right! To me that track sounded like Deep Purple colliding with Queen and then smashing into a brick wall called Savatage.

 

I like that!

 

It’s just such a cool track I love it.

 

Thank you.

 

Which leads to a traditional stock question what track on Global Warning is your favorite and why?

 

Right. Well, my favorite track on the album is “Firefly,” because the music has special meaning to it. It was a song that I wrote with Criss back in the early 80’s. The only part of that song that is new music is the ride out section. Criss and I wrote that song together when I got my first keyboard actually. It was called something else back then, it was one of those things that I never finished or did anything with.  When we started to work on this record I dug it out and started to work with it. I came up with the lyrical idea and it just seemed to come together. It’s got over 104 tracks on it was the biggest production number on the album. It’s the song that we spent the longest time recording, for example that song has real brass, horn players, real string players and the ride out thing I did, all the screaming in there. That’s the highest screaming that I have done. I remember after getting done with that I was red as a tomato. I put every ounce of energy into that ride out. It’s my favorite part of the album (the ride out on “Firefly”), it’s all this emotion and all this passion, it’s something that I’m really, really proud of. That song is the song on this record where we pulled out all the stops. I played all the guitar on there with the exception of the lead that Matt does. All the clean guitar and acoustic guitar was me playing. I worked on the song a lot, more than the other guys…for me it’s my favorite song. After getting a chance to record this after having this written so long ago…it turned out just how I heard this in my head. This turned out perfect.

 

You’ll be playing Progpower USA this year will there be other opportunities to play around the United States?

 

Yes, we’ll be playing Progpower USA in Atlanta in September. I’m really looking forward to that show. That show will kick off the world tour for the new album and we’ll be co-headlining with Iced Earth some very good friends of ours. It’s gonna be a great time for the fans. We’ll be pulling out some old and obscure Savatage songs that we haven’t performed in years and in some instances stuff that have never been performed on stage at all. We’re just gonna have a lot of fun and we’re gonna have a great time. We’re doing a quick run across the U.S., in fact Prog is the first show of the tour. We’re doing I believe something like 15 shows in the Northeast and the Midwest. We then head to Europe we’ll be back in time for Christmas. After the holidays we’ll head to the West Coast and do some dates there. We are doing the U.S. tour but it’s in two legs. The first leg goes from the end of September to the end of October then we go Europe then we come back and kick off the second leg in the U.S. in January of 2009. I’m really looking forward to that, Zak (Stevens) band Circle II Circle will be playing with us, I can’t wait. So it’s gonna be another band (not available at time of the interview), Circle II Circle and then us (Jon Oliva’s Pain) at the end of the night Zak will be coming out and doing 2-3 songs with us. It should be a lot of fun. This should be a real treat for the Savatage fans.

 

Didn’t you do a duet recently with former Crimson Gory singer Midnight? How did that come about? Were Savatage and Crimson Glory friendly back in the day?

 

(laughs) Yeah, you know we were playing the clubs with Crimson Glory in the early 80’s and we were friends with Midnight and the rest of Crimson. Down here where we are from it’s a very small circle so we know each other pretty well. I’ve been around the longest so I know everybody. We all run into one another, the guys from Obituary I see all the time same for the guys from Deicide, it’s a very small circle of musicians that have been around for a while. I don’t remember the name of the song that I sang on! (laughs) I know what you’re talking about. It was like 4 or 5 months ago I think.  I got a call and was asked if I wanted to be a part of it. I said yes. And the next thing I know I’m recording vocals for the song. It was fun I like the end result.

 

What are your thoughts on the 2008 presidential race? Have you picked a pony?

 

(laughs) Ummmm….I’m voting for Bugs Bunny! (laughs) I’m not really sure man. I really don’t like Osama or whatever his name is..Obama. I’m not really into his thing…and McCain I guess…I’m leaning his way only because of his experience. I really think whoever wins has his hands full man first of all. Things in this country are just getting out of hand the cost of gas is past the point of ridiculous. That’s just one thing; the new president is going to have his hands very full. John McCain has more experience, he’s been around longer, he’s a military man, he served and was a prisoner of war. So I’d have to say I’m leaning his direction, but I’m not a big fan of politics.

 

Would it have made a difference in your mind had the democratic nominee been Hilary Clinton rather than Obama?

 

(pause) You know our country would never vote in a woman present it’s simply just never going to happen. We’re just real male chauvinistic here (in the United States) and I just don’t ever see it happening here. I didn’t think that she was a bad candidate, but in the back of my mind I’m thinking “why bother, because we all know she’s just not going to win.” That’s just the way we are and I just can’t ever see it happening. I hope one day we will and I’ll be made out to look like an idiot…in my opinion I just don’t see it happening. It’s got to be frustrating to follow her and support her…in the long run she doesn’t have much of a chance to win anyway. It’s weird man. And the Obama guy…he really doesn’t have much of a track record of doing anything. The guy just popped out of nowhere! The other thing that people should be concerned about with him is the fact that he was born a Muslim and he has renounced the Muslim religion. That in the Muslim world is the ultimate mortal sin that one can commit, so how do you think his foreign policy gonna go over with countries from the Muslim world? I know it’s gonna be terrible! He’ll be looked at the one that has committed the ultimate sin for renouncing the Muslim faith. People from the Iran and countries like that are very religious. I have been there before and it’s really fucking strange (to me). The people there are very into their religion. It’s their way of life, their whole life. They get up at 6 in the morning and go to pray where we wake up at 6 in the morning and hit the snooze button and go back to sleep. (laughs)

I remember playing in Istanbul and getting woken up by a guy singing from a roof top and then as I looked around there were thousands filling the streets with their traditional dress walking to temple. That would never happen here in America…we’d drive! (laughs) Politics is a weird thing man. I do think that Obama in essence turning his back on the Qur’an should concern us.

 

Jon you’re a Beatles fan. You've paid homage to them many times over the course of the three JOP albums. Has Paul McCartney heard any of you music?

 

I don’t know about the Savatage or J.O.P. stuff but chances are he’s heard some of the T.S.O. stuff as that has heard by a lot of people. Some really big stars in fact, as you might already know a lot of really big stars have come out to play with us over the past couple of years.

We have had Roger Daltry from The Who, Jon Anderson from Yes, Ian Hunter (Mott The Hoople), Greg Lake from Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Tommy Shaw from Styx, Paul Rodgers coming in and performing with the orchestra (T.S.O.). I don’t know that he has for sure, but if he has I would absolutely just pass out. The ultimate dream come true would be to have him come on stage with T.S.O., the only thing in my mind that would top that would if we could also have John Lennon join too! Of course that isn’t going to happen. You know a year ago if someone told me that Roger Daltry would be joining T.S.O. on stage I would have told them “you’re out of your fucking mind.” He came and played and wants to do it again…they’re in talking stages of trying to get Robert Plant on board for a couple of shows this winter, so that could possibly happen. That just goes to show the phenomenal response that T.S.O. has been receiving, I didn’t know that we would have this kind of a reach. God bless this has definitely changed my life. To get people that you listened to growing up and now they are wanting to play with you, that is mind blowing. I could not ask for a better compliment.

 

How do you think he would grade you as a songwriter?

 

I would hope great. I would settle for good… you never know. (laughs)

Lennon and McCartney were my teachers, I learned how to play guitar, the piano, the drums and how to sing was all with Beatles records. The Beatles were my teachers and then Sabbath came along I love the heaviness. I really liked the power and the darkness of what they were doing and then there was Queen and I was like wow this is cool. Those three bands have always been my mainstays. I love The Beatles, Queen and Black Sabbath. There isn’t a day that goes by I don’t listen to one if not all three of those bands. I listen to them for inspiration while I drive to the studio every day and around the house.

 

Thank you Jon.

 

Thank you and I hope to see you on tour.

 

Thanks to Dave @ Locomotive Records USA for setting this up. A heavy metal thank you to my Ace In The Hole Ryan Seek from the Ultimate Metal Old School forum for his help and the rest of the UMOS regulars. You Rule.  Please do not hesitate to pick up a copy of the latest Jon Oliva’s Pain album Global Warning it’s a fantastic.