Once upon a time....
.....in the year 1975 , when 15-year-old Jon Oliva and 12-year-old Criss Oliva started their first band project together, thus founding the road towards a unique musical career, that would set the tone on the point of passion and richness of ideas.
At that time, in the middle of the seventies, when Richie Blackmore had just left Deep Purple to found Rainbow, Black Sabbath released "Sabotage" and Judas Priest gave "Sad Wings of Destiny" to humanity, the two future Heavy-Metal-heroes were living in California and were occupied in a coverband called Black Diamond ; Jon let the leadaxe wail and Criss picked the bass.
Jon:"We had about 30 Kiss-songs in our repertoire , plus Black Sabbath's 'War Pigs' and 'Iron Man'. Our Kiss-like make-up without the white background looked a bit like Alice Cooper's , only heavier".It must have given the organ-player, a fifteen-year-old kid with an enormous blond Afro-look dazzling features !
In 1976 the Oliva family moved to Florida, where Criss and Jon transformed an old henhouse in the backyard into their practice-room. "We named the thing 'The Pit'. One could get sick in that place. The worst thing were the rats. After each practice session Steve Wacholz had set traps and for each rat that was killed -most times we found up to six of them- he painted a huge X on the wall behind his drumkit."
Before it ever came to this very special sort of body-count, Steve had his fatal first encounter with the Oliva-brothers, who at that time were the leading elements in a band called Metropolis. Steve was a die-hard Metropolis fan , had even gotten hold of their first single 'Let's get Rowdy', a 7" limited to 500 pieces. The upcoming "Doctor" was living a little further down the road and one sunny afternoon he showed up in "The Pit" where he caught Jon and Criss in the act of overtaxing the Palm Harbour neighborhood with a new attempt of breaking the world-loudness-record.
Jon:"All at once this guy was standing in our shed saying: "Hey, you guys are really cool. How about this: do you need a drummer?" We took a quick look at him and asked ourselves, what kind of a strange dude he was, and then told him that we would have nothing against his coming by with his junk for a tryout session within the next few days. So he brought his stuff with him and started to play. The only problem was: he was stroking his drums instead of hammering on them. I stood up in front of him and said: "Mister, if you want to jam with me and my brother, it has to make a bit of noise, you know what I mean ?I'll show you how it's done."
Behind the Pit a rake was standing against the wall, so we took the handle and broke it into two halves, thus creating two enormous drumsticks.Then I sat myself down behind his drumkit and said: "Okay man, you must play at least as hard and loud as I'm showing you right now. ..and beat at his kit with all my strength. In the meantime he was jumping up and down in front of me crying: "My drums...my drums...what are you doing!?! "And I replied: "Don't be a wimp. Be glad that I'm teaching you the proper thing!" Well, I had demolished his fell completely, so I had to come up with $35 the next day in order to get him a new one. Then he started to play and I told him: "Okay,go out and get yourself the biggest drumsticks they make." No sooner said than done: he brought me the biggest sticks that were available."
Because he was short of money Steve stole a pair of golfsticks from a golfcourt nearby, and sawed them into percussion instruments."...And from then on he actually played much louder. My brother however had a very sneaky method of inciting him even more.He said: " This guy still isn't loud enough. I will instill the flute-tone into his mind". He had the brilliant idea of putting our amps directly behind the drumkit. Then we put these things on at maximum volume and really gave him hell ,haha ! Yeah, and then he had to beat real hard, whether he wanted to or not. He then started to play very loud and from that time the name 'Dr. Killdrums' originates...he simply ruined everything. After having played with us for about 3 weeks , his drums looked like they'd been thrown at him for $20 at a fleamarket."
During the time that followed Criss and Steve played in a highschool-trio called Tower, and Jon left school without graduating, because in the meantime he was able to make a living from the gigs with a coverband. Together the three went " on the Rush-trip. From then on we called ourselves Avatar. The time of the coversongs was behind us, we already played our own compositions.In the meantime Criss had developed himself into a very good guitarist, and I took care of the bass and the keyboards."
| In the longtime the threesome however needed a regular bass-player. Jon:"That's how we found Keith Collins. Mainly because of the fact that he owned a P.A. - and with that all the equipment we could make good use of playing in the clubs nearby. Very practical, haha! Besides he actually wasn't a bassplayer, but a guitarist, In 1980, bassplayers were very hard to find. The first real Avatar-line-up also started as a fourpiece,. At that time we didn't have a real agent; we took care of everything ourselves. Especially Steve, who did the complete booking." |  |
1980 gave the first Avatar - performance on a sampler of the Rock - radiostation YMF - Avatar was the only band that was allowed to contribute two songs: "Rock Me" and "Minus Love". In these two songs little could be perceived of the Rush-trip. Jim Morris, who had opened the Morissound - studio in Tampa in the year 1981 together with his brother Tom, remembers "real commercial rock. Hairband - rock . At least it was louder than anything else people used to listen to."
