The Masters of
Heavy Music

Interview with Steve Wacholz and Jon Oliva

From: Aardschok/Metal Hammer, Holland 10/87
Written by: Metal Mike
Translated by: Ellen Bakvis

Palm Harbor, a small town near Clearwater in Florida. In between the grazing cows is the house of the Wacholz family, and that's where I'm to meet the members of the band Savatage, who are going to tell me all about the new album " The Hall of the Mountain King".
Unfortunately, bassist Johnny Lee Middleton is not there because he has to pick up his girlfriend at the airport, but "He'll probably drop in later" , according to drummer Steve Wacholz, the host of our tea.., ehm...beer-party.

How was the response to your previous album "Fight for the Rock ?"

Steve: Quite surprising. My mother takes care of the fanclub for us and she has only received 4 angry letters from our fans. And only three magazines have written negative reviews. The rest was rather positive.
Jon: It was not a goodbye from the old style, like now we're gonna do a new Beatles album, but it kinda resulted from the material we were writing at that particular moment. We did not start writing, thinking " This album must become a commercial succes, or this album must be metal ".

Still, it was not a small step in the evolution of the band. It was a major jump from 'Power' to 'Fight'.

Jon: It was a rather drastic change, especially a few songs, but not all of them. I don't think "Hyde" or "The Edge" or "Midnight" or "Red Light Paradise" are very different from the material that's on "Power of the Night". Maybe it was a little more melody-oriented.
Steve: The producer of "Fight for the Rock" had much more to say than any other producer of our previous albums. I don't mean that we had nothing to say in the matter but he simply took over control from us.
Jon: He softened the sound a great bit, 'cause he clearly was aiming at radio airplay. We are just musicians, we do nothing but play our music. The final result was rather disappointing for us. The songs could have been a lot heavier, if they'd been produced differently. The rough edges had been polished.
I can understand the response of some of the fans, it was a completely different album. But take, for example, Led Zeppelin III, that was a totally different thing than Led Zeppelin IV, right? A lot of bands reach that certain point once. We'd been playing extremely heavy music for years, long before our first album came out. We reached the point when we were a bit fed up with it and wanted to approach our music from a different point of view. We wanted to preserve the heavy sound, but do something different at the same time, and that's what we did. For some of the songs this new approach turned out to be OK, but for others it was not. It simply is a question of taste.
Steve: Many other bands went commercial for a lot of different reasons, and we were also rated in that category. But the record company of Savatage in no way put pressure upon us. The record company had not heard one note of the music, until the album was mixed. All songs on the album were put there by us. Even " Day after Day " was Jon's idea, although the song turned out to be a little softer than I'd expected on the album.
Jon: ...Than we all had expected. But we still like the song. We all like different kinds of music, that's who we are. We grew up with bands like Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Kiss, so our musical roots are diverse. And that album simply showed another side of the band. It was not like we never wanted to play metal anymore.
Steve: A lot of people don't know that Savatage writes all kinds of music. Stuff our audience will never hear. Jon, for example, is a very talented pianist. He also plays drums, bass, guitar and keys, so he writes almost everything. He used to be a lounge musician, by the way.
Jon: Yeah man, I was doing stuff from Barry Manilow, The Beatles..
Steve: And he also writes stuff like that for a publisher, for which he often doesn't even use his own name.

How did " Fight " sell, as opposed to " Power " ?

Jon: "Fight for the Rock" has been our best sold album so far. Atlantic ( record co. ) was also satisfied, because we were allowed to record a new album right away.

But for the new album you disposed of a much smaller budget to work with ?

Steve: We have recorded the new album for half the amount of money we had for the previous one.
Jon: We went into the studio prepared, this time. We had already written all the songs, when we walked into the studio.
Steve: We had a lot of support from our producer Paul O'Neill and all the folks at Record Plant.

You guys did a short European tour supporting Motorhead, ended with a gig in Holland and went into the studio again. Has Lemmy converted you to return to the old heavy style?

Jon: No, again it was just the stuff that we wrote. It just came out like that. we came back from the tour and Criss and I got together and said to each other, ok, now we're gonna do another album. He already had finished half of the material and I had written the other half. Some of the songs had even been written before the recording of "Fight for the Rock", so all we had to do is put it together. "Beyond the Doors of the Dark" had even been written before the recordings of "Power of the Night".
Steve: Not to mention "Devastation"...
Jon: The fundamentals of that song had been written back in 1978. So this album arose from bits and pieces that Criss and I already had on tape and that we wanted to use, pieces we liked. You know, whenever we write songs, there's a taperecorder on in the background. So when the time comes to make another album, we hook up and listen to all those tapes and then construct the album. And the new record came out very heavy that way. It has become a great album, we love it. It probably is the heaviest album we have made so far.

Maybe you can tell us a little bit about the lyrics of each song...

Jon: OK, the album opens with "24 Hours Ago". The song is about some guy who almost collapses 'cause of stress, who cannot handle things anymore, who leaves his girlfriend, home and family, jumps into his car and takes off. So he's an individual who wants to leave everything behind.
"Beyond the Doors of the Dark" is about an evil spirit that takes control of your body in your nightmares like in the movie Nightmare on Elm Street. He wants your mind and your body , but you don't want him to take them so you try to fight it but you can't because you cannot wake up.
"Legions of the Night" is about the army of headbangers upon the face of this earth.
"Strange Wings" is the commercial song on this album. This song is about a witch who posesses strong powers, and the character in this song is under the impression of that witch and wants to meet her. But each time he sees her, riding a black horse for example, she disappears again. Ray Gillen, who sang with Black Sabbath for a while, sings this song together with me. Although this song is rather commercial, it's a real Savatage song and very unique.
The B-side of the album opens with "Prelude to Madness", some sort of battle between Criss and what we call the 'Demon Orchestra'. The demons guard the 'Hall of the Mountain King' and it's an intro to the song by that name. So the demons try to chase Criss away from the Hall, but in his solo's Criss tries to enter it.
"The Hall of the Mountain King" describes the King who guards his treasures and the mystery of the Hall. Like 'Sirens', it tells a story.
"The Price you Pay" is about a goal you have in life, and even after that when you're gone. But it's a positive message to fight for the things you want to achieve.
"White Witch" is a fast song, kinda like "Rage" and is about cocaine, about what it does to you, the way it controls your life and can even kill you. 'That's my favorite song', according to Ma Wacholz who has entered the room.
"Last Dawn" is an instrumental intro that Criss came up with and gives an impression of the dawn of the last day. It has a connection to the last song of the album entitled "Devastation", a song about the end of the world, an answer to the question of the song "Holocaust" of the "Sirens" album: 'What will 2000 bring?'...which is total devastation. So each song on the album has it's own story.

Wasn't Atlantic Records shocked when they heard the final tape of "The Hall of the Mountain King ?

Steve: The people from the record company that have heard the tape are very satisfied. The video committee has approved the script of our video of the song "The Hall of the Mountain King" today.

So this will be your first real video...

Steve: We do have some live recordings of shows but the quality of those isn't very good. The producer who's gonna do our video did 'Friday the Thirteenth', 'Maniac' and 'The Chainsaw Massacre' and the video will be recorded at the studioset of the movie 'Dawn of the Dead' and our budget for this is considerably larger than what most other bands get.
Oh yeah, if that guy from Allied Forces reads this: " I'm sorry about your drumset man, I apologize for breaking it and all the damage I did. I will repay you one of these days".
Jon: (laughing) It's your own fault, you shouldn't have trusted him!
Tringggggg!!! Telephone. Bassist Johnny calls to say that he's still at the airport because his girlfriends plane has been delayed.

In between "Power" and "Fight" bassist Keith Collins was thrown out of the band. We've never been told why that happened...

Jon: The three of us are all kinda quiet, very polite. We were on the "Power" tour and Keith was way too nervous and was stressing out everybody, it was getting worse and worse. In the end we couldn't even give a normal performance or give interviews because of that. It already was like this on the 'Sirens' tour and was getting worse and he did nothing to improve his behaviour. Besides, he made no progress whatsoever, musically speaking. Everything that happened to Keith was absolutely his own fault and it was a relief to everyone in the band when we had him replaced by Johnny.
Steve: Johnny was playing in this neighborhood in a band called 'Lefty'. He was the most important musician in that band and I'd already been watching him for about two years. He was often in the spotlight because he also is a great performer and he also fits in with the rest of us regarding personalities.
Jon: Keith made it seem like he'd been the one who had left the band in interviews, but he's been thrown out by us because he kept yelling and we were fed up with it.

BTW, have you heard the demo of his new band Keith Kollins Krunch ? There is a song on it entitled "Return of the Sirens".

Steve: I have heard that song, and it does resemble the song "Sirens". He is obviously trying to follow in our footsteps. But it's a fact that Keith never really contributed to the Savatage songs. The two Oliva brothers are the main songwriters of the band, although Keith tried to make it appear differently.
Finally, I would like to thank everyone in Europe for their support, because they discovered us before America did and we hope to return to Europe soon for a number of gigs.