Jon Oliva's Pain
Vivid Dream Life

09.09.2010

In our hi-tech day and age, everything happens so quickly that you have no time even to be surprised by it. Step One – register a Facebook account and list your favorite bands there. Step Two – learn as much as possible about the Bang Your Head festival that is held every summer in Germany. Step Three – get to know the people from all over the world who are also going there. Step Four – one of them recognizes you as a Jon Oliva’s Pain and turns out their promoter. Step Five – next day you stand in front on a hotel in Balingen, where the Mountain King found shelter for the night before the festival show, and cannot believe how lucky you are. John Oliva is a monumental person, a metal giant (both literally and figuratively), but he only looks frightening at first sight. Then he smiles, kisses a lady’s hand and listens attentively even to the most awkward combinations of English words, providing detailed answers to all the questions asked…

You initially planned to tour in support of your latest album “Festival” in spring.  But then everything was delayed until autumn, and your performance at Bang Your Head is one of your first appearances in support of the album. What was the reason behind the delay? Do you think it hurt album sales because there have still been no gigs to support it?
 
I don’t know. (laughs) If I knew the reasons, I’d tell you.  Just so many things just didn’t work out. People’s schedules were all mixed up, Trans-Siberian Orchestra work popped up that I had to do.  I just had to move around. It’s just one of these things which happen once in a while in this business.

Also there were financial things.  And we didn’t have enough time to put everything together because I wasn’t around, I was with TSO. I didn't have enough time to put everything together to do it from springtime and I had to postpone it, because otherwise it wouldn't have been very good.
 
Don’t you think it hurt album sales because there have still been no gigs to support it?
 
Not really.  I mean, people buy my records because people know me. I have my own built-in audience, they’ve been around forever. So I don’t really worry about it. I just like to make records, and if it works out to where I can go out and do a bunch of shows, that's okay, but you know, I'd rather just come and do the summer stuff, get in front of a bigger crowd. It’s more efficient. Just to have the amount of people I played in front of last week (at the Graspop Metal Meeting festival in Belgium – ed.) I would’ve had to play like 50 club shows.
 
Everybody now complains about declining album sales because of illegal downloading and stuff like that. How much has it hurt your band?

Well, it hurts everybody.  People don’t really realize it, but… It hurts the smaller bands more then it hurts the big ones. It just does. It's like half your income is all the sudden gone.  You're used to making this amount of money every year doing an album and then it's half of that. It hurts the whole thing... I mean, it's good in ways because a lot of people get more exposure to bands, but when it comes actually to sales and to figures, it’s really damaging. I wish I could solve the problem, but I can’t. I give up.

“Festival” is your fourth studio record with Jon Oliva’s Pain. Can you describe the way you worked on it? Was it any different from the recording of the previous three albums?

It was a lot different, because everything was written on tour. I did a lot of writing when I was on tour. Usually, the albums before that were all basically written at home. I have a home studio.  This album, though, for some reason, it just fell into the time when we were doing all these festivals last summer. I set up a little recording system in the back of the bus, and I did a lot of writing just driving around.  It was like we had no other choice.  It was either we had to do it this way, or wait ‘til you get home.  So it was like, “Well, why not?  Give it a try”.

A lot of the songs was written on guitar, because obviously I couldn’t fit a piano in the back of this bus.  I think that's why the album has a heavier edge to it. Just the last song, the ballad, was written on piano. So that was a big difference.  All the other albums were written in the studio, and this was written in the rolling tube. (laughs)

You have two guitarists in the band, and you play guitar yourself…

Yes.

But most of your albums have some guest guitarists.

Yeah, I play a lot. I’m probably the biggest guest guitar on this album because I play guitar in every song on the album, except for one. I played a lot of guitar — I played a couple solos.  Because I wrote a lot of the songs on the guitar, and when we were just running them over, working on them. it just sounded right with me playing. Even my own guitar players said, “It just sounds better with you playing it.  So just play it.”  So, I was like “All right.”  And that’s what happened. They played on everything but I played all the rhythm guitars, all the acoustic guitars, slide guitars, weirdo guitars...  All kinds of shit. I played a lot of the shit on the album. (laughs)
 
But anyway you have more guest guitar players on this album - Tim Morros, Dana Piper…

They’re just friends that do a couple of little noodles — just a few seconds worth of stuff.  That was just fun to have them there. I just wanted them to be on an album because none of them had ever been on an album before. So I was like, “Well, here... you play this...” And it was good! It came out good, and I was happy with it.

Jon Oliva’s Pain gets more experimental with every album. Do you think there is a limit to your experiments?

Not really.

Is there a chance that someday we will hear some rap or rave parts on your album?

No, you will never hear rap.  But you WILL hear a bunch of weird stuff. I’ve only just begun to get weird.  I’ve opened that door of weirdness and that is a fun door to go down! There is a lot of cool stuff we can do. The music has to grow like a flower, like a tree. And when the tree finally gets to the height, it dies! (laughs)  So, hopefully I’m not quite at the top of that tree.

You will be shooting the first Jon Oliva’s Pain DVD in Tilburg, Holland, in October.  Even though you moved the whole tour, you are still planning to record the DVD in Tilburg.  What makes this city and this venue so special for you?

The venue.  The venue is designed for that kind of a concert. It saves thousands and thousands of dollars of me not having to bring stuff into a place that’s not suited for it.  That place is designed as a video venue.  Everything is already hung from the ceiling. So it’s just the logical place to do it. And there is a great coffee shop right around the corner, which doesn’t hurt. (laughs)

I saw a very interesting announcement on your website – on May 12 you did a “songwriting clinic” in Florida.

Yeah!  That was fun!

Can you describe this event in a few words?  What did you perform there?
 
It’s hard to describe.  It was just fun.  It was a small group of people, like 75 people. I just did some stuff and answered some questions and showed them stuff that I’ve been doing with different tunings and things. It was really weird because I’ve never done one before.  But I was happy with the end result. I was like, “This was cool. Maybe I’ll do this again.” It is all on YouTube. (laughs)

What kind of audience came to the show?

All mixture. There were kids, some older people, anyone from twenty years old to fifty.

On “Festival” we once again can hear the songs in which you used the music written by your brother, Criss Oliva.  You’ve already done three albums using his riffs – do you still have more of his unreleased stuff in the basement?

Not too much more, maybe a few cassette tapes - five, six or so... I kinda used them all up, which is sad. But it has to come to an end some day.  I’m fortunate — I’m happy that I was able to find that stuff, so now the fans got to hear it.  That was really the only reason behind doing that and using that stuff — so the fans could get to hear stuff that they would never have heard before that Criss wrote. But I don’t have much left, ,maybe enough to make them part of one more album.  But that’s probably gonna be it, though.

A few years ago it was announced that you were working on music for a movie, and that bonus tracks for the album “Maniacal Renderings” were composed for that movie.

Yeah, one of them was.  The movie crashed, it went bankrupt. Actually I was called by my publishing company, and they said, “This guy wants to meet you in New York, at the TSO show.” I met him, and he was really nice guy, older guy. He said, “I’m doing this movie, and I need a song to end a movie that is kinda like John Lennon.” I was like “All right!” He said, “Could you do something?” And I was like, “Sure.”  So I did it and played it to the guy — he loved it.  And a month later the movie went bankrupt. (laughs) And I was like, well, whatever!  What are you gonna do?

Earlier this year a new Savatage compilation called “Still The Orchestra Plays” came out. It’s a very nice release, but who chose the track list for it?  I’m asking because a couple of very obvious Savatage hits that everybody loves – “Believe” and “Jesus Saves”, for instance, are not on this compilation…

Yeah, well, we picked the songs on our own account. We just picked the ones that we thought best showed everything — versatility, musicianship, good songs. There are so many songs we could have chosen from, but... I’ll tell you what, it was very difficult.

When this compilation was released, it was announced that the entire Savatage back catalogue will be re-released once again. What is the point in releasing these albums again? SPV already re-released them about 10 years ago, and I guess these re-releases are still available…

Oh, I don’t know.  I’m not the record company. They’ve bought it and they have the right to do whatever they want. Еhey asked me to do some extra bonus tracks for them, and I did, so now they’ve got 14 acoustic bonus tracks that I did - of all kinds of songs. What they do with them, they do with them, I don’t know. I think the reason was that the last company that had them stopped releasing them... stopped putting them out. Paul (O’Neill, Savatage producer) wants to keep the catalogue out there, so they put a deal together with Edel. Tthat was it and now they’re available and people that don’t have them can get them.

There have been speculations about a new Savatage album for ages, and the release of “Still The Orchestra Plays” started a new wave of rumors. Can we hear it from you first-hand – are you indeed planning to bring Savatage back?

Oh God, we are not doing an album.  TSO is coming here in March/April, and there is a possibility that I may come out on stage and do some stuff with the guys at the end of the night.  But it’s not confirmed yet. It’s just an idea we’re talking about to make everybody happy, and everyone will stop asking me about a Savatage reunion. This way they come see Trans-Siberian Orchestra and maybe a little Savatage — mini Savatage reunion at the end of the night.

That’s really all I know what’s going on right now. Nothing’s been confirmed, this is just what I was told. But it would never be like the band would be back together. It’d just be for this one thing, just to make everyone happy and say, “Ok. You’ve got see Savatage one more time like it was during the 1990’s.”  And that’s all I can really do.

Speaking of “Believe” – whose idea was it to re-record this song for Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s latest album “Night Castle” (2008)?

It was everybody’s. Because it’s gonna be part of one of the musicals that we’re doing.  We had to bring it back and find a guy to sing it.

And why is Tim Hockenberry singing it, not you?

Because I’m not gonna be able to do it on Broadway.  It’s for a Broadway musical.  The guy who’s singing is the guy that’s gonna be up there every night on stage doing it. And plus, we wanted somebody that had a different, more theatrical, a more Broadway theatrical type of voice than me.  I’m still a rock voice.

My version’s great and I love it.  I’d do it every night.  But what we’re using this for, he does it better. He does it the way it fits into the play, the rest of the play. But no one’s going to realize that until they see the rest of it. I’ve seen parts of it and I’ve worked on parts of it. So I see what he wants to do — what Paul wants to do.  And it’s going to work very well!  I’m excited about it.

My version is there.  And every time I play you’ll hear me do my version.  That’s all I can do.

The albums of Trans-Siberian Orchestra are mostly based on Christian themes, and with Jon Oliva’s Pain you also have some songs about faith, such as “The Answer”.  Maybe this question is too personal, but maybe you can answer it – at what point in your life you became a Christian?  Was it something that your parents taught you?  Or did it happen later, when you were already a well-established musician?

I was born Catholic, Roman Catholic. I mean it’s just something that’s part of life.  If you listen to the stuff I write about, I really kind of write about life — what’s going on and what I see. Whether it’s religion or war or politics or sirens or mountain kings or whatever.  A lot of the recent stuff is factual.

It’s not something I do on purpose.  Words come out, I just write them down. And then it kind of dictates where you want to go. From there, if you’re a writer, you can kinda get like it’s pushing you down a hill a little bit.  “Oh, okay.  I see, I’ll write about this.”  And then it starts to happen more. You throw the paper out the window, ya know... it’s one of the two, so...
 
In the comments on the song “The Evil Within” in the booklet of the “Festival” album you wrote that the song was inspired by one of your many nightmares.  Do you know the reason why you have nightmares?  Do the things you see in your sleep often inspire you to write something?

Ever since I was a little kid I’ve always had nightmares. I think it was from watching the old monster movies when I was little. But I’ve always had very vivid dream life.  I dream a lot. Every night I dream.  Sometimes they’re good dreams, sometimes they’re not.  And sometimes one hits you so hard... you know, you get up in the hotel room and you got one of these notepads sitting right next to you with a pen and you’re like, “Oh my god. This happened and that happened...”  And then you use as the start of a song.

I don’t know, it could be bad Chinese food. (laughs)  It just happens when you are in a subconscious state.  I guess it has to do a lot with what’s gone on during the day, what you watched on TV or read in the paper — it gets into your sub conscience. And when you go to sleep that stuff comes forward.  I don’t know, I’ve never tried to explain dreams before.  But I do have a lot of them.  A lot.

In my country there was the time when nearly no foreign bands would come to play there. Nowadays basically everybody plays in Russia, but not Jon Oliva’s Pain.  What is needed to finally bring you over for a gig or two?

(laughs) A lot of money! To be honest with you, I’ve had people poke around and I haven’t got any offers.  So, I don’t know.  Maybe they don’t like me up there. (laughs)

I’ve inquired to go there, cause I’ve always wanted to go to Russia. I’ve never been there. But I haven’t really gotten any responses from anybody that were worth, you know...  It cost a lot of money to go there, but what you get paid up there is very, very little. So to try to make it to where you can pay the bills...  Like I said, I don’t even care if I don’t make any money to play there, just as long as I can pay the bus and the crew - I’ll do it.  But they’re like, “Well, you know, we can give you like, $50 and a gallon of milk.” (laughs)  It’s like, well, I can’t do it.

Jon Oliva’s Pain on the Internet: http://www.jonoliva.net

Special thanks to Frode Johnsrud for arranging this interview

Interview by Angelion_Li
Questions also compiled by Roman Patrashov
July 16, 2010
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