Trans-Siberian Orchestra
Still The Orchestra Plays

31.08.2012

*** ARCHIVE ITEM - DATED 2006 *** “There is a thin line between insanity and genius, and he is always on this line”, that’s how Ferdy Doernberg of Germany’s Rough Silk described our subject for this interview. It’s hard to argue – in order to put together a project of such a large scale as Trans Siberian Orchestra and bring it to the top of U.S. charts of the late 1990s, one has to have insanity or genius in him… or maybe both.
Paul O’Neill has had a prominent name of the U.S. rock scene for a long time. Among other things, he produced Aerosmith, Omen, Metal Church and many other bands, but his biggest merit is inspiring the transformation of Savatage from a pure energy-driven metal bands into masters of grandiose concept pieces bringing together classical music and heavy rock in basically equal parts. With Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Paul made a step further, and the project’s three albums – “Christmas Eve And Other Stories” (1996), “The Christmas Attic” (1998) and “Beethoven’s Last Night” (2000) – are true rock operas featuring the best singers and players of not only rock music, but also the symphonic world and Broadway.
When talking to Paul, you learn the true meaning of the word “charisma”. His enormous optimism, enthusiasm and confidence in the path he has chosen simply cannot leave you indifferent. Paul got so much carried away talking about his project and his impressions of Russia, which he had visited twice, in 1984 and 1986 (hence, the name of the project), that he spent an entire hour on the phone, instead of the 30 minutes we had been initially given. He would have spent more, if not for the need to do another interview, this time with someone from Hungary. Well, OK, next time he promised to secure for me a two-hour slot…

(EDITOR'S NOTE - THE YEAR 2012: Those of our readers who have been following HeadBanger.ru for a long time are aware that the website was not born out of nothing. By the time it was established, all of our original authors had several years of experience with other Internet and print media. At that time we came up with a lot of materials, but, for various reasons, some of them are not available on the Internet at all at the moment, or are available in incomplete versions. The fifth anniversary of our webzine is the perfect moment to look back and put them online again. Why? First, because some of these conversations matter a lot to us personally. Second, we know that there is still interest in them on the side of our readers...)

Hi Roman, this is Paul O’Neill. I am calling to Russia, right?

Hi Paul. Yes, this is Moscow.

You know, I visited Russia twice, in 1984 and 1986.

Oh, it was a long time ago…

Yes, but I fell in love with it, I really really did, because I’ve always been a fan of Russia, you know, Russian artists, especially Andrei Tarkowski, Tolstoy, Dostojevsky, Checkhov, all these great writers. One of my favorite poets is Russian. I’m probably not saying her name right – Akhmatova? (with the stress on “o”)

Yeah, Akhmatova. (with the right stressing)

Ah, thank you, I read her poetry like in awe. As a matter of fact, reading her poetry made me want to learn to speak and read Russian, so I could read her poetry in its original language. It was so great translated into English, I was like, “Wow!” It’s like - I’d like to learn French so I could read Victor Hugo in its original French. I just love Russia…

Oh, it’s great to hear it. Usually when I speak to musicians they don’t know a lot about Russia, they’ve never been here, and it’s great to speak to someone who’s been to my country and knows something about it.

Oh, Russia is such a great and fascinating country. We’ve written a musical that will one day be produced in the U.S., probably in about two years, it’s called “Romanov”, it’s about the Bolshevik revolution. It’s just fascinating, because the characters, you couldn’t make them up, like Stalin, or Beria or Trotsky, any of these characters – it’s like “where did you come up with the character like this?” (laughs) If you wrote that in a Hollywood screenplay and turned it in, everyone would go, “No, no, this is unbelievable!”

…This can’t happen!

This can’t happen, right! And when I was there I got to go to the Hermitage, took a walk through Leningrad. Just look at the artwork, I mean, even the government’s apartment store, you walk through and you look at the architecture, it’s just so beautiful. Also Russians remind me an incredible amount of Americans. They just seem like Americans. I’ve always felt so bad, because we’re locked out, we ended up with the capitalist democratic system that allowed everyone to thrive, and Russia had the bad luck to end up under Marxism, and it drove out a lot of work ethic and morality. I’ll never forget the time when I was walking down Gorky Park and I saw that statue, a little boy, and I was asking, “Oh, who’s that, what did he do?” And someone told me, “He turned his parents in.” (laughs bitterly) “And then you built him a statue?!” It’s hard to comprehend.

The story of this boy was studied in school in Soviet times. When you were in your fifth year at school, you had to tell his story by heart. But now it’s not like that any longer…

Oh, I know it’s not like that. Even in 1984 and 1986 I could smell it changing, because the person who was telling me that story was like, “Can you believe this?!” And then it’s also so sad, because when I was there I met a lot of musicians… (pause) There was one guy, I can’t remember his last name, his first name was Sasha. This guy was kind of old when I met him, he must have been about 40, and this guy had a voice that reminded me of Rod Stewart, he was great! If this guy was on the Western market, he would have been a superstar. And I saw bands like Brigada S, if their timing had been right and they had been in the West, I think they could have been a big band! And it’s such a shame because when you think of the time before 1917-1918, all the great artists were coming out of Russia, like Rakhmaninov, whose music was floating and the whole world was embracing. And then you had 75 years – and all these great artists, what happened to them? You know, Roman, it’s like in rock’n’roll, you have 10 years, maybe 15 years to make it. And if you cross a certain age group, it’s very rare that major record companies take chances on you if you haven’t already got to a certain level. And I think about all these great writers, all these great singers, all these great musicians whose artwork has been lost to the world forever. I bought all the books of Anna Akhmatova that I could put my hands on, and I was trying to get some extra ones when I was there, and somebody told me that during the Stalin purges a lot of her writings were destroyed and no copies of them exist. It’s such a shame just because to me Russia is such a great country, it’s a magical place. And there was another thing that disappointed me: I love Russian architecture, I forget the name of the church – St. Andrew’s? The church that was in Moscow and took 300 years to build and Stalin tore it down to build a monument to Communism, and now the only thing there is a swimming pool. (Paul obviously refers to the Temple of Christ the Savior – ed.)

But now they have rebuilt it.

Oh, yeah, I heard they were rebuilding it. (pause) I know Gorbatchev is not popular in the Eastern countries, but from the Western point of view he’s a great man, because Communism was slowly destroying the country, it was like selling out pieces bit by bit, and I think the longer it went on, the harder it would be to get back. When the Wall fell, Germany, Hungary and Poland seemed to be recovering faster, and Russia is recovering slower, and it’s because the longer you stick to this mentality, the harder it is to get out of it. You live there, you probably know better than I, and I know there are some problems with crime and gangsters now, but I think that under Communism, there were much worse gangsters, the gangsters that were running the state. I also had a very close personal friends from Brooklyn, NY, he’s an older man, and he spent 25 years in a Soviet concentration camp in Siberia. He was a priest and he was put into jail for being a priest. He wrote a book that was fascinating. I think he was in Poland when Stalin invaded it in 1939, and he was arrested and sent to Siberia, and I think of the 5,000 people that went into the concentration camp, only a handful came out alive. I don’t know, I have so much hope these days, I wanna go back and spend more time there, especially now. In the 1980s, we sent cases full of guitars, amplifiers, tape recorders, because we were gonna try to work with a band in Russia. But they only had Melodia Studios, and Melodia Studios just wasn’t up to the standards that you need to compete. And I was gonna try to work there, I said, “Listen, I need to use if for six months, just gimme six months locked out, and I’ll make it work.” And somebody said, “Six months!? No, no, no! You can have it from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Thursday, and from 9 a.m. to noon on Sunday…” (laughs)

That’s a Russian tradition, oh yeah…

…And I said, “This band can compete, we can compete with Aerosmith and Guns N’Roses, but they won’t be able to compete if you don’t let them use… Let me take these guys to New York.” And they were like, (in a wicked voice) “No, no, no!”

They won’t come back, I see! (laughs)

(laughs) It’s so funny because somebody from the American embassy tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Paul, you take these guys to New York, the band knows they are not coming back, and the government knows they are not coming back, we know they are not coming back! (laughs) They’re never gonna let you do it!” So the whole thing kinda fell apart. (with a swift change in the mood) It really broke my heart because the quality level and the artistic level of writing in Russia is amazing. A lot of countries have their one or two, you know, like Poland had that one great female poet, France has Victor Hugo or Emile Zola, but Russia just had a million great writers, a million great… (a mobile phone is ringing on the other side of the line) Oh, don’t worry, I’ll answer that later, there’s a telephone call coming through for me but this is more important. (a moment’s pause) Oh, where are we? I didn’t mean to get off with a history conversation when I know we’re supposed to be talking music.

Oh, don’t worry, it’s not everyday that I’m having such interesting conversations about Russia with musicians.

(laughs) Oh, I’ve always been fascinated by history, and Russian history is just too fascinating…

It’s like a fantasy book!

It really is, and the characters, I mean, it’s not just the Bolshevik revolution, if you go back further, I mean, Peter the Great had such a fascinating life, Ivan the Terrible is just unbelievable, Katherine the Great is just fascinating. Again, you couldn’t write fiction as fascinating as the Russian history. And maybe it’s just because I’m an incredible optimist, but I think that in maybe 50 years Russia is going to be a great superpower again. I think that the United States and Russia will become as close as the United States and Britain are.

I hope so too, I hope to live long enough to see this day.

Me too, but you know, when I was there in 1984 and 1986 I was surprised, because I knew that Russia was a great rich nation, and when I saw the way that people were living there, I saw these long lines for food and nothing in the stores… And you know, this is a rich country. But I never thought it would have changed as quickly as it did. In 1989, when all of this came crashing down I was expecting bloodshed. And that's what I give Gorbatchev a lot of credit for. I think he could have just done his term in office, retired to his dacha, and left the mess for someone else to clean up. But I think Gorbatchev traveled to the West, he was in Canada, he was in Australia, he was in the United States, and he saw that, boy, this isn’t working and to put any more money into it is insane. And Russia is a rich country, it’s an incredibly educated country, I would say that 90 percent of Russians that I talked to were incredibly educated. This country should be thriving! When I was there in 1984, they asked me to give a talk to a class that was studying English, and they asked me to talk about America. I remember they asked me if I was married, and I said no, and they said, “Oh, so you live with your parents.” I said, “No, I have an apartment.” They said, “How big?” And I said, “Three bedrooms, two bathrooms.” And they said, “You live in an apartment in New York City with three bedrooms, two bathrooms by yourself?!” (everybody laughs) I could feel they thought I was making it up! Then they said, “You’re super-rich!” I said, “No!”

(laughs) Yeah, in Russia you have to work really hard to buy your own flat, and most of the people get it when they’re 30 or 40 years old, unless they inherit it from someone.

Yes, they explained it to me. And then they asked me about cars, and I didn’t even tell them the truth because I had four cars. I said, “I only have one.” (laughs) I felt guilty, you know.

Yes, I can understand that.

And the people in Russia were very kind and very warm. I tried to get out of Moscow and Leningrad just to see the rest of the country, and everybody was just so nice and so sharing. I had a lot of great nights just sitting around the table talking. We were talking about everything from the history of World War II to the history of World War I to Roman history to Greek history, and they were very educated about all of these things. The Russians love their music and the Russians love their poetry, and it was fascinating. And not to mention I’ve always felt very bad for Russia because they took the wrath of the insanity of Hitler. I think it was one of every 10 Russians died or something. There’s a saying in the West, I don’t know if you’ve heard it or not: the Russian people’s capacity to absorb suffering is staggering. And they come out at the other end and smile and have an optimistic view!

Again, Russians remind me of Americans. Americans think of the British as their brothers, but in many ways Russians are more similar in outlook and everything else. I think America was just a little bit lucky. When we were born as a country we had George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. And when they tried to make George Washington king, he was like, “Are you crazy?” And when we had the equivalent of your revolution, we were lucky enough to have Abraham Lincoln. I think Kerensky was a good man and he was trying to do the right thing, but I think Kerensky underestimated Lenin and Trotsky. And unfortunately Russia had to pay for that for 75 years.

There was another very fascinating thing when I was in Russia – any building I saw that was built before 1917, I was like, “Wow, that’s beautiful!” And then I would see apartment buildings built after 1917, I was like, “Wow, this is the ugliest building I’ve ever seen in my life!” The contrast is so extreme! Once I was having dinner with one of Russian ambassadors, and he was a really nice guy and he got really drunk. (laughs) This is when I was only there for a few days. I said, “How come the productivity for consumer goods is so much worse in the Soviet Union than it is in the United States? You have thriving technologies obviously, you’re putting men in space and you’re building jet fighters, but I’m going to people’s houses and they don’t have refrigerators and they don’t have washer dryers! Some of the hotels that I stayed with outside Moscow didn’t have hot water! How is this?“ And he said, “Paul, you did not hear this from me. Communism destroyed the work ethic of a lot of people. Let me tell you the difference,” – and this man had traveled to the United States a lot – “if an American worker would see this boss driving to work in a really fancy car, he would turn and say, “I have to get a car like that for myself.” And in Russia, after Stalin and Khruschev, a Russian worker would see his boss driving to work in a fancy car and say, “He shouldn’t have that car.” You see, the one is thumbing down and the other is thumbing up.”

I have a hope for Russia’s new president, I think he’s trying to get the country back on track. I like Gorbatchev, I think Yeltsin was good, but he drank too much. (laughs) I think he tried, and I respected him for standing up when the hardliners tried to take back over. I think Russia in like one or two generations is going to be… I think the world is getting more and more dangerous, and you have these nutcases like Iraq and North Korea, you know, people that would really use the atomic bomb to kill innocent people. I think the sane people all over the world need to pull together and just not allow insane people… you can’t allow Hitlers to rise anymore, you can’t allow Mussolinis or Saddam Husseins to rise up anymore, because it’s too dangerous. I think of the future and I think a group of countries will come together, you know, the United States, Britain, Germany, Japan, were reason and sanity reign. And I think that we’ll see a new golden age, maybe I’m just an optimist, but I have a lot of hope. Also, the bands wanna tour Russia. When we worked with the Scorpions, the Scorpions toured Russia, but we lost a fortune in money, (laughs) because we couldn’t transfer the ruble overseas. It is getting better.

Yes, it does. But you know, let’s talk about the music a little bit, it’s getting really late here. As far as I know, you’re in the studio now, what are you doing?

We’re working on two new albums. One is another Christmas rock opera, and another not a holiday rock opera, it’s about the Chinese emperor. With Trans-Siberian Orchestra, everything we do is a rock opera, it tells a story. We wanted to try to break the normal pattern. In a normal band, you have four, five or maybe six members, and you do a bunch of songs. But we were always looking for a way to make the music have more impact. We tried to write the lyrics that were so strong that would stand up as just poetry. And we tried to write the music so it’s so strong that it doesn’t need lyrics, it just holds up on its own. But when you put the lyrics with the melody you can’t imagine them apart, it’s like creating an alloy with some of the parts created as a whole. And when we have acted to the best of our ability, we were looking for a way to make the song have more emotional impact, and we realized that the way to do that was a rock opera – putting each song in the context of a story. Like “I Don’t Know How To Love Him” from “Jesus Christ Superstar” is a beautiful love song if you hear it by itself, but if you realize it’s Mary Magdalene singing to Jesus, it takes on a whole another angle. “Pinball Wizard” from “Tommy” and The Who is a great song, but when you realize it’s about a kid who can’t see, can’t hear, can’t feel, but becomes an international icon, it takes on a whole another meaning.

So we started to experiment with the band Savatage, when we did rock operas like “Dead Winter Dead” and “The Wake Of Magellan”, but the problem with doing rock operas with a regular band is that you have just one or, if you’re lucky, two great lead singers. And rock operas by their very nature want multiple lead singers, because as the characters change, you want to be able to change the voice. So we decided to start a new band that would have new rules. The line-up would be fluid, you would have the core of members that would stay the same, but we would write the songs and then we would go and find the very best singer to sing it. When we needed a great Broadway singer, we went to “Cats” and stole the singer from “Cats”, when we needed a great blues singer, we got Daryl Pediford from Kool & The Gang. When we needed a great cello player, we went and got one from the New York Philharmonic. So basically it takes about 100 musicians to make one Trans-Siberian Orchestra album. But you can hear the difference, especially on “Beethoven’s Last Night”, when we needed all these different characters and stuff like this. And the records have been all doing really really well, TSO in the United States plays huge venues, the first album is platinum already, the second one’s gold already, and after all they’re all gonna go platinum. The only bad thing with Trans-Siberian Orchestra is that we haven’t gotten over to Europe yet, but we definitely plan to do it.

And when are the new albums going to be released?

“Beethoven’s Last Night” is coming out in Europe in March. It’s already been released in the United States, but what happened is that the band got so big so quickly in the United States that we got caught up touring and recording here and didn’t get a chance to go to Europe yet. The Christmas albums are a trilogy, we have the three in a row, which we’re finishing up now, and then we’re gonna have three non-holiday rock operas. And one of these rock operas may be about the Bolshevik revolution, cause we already have it written, it’s in the can. The problem hasn’t been writing it, it’s just we got to get it recorded. It only takes about a month to write them, and when it takes about six months to record them. (laughs) And that’s the hard part. And also, we have such great players like Al Pitrelli, he’s our main guitar player, he was in Asia, he was in Alice Cooper, and he has just left Megadeth to come back to Trans-Siberian Orchestra, an amazing player. Alex Skolnik from Testament is one of the guitar players. We just have some truly amazing players in the band, it gives us an additional edge. The first time Al auditioned we were doing a song where in the middle of the song we went into a classical piece from Mozart’s 25th symphony, and I was gonna show Al how to play it, and Al said, “Well, you have the music!” And I’m not used to rock musicians being able to read, little so sight-read. And I said, “Al, I have the music, but it’s in the wrong key.” And Al said, “No problem,” he sight-read Mozart’s 25th symphony in the wrong key, transposed it in his head to the right key, did it in one take and put it on the album. And I was like, “Wow! (laughs) You’re in the band!”

Is Zak Stevens (ex-Savatage) still involved in Trans-Siberian Orchestra?

He had a small part in “Beethoven’s Last Night.” The singers change from album to album, it depends on the set we’re going for. The Christmas albums had a little bit more of a rock edge. “Beethoven’s Last Night” has a little bit more of traditional classical music. Actually, “Beethoven’s Last Night” has a dream sequence, where Beethoven is hanging out with Mozart and Rimsky-Korsakov and they start jamming together, and it goes from “Flight Of The Bumble-Bee” to Mozart’s “Requiem” to Beethoven’s 9th symphony, we just have a field day. You know, these songs, these melodies are so great because they survived the ultimate critic, and the ultimate critic is time. You think of Beethoven’s stuff, it’s written 300 years ago and it’s still great.

I’ve heard that you released a DVD last year, but I have no idea what’s on it…

Oh, we did a movie for American television.

Ah, that Fox Family Channel?

Yes, that’s it. They ran it six times and it did so well that this year they put it out on DVD and it went Top 40. It’s about a runaway girl on Christmas Eve, she breaks into an old vaudeville theater and is discovered there by a caretaker, played by Ossie Davis, he’s a very famous old actor in America. He uses the ghosts and spirits from the theater who are played by Jewel – do you know Jewel? – she plays one of the ghosts, Michael Crawford plays one of the ghosts, he was in the original fantasy opera on Broadway. It didn’t take us long, we wrote it in a week and we filmed it in three weeks, and they ran it on TV the week after. It just kind of took off. Oh, sorry, I’m 10 minutes late for an interview with Hungary. What shall I do, shall I call you back or…? I’m sorry I got carried away by history.

Let me just ask you a few more questions. Give me 10 more minutes, OK? I read your interview dated November 2001 and you said Trans-Siberian Orchestra was going to perform some surprises during the upcoming tour. What did you mean?

Oh God, first of all, we started to perform “Beethoven’s Last Night” at the end of the show which we weren’t going to do. We also increased the show. Before we had two tractor trailers full of sound and lights, and we added a third tractor trailer of new lights and new special effects. Every year we try to bring the show up to another level, we make the visuals very exciting. To me the greatest live performing band for a spectacle is Pink Floyd. I worship Pink Floyd, but my job in life is to make Pink Floyd look like a bar band. (everybody laughs) And also we performed a lot of new songs that we had just written, and the audience were crazy, they loved it. So we gave them a taste of the new albums to come. People liked it so we knew we’re on the right track. In some cities it just gets a little crazy, like in Cleveland we sold out seven shows in a row in four hours, it was insane. Pretty much like 97 percent of the concerts sold out very quickly. The band has gotten so big in the United States so fast, it kind of surprised us all. We’ve also been the first band in the U.S. history in the following: the Christmas rock operas are great whenever you see them. You see them in August and they’re great, or you see them in December and they’re great, but there’s a little bit more magic if you see them in December. So what we did was that we split the band in half, took extra members on both coasts, and we toured the East Coast and the West Coast simultaneously. We were the first band in the American history to split in half and tour two coasts simultaneously, and we still have great reviews and nobody to complain. For “Beethoven’s Last Night” tour there’s gonna be one touring band, but for the Christmas tours we wanted everyone to see the shows in the holiday season, and in America the holiday season goes from November 23 to New Year’s Eve. We did that, we got away with it, but we were able to do it because there’s so many great musicians involved in making the albums and we just had access to them all.

The TSO album “The Christmas Attic” is dedicated to Ireland Wilde. Who is that, can you tell me?

(with incredible tenderness in his voice) It’s my daughter. Her name is Ireland Wilde O’Neill. Ireland is for the country, Wilde is for Oscar Wilde, who’s my favorite author, and O’Neill is my last name. She’s so cute, I wish you could see her. She’s four years old now and I love her so much!

I thought of that, but I just wanted to make sure. Can you tell me when and how did you meet Robert Kinkel, the second key participant of Trans Siberian Orchestra?

It was when we were doing an album called “Hall Of The Mountain King” by Savatage (1987). Bob has got a master’s in music from college, he’s a great great great keyboard player. He also has a master’s in physics, and he is just great, because he is a great writer and a great player, and also music is getting more computer-oriented, you have to work with computers, and Bob is a computer expert. I write the stories, I write the lyrics and I write a lot of the music, Bob writes some of the music with me, and Bob is also a great engineer and a great computer guy, he’s just a very important person in the team. He’s like a Renaissance man, he’s like a little Leonardo Da Vinci, he knows a little bit about everything, he’s just great.

Is it true that you had the idea, the concept of the “Streets” album by Savatage as early as 1979?

That is true. “Streets” is written in ’79. What happened is that it was sitting in a drawer in my desk in the office, and Criss Oliva from Savatage picked it up and read it and listened to the tape. I said, “I wrote this for Broadway,” but he said, “No no no, we can do this, we can do this!” So we rocked up a couple of the songs, we left the bunch of the songs the same, like “Believe” and stuff like that, and we did “Streets”, and it was a big success here in the States. It’s still one of my favorite records, I love that record. Savatage is just a great band, there are a lot of talents in that band, Jon Oliva especially – a great musician, a great writer and also a great singer. Jon is schizophrenic, he has a lot of personalities in his voice. When you hear “Beethoven’s Last Night”, Jon plays the devil, he plays Mephistopheles, and he plays it so well. A lot of singers would approach the devil… they would sing the devil like “Arrrrgh! Arrrgh!” (roars in a manner similar to Cronos from Venom), they would try to sound evil. But Jon sings it with charm and seductively. Because evil in the beginning and a lot of times is seductive, it is charming, that’s how it lures you in. And Jon just plays the Devil character with such depth…

Trans-Siberian Orchestra is featured on the “Grinch” soundtrack with such “fabulous” artists as N’Sync and Busta Rhymes. How did you get there?

It’s actually a funny story. We got a call from Universal, the movie company, and they asked us if we would write two songs for the “Grinch” soundtrack. One would be a progressive rock song, and the other wound be a 1950s pop style song. Between me and you, the first thing that went to my head was, “Why are they calling me? I’ve never written things in ‘50s pop in my life!” We were in the middle of doing something else, we were gonna pass on it, we were gonna say no, if not for my daughter, who was three at that time. You know, I could be doing a Beatles reunion album with John Lennon and George Harrison back from the dead, and my daughter could care less, right? But she heard “Grinch” and she was like, “Dad, a Grinch?” And she was like jumping up and down! So I decided to do it because she could go see a movie that she would love with her dad’s music in it. Then we did the song and the movie ended up being a huge hit in the United States, it worked so great. I was like, “Honey, thank you very much! You made daddy a lot of money.” And also not to mention I’m a big fan of Ron Howard and Jim Carrey’s. So it was great working with them.

You worked as a producer with Aerosmith on both albums of the “Classics Live!” series. Can you tell me more about this cooperation?

David Crebbs (Aerosmith’s manager – ed.) called me up. They’d had a live album out, but it really wasn’t selling well, and right around that time things were starting to go to CD. And CD demanded a very high quality, you know, it has a higher quality than vinyl. So we decided to renew the albums “Classics Live!” and “Classics Live! II”, and Columbia asked me to do it. I was like, “Yeah!” So we did it, both albums went platinum, and it all worked out great. Aerosmith are just a great band. Steven Tyler – what a great singer! I’m getting back to one of the advantages of Trans-Siberian Orchestra - to create a great albums you need two things, first you need great songs, you have to write great songs, if you don’t have great songs, you can’t have a great album. But that’s only half the battle, for the other half you need great singers to sing it. Like “Dream On” from Aerosmith is a great song, and Steven Tyler is a great singer, Steven Tyler singing “Dream On” is a masterpiece. “Still Loving You” or “Winds Of Change” are great songs, and Klaus Meine from the Scorpions is a great singer, him singing those songs you have a masterpiece. But if Klaus Meine was singing “Dream On” and Steven Tyler was singing “Still Loving You” both songs might not work. With Trans-Siberian Orchestra this is no problem, we get the singers we want for each particular song. When we were doing an album, we probably auditioned over 2,000 singers for every role. What happens is about 2,000 tapes arrive, and we narrow it down to 100 singers that we see personally, and then those 100 get narrowed down to 10 and from those 10 you finally pick the one you wanna use. And because Trans-Siberian Orchestra is platinum in the United States, basically we have a pick of all the best singers. You can come to Trans-Siberian Orchestra, sing and then go back to your side project, if you wanna tour with us you can tour with us, if you wanna go do another project, go do another project. It’s like a great big musical family, we constantly have new blood coming in and new blood going out. On stage it’s fascinating, you have like Al Pitrelli who’s played with all these superstar bands, and we have people like Dave Z who’s 19, who can’t believe that he’s playing with these other people. It’s interesting to watch them. I was watching the rehearsal the other day, and they have a cello player who’s like 65 from the New York Philarmonic, and he’s playing this classical riff, you know, and the bass player picks it up and he’s rocking with it, he improvises on it and throws it back to the cello player who’s like, “Wow!”, and he tries it his way. It’s great when you see these rock guys with these classical guys with these Broadway guys. We mix it all together and what comes out is amazing, because the blues guy will take a classical melody and will put the gospel touch on it that we never would have thought of. It takes the song to another level and it allows us to explore the music from all these different angles. That’s basically what we do… Roman, I’m now 23 minutes left for my next interview…

OK, let me just ask one more question. There have been a few other rock operas out recently, such as “Leonardo – The Absolute Man” or “Avantasia”. Have you heard them, and if so, what do you think of them?

Unfortunately, I haven’t heard them yet. I try to keep an eye on music, but there are so many things and it’s so hard. We’re doing the next record and our office is getting tapes of all these singers. Literally we get mailbag after mailbag of audition tapes. Literally it’s 2,000, and you have to listen to every one because in our heads, if you don’t listen to one, that’ll be the one that would have been great. You never can tell where the perfect singer is gonna come from. Sometimes it can be one who is sent to you from the record company, a famous person, but sometimes it can be a buddy from a farm in the middle of Iowa, in the middle of nowhere. Right now “Beethoven…” is getting ready to tour, the role of Beethoven is being played by a guy whom we got from Broadway, from the Broadway play “Jekyll & Hyde”, who is pretty famous, you now, a Broadway! But the guy who’s playing young Beethoven got off a bus from a farm in Minnesota. He just came in and he opened his mouth and we were like, “Wow! Where the hell have you been hiding?” You never can tell where you’re gonna get your great singers from. So we spend a lot of time listening to tapes. And we also try to keep up on the new bands coming out and stuff like that, we try to listen to as many things as possible just because it keeps you in touch with what everybody else is doing, or lets you know that a new type of music has been discovered, we try to listen to everything from Bob Marley & The Wailers to… you know, I listen to a great deal of classical and a great deal of Broadway, and of course, I come from heavy metal roots. But to me the difference between heavy metal and classical is not that great. To me the very first heavy metal star was Beethoven. (sings a famous passage from Beethoven’s ninth symphony). If Tony Iommi from Black Sabbath wrote that everybody would believe it, you know. The only thing that Beethoven didn’t have was electric guitars… Listen, Roman, I really enjoyed talking with you, but I gotta move on to the next interview. If you would like to continue this or if you have additional questions, no problem, just call the office in New York or call SPV. What they do is they give me every interview for half an hour, tell them to give you two hours.

I’ll definitely try. Anyway, it was great talking with you!

Spasibo!

Na zdorovie!

Trans-Siberian Orchestra on the Internet: http:///www.trans-siberian.com

Special thanks to Maxim Bylkin (Soyuz Music) for arranging this interview

Roman “Maniac” Patrashov
February 14, 2002.
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