METAL-ZEN

For some reason, I was more nervous about this interview than any interview I conducted this year. I don’t know why. But I suspect it’s because Jon Oliva is a legend. I mean, Savatage alone would qualify him as a capital “L” Legend. But when you add TSO and, now, Jon Oliva’s Pain to the mix…well, “legend” is too tame a word.

In preparation, I spent a couple of weeks listening to JOP albums, watching JOP fan-uploaded videos on YouTube, and reading previous interviews with venerable The Mountain King. From that intensive time of immersion, I culled about nine pages of questions.

But when I finally got Jon on the phone, the questions became merely guidelines. The interview became more of a conversation, and I allowed it to flow organically. Hence, not all of my carefully prepared questions were asked because, frankly, I didn’t think they were necessary. The conversation itself took on a life of its own.

At the end of our conversation, Jon told me, “It’s great to talk to you, man. One of the best interviews I’ve ever done.”

That meant a lot to me. And it confirmed two things: (1) Jon shared my feelings about the unique give-and-take interview, and (2) Jon is a genuinely nice guy, very generous with his time and willing to answer just about any question I posed to him.

I’m quite pleased with this interview, which was conducted on May 23, 2008. I hope you enjoy it as much as Jon and I did.

JO: Hello.

BM: Hello, is this Jon?

JO: Speaking.

BM: Hi, this is Bill Murphy calling.

JO: Hi Bill, how you doin’, buddy?

BM: Good. How are you doin’?

JO: Oh, I’m hanging in there. Just got done rushing through rush-hour traffic to get home.

BM: Oh Jeez. [laughs]

JO: So I’m in time for your call. I just walked in the door five minutes ago, so.

BM: Oh man.

JO: I made it.

BM: So now you’re in no mood whatsoever to chat with me. [laughs]

JO: Oh no, I’m fine, man. I’m, no problem, bro.

BM: Oh good. Well I appreciate your time tonight. I really do. Thank you very much.

JO: No problem.

BM: Well, I’d like to do an interview for ProgPower USA.

JO: Ok.

BM: Glenn Harveston calls me the Mike Wallace of the metal world.

JO: [laughs] Well that coming from Glenn…that’s quite a complement, isn’t it.

BM: [laughs] Yeah.

JO: He’s a great guy, Glenn.

BM: He’s a really good guy. And you’re one of his absolute favorite vocalists.

JO: Oh cool.

BM: He’s a big fanboy. As am I.

JO: Well, I appreciate that, man.

BM: Well, let’s start with your tour, your recent tour of Europe. How did that go? How were the crowds over there?

JO: It was great. The last time I went over there, I was kinda disappointed in the turnouts. I was only doing a couple, 200-300 people a night. And then all of a sudden this time, I guess the shows were really good, because I doubled to tripled my audience in each place I played the last time.

BM: Wow.

JO: So I was back up to those familiar Savatage numbers of people, which was nice.

BM: [laughs]

JO: You know, because it’s taken me three years, three albums to build this band up to that, close to that level I was at over there with Savatage. People were thinking that was going on and stuff, but it went really, really well. We were happy. I mean, the turnouts were great, the fans were very enthusiastic. Everyone was singing lyrics to the new stuff, so that was a good sign. So I couldn’t have asked for it to go any better.

BM: That’s great. I know you don’t like computers, but have you seen the YouTube videos posted from your gig in Florence?

JO: In Florence, in Italy?

BM: Yeah.

JO: No, I haven’t. They’re on YouTube?

BM: Yeah, there’s quite a few of them. Somebody took about four or five of them that look almost pro shot. They must have used a really good digital camera.

JO: Really? I’ll have to check that out, because I haven’t seen any of them.

BM: [laughs] Pretty decent.

JO: Well good.

BM: Well, let’s talk about your latest album. Global Warning is just absolutely amazing. I think it’s my favorite of your three. I think because it’s so diverse.

JO: Well thank you. It’s mine too, of the three.

BM: Yeah. Well, tell me why it’s your favorite.

JO: Because it’s so diverse. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] Well there you go. I can ask and answer.

JO: It’s got a lot of different, it shows all different sides of what I do. I think it’s the one first really complete album that shows basically just about every style of music that I do. Because I don’t just do heavy metal. I love it, and you know, god knows I still play a lot of it at the live shows, but I do a lot more than that. And this album I think shows it all, while still retaining my sound that I’ve worked on for 25 long, grueling, painful [laughs] years.

BM: [laughs]

JO: And so I was really happy with it. And I love the Chris [Kinder, drummer] music on it. His contributions this time were a little bit more substantial, and I really liked the stuff, how we worked on the stuff of his that we used. So you know, that was also a big plus. And I think the production is really, really good. Chris did a hell of a job, working, picking up the slack for Greg when we lost Greg [“Super G” Marchak, producer and engineer, who recently passed away].

BM: Yeah.

JO: And he just did an amazing job on the production with Tom [Morris] and Jim Morris. You know, I was involved to, but not as much this time on the actual production, because I was working with Neil on TSO stuff. So I really threw a lot of shit on Chris’ hands and even though I still had final approval on everything, they did a great job. I never really had to go back and say, “No, I don’t like that.” Or, “No, I would do this differently.” We kind of had a meeting about each song, and I let them put the mixes together. And I would show up for a couple hours and listen and then make any kind of fine-tuning adjustments, and that was it, we just moved on.

BM: Cool.

JO: But they, everyone had a really good focus on the record. So that’s why it’s my favorite.

BM: It’s partly my favorite, because you just can’t beat the Hammond organ sound.

JO: Oh yeah.

BM: I mean, when you’re rocking like an ELP or Triumvirate, or Kansas. [laughs]

JO: Yeah. [laughs] That was fun, that was fun. And that’s a friend of ours, his name is Howard Helm, who is a great local keyboard guy here, that I’ve known for many years.

BM: Cool.

JO: And he is an ELP freak.

BM: Yeah.

JO: I mean this guy and Morris, they have a real B3 with a real Leslie, an old B3. And the thing, when you crank it up, it takes a couple hours to get it runnin’, but once you get that thing cranked up, it’s just… And he just plays the shit out of it. So we just said, “Hey, throw a couple solos down for me, like, a la ELP-ish.” And he just went nuts.

BM: Oh yeah. You must have made his day. [laughs]

JO: Oh, he loved it. [hehe] He was laughing his ass off out there. We were all laughing, because it was so cool. It just fitted so perfectly. So it was a lot of fun.

BM: Well, the lyrics are phenomenal on this.

JO: Thank you.

BM: In the song, “Open Your Eyes” you say, “I’ve got a lot to say, but there’s just so little time.”

JO: Right.

BM: And that kind of reminds me, everyone gets these spam-type emails that go around from friend to friend, sometimes sort of encouraging things. The latest one I got had this line in it: “Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes.”

JO: Wow, that’s a good one. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] Do you kind of get that feeling?

JO: I don’t know if I can fit that into a song, but… [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

JO: [sings] Life is like a roll of shit paper. [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

JO: Wow, that’s cool.

BM: Do you get that feeling? I’m a month older than you are, and I feel like time is just whipping by. You know, I cannot—

JO: Yeah, it does. It’s weird, isn’t it?

BM: Yeah.

JO: It just seems like as you get older, it just goes faster and faster. Like they torture you your whole life, and when you’ve finally gotten some success and can kick back a little bit, then they speed the clock up. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] So you can’t enjoy it.

JO: So they can hurry up and kill you off, you know. [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

JO: Like, “Well fuck, what was that that just went by?” “That was your life, man.” “Oh.”

BM: [laughs]

JO: [laughs] That quick, huh?

BM: Someone with your accomplishments and productivity level, do you feel a sense of urgency to go faster and faster? Or do you have to pace yourself and slow down?

JO: You know, that’s a really great question, because I have felt lately that I wanna work more. There’s just more stuff that I wanna do, you know, before I’m pushing up daisies. You know what I mean?

BM: [laughs]

JO: So yeah, I have to admit that. That’s a great question. I do feel that, though. Just not the fact I feel old or anything, because I don’t really. You know, if I felt I couldn’t go out and play at the level we were playing at, I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t go out there and suck every night [laughs] just for the ego side of it, you know. I would do something else. But I’m, my voice feels great, and I feel really good about what I’m doing. I love the band, and I love the different musics they can play, because it opens up a lot of doors for me. But I do feel that little sense of like, “Come on, man. There’s more to do. Quick, quick, quick.” [laughs]

BM: Oh yeah, yeah. I know that feeling. [laughs]

JO: Yeah. It sucks.

BM: Since we were both born in the same year, you know, I grew up in the 60s, I remember a lot of the things growing up, Star Trek, Lost in Space.

JO: Love Star Trek.

BM: And the Beatles and The Monkees. Twilight Zone. I remember an episode of Twilight Zone that just—

JO: Big Twilight Zone fan here too. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] Did that kind of stuff make an impact on who you are as a person today?

JO: I think so. I mean, I think when we grew up, and that was a very time-changing period. And we were just in our, you know, our pre-teen years or even a little bit younger than that through most of it. But when it came to the late 60s, when we were getting like eight, nine, 10 years old, and you’re starting to figure it out a little bit, I mean, yeah, there was a lot of stuff I think that had a lot of impact on me. I mean, The Beatles had probably the most.

BM: Oh yeah.

JO: I mean, I was just completely crazy about The Beatles. You know, they were my teachers. They were my music teachers. I mean, I sat there for hours and hours and hours every day with my turntable and acoustic guitar, or the house organ, and sat there rewinding by hand the stuff, so I could pick out the notes they were playing. [laughs]

BM: Yeah.

JO: I used to drive my mother crazy, because all she would hear is, “Help. Rrrrrrrr.”

BM: “Help.” [laughs]

JO: [laughs] I would go back, “Oh, ok. Anytime I would lose a note, I would stop the turntable and then rewind it. Back then, we didn’t have [laughs] what we have today, so you had to do it manually on the turntable. Of course, my records all got scratched to shit.

BM: I know it.

JO: But I learned how to play to The Beatles, man.

BM: That was kind of the turning point. I really got into music because of The Beatles, and even The Monkees, I’m kind of ashamed to admit.

JO: No, I mean, they had some great songs though.

BM: Yeah.

JO: I mean, I wasn’t per se a Monkees fan, because I was a Beatles fan, but I mean, the show was on all the time. And when you look now at, I actually went out and bought—

BM: The show on DVD?

JO: Because of the songs on there.

BM: Yeah.

JO: I mean, if you look at some of the songwriters they had, Neil Diamond, Carole King, I mean, they had some great writers and some great songs. “Pleasant Valley Sunday” is a brilliant song. “Not Your Stepping Stone.” [Tommy] Boyce and [Bobby] Hart wrote some great songs for them. So you know, they had those catchy melodies and those things that stuck in your mind, you know. I still listen to it once in a while. Them and Three Dog Night was another band.

BM: Yeah, yeah.

JO: They had a lot of cool, you know, cool, moody type of stuff.

BM: Well that must have—

JO: We had great music back then. Let’s face it. [laughs]

BM: Oh yeah. That’s what I keep telling my wife.

JO: Yeah.

BM: She’s younger than I am, she didn’t grow up in the 60s and 70s, so it’s like, now she’s discovering it through me. [laughs]

JO: Right. Play her some Motown.

BM: Yeah. [laughs]

JO: Play her some great Motown stuff. That’ll get her goin’.

BM: That’ll get her goin’. [laughs]

JO: [laughs]

BM: So those groups and that era and all that music going on then, was that the start of you wanting to be one of those kind of people?

JO: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I got drums the day after The Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964 when I was like five years old.

BM: Oh man.

JO: My parents bought me a drum set that looked just like Ringo Starr’s. Silver sparkle, [Ludwig]. I’ll never forget it. The [Ludwig] drum kit, with the really shitty tin-can cymbals that we had to drill holes in and put nails in there to make it sound like The Beatles, you know. [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

JO: But yeah, I had a set of drums. I used to just drive my mother crazy. And then I went from that, you know, Lennon and McCartney were my favorites, so I was like, “Well, I gotta learn how to play guitar.”

BM: Oh yeah.

JO: My older brother had already started playing guitar, so there was guitars around the house. So I just started plucking along, you know, and then drug my brother in with me behind it. You know, Criss [Oliva, 1963-1993], even though he was really young, we still would run around the house with tennis rackets, making believe they were guitars, you know. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] Oh yeah, I remember doing that. Yeah.

JO: Yeah, I mean it was great. [laughs]

BM: Oh yeah. And you mentioned Savatage. You may forever be associated with Savatage, whether or not you want to.

JO: Well I hope so. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] Do you ever get tired of that? Even when you’re touring now, your albums have stickers on them saying, “Mastermind of Savatage.” Do you ever want to just say, “Look, I’m Jon Oliva, and this is my new band.”

JO: I do do that. You know, I do do that, but I understand, I have a great love for the Savatage fans, because they’ve been so loyal. And you know, I understand where they’re coming from. And it’s sad when, you know, there’s something you really like and it disappears, it goes away. A lot of them are just now, it’s taken three albums to get over the fact that there isn’t going to be any new Savatage albums.

BM: [laughs]

JO: It’s just not gonna happen. And if you’re a fan of Savatage, you should be buying what I’m doing, because if we were doing Savatage, these would have been Savatage albums, basically. 80% of the material on the albums would have been put on Savatage albums and called Savatage. And the other thing that aggravates me is, I was the only original member since 1995. So it’s really not that different, [laughs] it’s just different music. Savatage through the 90s had so many different people in the band, I can’t even remember everybody. [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

JO: I mean, we had so many people coming in and out. And here it is again, now it’s the 2000s, and I’m the only original member, and I’ve just got other guys around me, but they’ve been around me now for four or five years, it’s been a consistent lineup. So to me, this is kind of like the new Savatage, though out of respect, I wouldn’t use the name. Because I wouldn’t want people to think I’m trying to cash in on the name and trying to put something forward that’s not what it is.

BM: Oh yeah.

JO: And out of respect for the guys that played in Savatage, I wouldn’t do that to them either, because we all played for many years and suffered a lot of hardships and stuff. And I just wouldn’t do that to them. It’s different, even though it’s still gonna be labeled as like, Savatage music, because it’s me writing and singing, which is what I was doing with Savatage for all those years anyway. It’s just different musicians playing with me, really, is basically the only thing. But we’ve got Criss’ music in there too, so that to me gives it a little more weight of saying, well, I’m just carrying the Savatage torch. I’m calling it JOP out of respect for everybody, so no one gets the wrong idea that I’m doing this for money or doing this to cash in on the name. I’m doing it because me and my brother started something, and until all his music and my music that we’ve worked on is put out, I don’t feel my mission is complete yet. So once I get that all done, then maybe I’ll sit in my rocking chair and smoke weed for the next 20 years until I croak. [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

JO: But I have a lot more stuff to do, and as a brother, I would have hoped if the roles were reversed, that he would have been doing the same thing. If he found music of mine that was never released or never put out, that he would have done something to get it out so the fans could hear it. You know, and that’s all I’m really trying to do, and plus do what I want to do. You know, some stuff to say, “Hey, thanks for listening for all these years. Now here’s some other shit that I do, hope you like it.” And that will just sew up the whole thing and finish the whole mission that I’ve been on for many years. Which I still don’t know why I didn’t become an electrician, but.

BM: [laughs]

JO: [laughs]

BM: Do you, what do you get more pleasure talking about or reminiscing about, Savatage music? Or JOP music?

JO: Well, both, really. I mean, the Savatage stuff, some of it is very painful. I mean, we went through a lot of bad times, you know, where we were ripped. The early part of our career, we were completely stolen from. For the first, until 1987 when we met Paul O’Neil and started Hall of the Mountain King [1987], from that point before that, we never made a fucking dime. And we were just ripped off for hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. And when we finally discovered it, we got rid of everybody, you know, when we finally figured it out, and then we went into the Paul O’Neil era. And those memories to me are really, really great memories, because it was Mountain King, Gutter Ballet [1989], and Streets [Streets: A Rock Opera, 1991], and I thought those were by far our three best albums, that we did with Savatage.

BM: I think Gutter Ballet is my favorite one, in fact.

JO: Yeah, Gutter’s up there. Streets is mine, but Gutter is second.

BM: [laughs] Yeah.

JO: So and I think, you know, those memories are good. And of course, after that we have the whole Criss incident, and all those memories are bad. And then a lot of the 90s, stuff we were going through with all different people coming in and out, and it was just, there was no stability and you know, it wasn’t a very fun time for me. When Criss, to me, Savatage died when Criss Oliva died. Savatage as we knew it. And then from after that, I think all we were really doing was, Savatage was basically the warm-up band for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. I think we started changing into the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and once we realized that we were never going to replace Criss Oliva, ever, and that sound was never going to be back again, we started foraging for new territories and looking for new sounds and new things to do. And that’s when the rock operas, like “Dead Winter Dead” [1995], “The Wake of Magellan” [1998], even “Chance” [from Handful of Rain, 1994]. I think “Chance” was the first Trans-Siberian Orchestra song ever written. Because it’s something that TSO would do. And we just kind of worked that up to all the way up to Poets and Madmen. Well finally, the TSO thing just overwhelmed Savatage, took it over, and basically, we changed the name from Savatage to Trans-Siberian Orchestra. If you really want the honest truth, that’s really what happened, because if you look at the lineup, it’s everyone from “Dead Winter Dead” and “The Wake of Magellan” is in Trans-Siberian Orchestra now. [laughs]

BM: Yeah.

JO: Even myself, you know. And Paul [O’Neil], and Robert Kinkle, the guy that plays, who played on a lot of Savatage stuff with us also. You know, Zak [Sevens] sings on stuff, I sing on stuff, you’ve got Al Pitrelli [guitarist], Crhis Caffery [guiarist] in there, even Alex Skolnick [guitarist] who played with us on before [Handful of] Rain is in there. I mean, it seems like everybody that played in Savatage in the 90s got converted to Trans-Siberian Orchestra. And when you’re selling out, you know, when you’re selling 85,000 tickets in Cleveland, Ohio, it’s kinda hard to argue with putting Savatage back together. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] Well—

JO: We couldn’t sell 85,000 tickets in a year, man. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] Well, I’m lucky enough to have seen Savatage. I caught you guys on your Poets and Madmen tour. You played in Grand Rapids here.

JO: Right.

BM: And I thought it was a great show. But then ever since, I’ve been one of those loyal TSO fans. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. You guys created—

JO: It’s a great show.

BM: Magical, man.

JO: Yeah, it’s a great show. And I’m really happy for that. It’s made my life a lot better, my family’s life a lot better, and it’s enabled me to do JOP on the side, to finish that Savatage mission of what Criss and I started back in whatever it was, 1979 or 80, whenever it was. And I play the stuff live, I play all the old stuff live, for the fans. You know, TSO doesn’t play any Savatage music, so I’ve taken that under my thing to do the, you know, Gutter Ballets and the Mountain Kings and stuff like that in my live shows. And the guys I play with, I was really hard on them. I was like, “Look, if we’re gonna do Savatage music, it’s gotta be fucking perfect.”

BM: [laughs]

JO: “So sit down with the records and we’ll go over it.” And I mean, these guys really busted their asses to learn the stuff and put the feels and the dynamics in that we did on the records. In a lot of instances, I think we sound more like Savatage than Savatage in the 90s sounded like Savatage. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] Yeah.

JO: Because it’s got me singing, and you know, to me, we sound more like the original Savatage than the Savatage of the 90s otherwise. Because you know, you had a different singer in the 90s, and all the different players and stuff. This band, I think, we kinda went back. I brought them back and said, “We’re only going to play Savatage music that Criss Oliva was a part of.” Except for “Chance”, I do that. So I don’t know, man. It is what it is, you know. And all I’m trying to do is make everybody happy the best way I can. And if people don’t get it or get pissed off at me, I’m sorry. [laughs] Give me a fucking break, you know. [laughs]

BM: [laughs] Well let’s talk about JOP a second. The lyrics, I remember watching your website before the album came out. It says, “Expect some of the darkest lyrics he has ever written. Oliva is not a happy man.” [laughs]

JO: Right.

BM: When I look at the lyrics on Global Warning, and I see that it is pretty negative. It’s about lying. It’s about politics. It’s about war.

JO: Yeah.

BM: But—

JO: It’s about everything, really. Life, life in general. Life and death. And yeah, it is kind of negative. [laughs] But it’s just the way I see it, you know.

BM: But you know what I find interesting though? You share some of the same worldview lyrically as you can find on Nevermore or Megadeth, but your music is different from that. It’s not as bone-crushing or harrowing or pessimistic.

JO: Right.

BM: You seem to inject some lightness to it. It’s almost fun to listen to your negative lyrics. [laughs]

JO: Well thank you. That’s good. But you gotta, [sigh] people are tired of that whole doomy, “You will find out I’m all pissed off at the world.” [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

JO: They missed, you know, I like melody, and I like singing. I’m a singer, so I love vocals. And I put a lot more work, you know, Dave Mustaine, I love him to death, but he’s a guitar player. He’s not really a singer, you know what I mean? He sings, but he would be the first one to tell you, he’s not a vocalist. And some of that music to me, loses it with the guys who aren’t really great vocalists who try to convey it in, like that’s why the death metal stuff really bothers me, because I can’t understand anything they’re saying anyway.

BM: [laughs]

JO: But some of the lyrics I’ve read are really great. And if you could understand what the guy was saying, it could be like, “Wow, that’s a great fucking line.”

BM: [laughs]

JO: But I don’t know about you, I can’t understand [growls]. You know, that, I don’t get it.

BM: Yeah. Sometimes there’s these debates on the ProgPower forum about death metal vocals. Why is that so-called Cookie Monster style becoming so popular?

JO: I don’t know – people are deaf? [laughs]

BM: [laughs]

JO: I don’t know man. There’s some great, you know, I’m not knocking it saying it sucks, because there’s some great music and some great musicians that play that stuff, and I respect them for what they do. But for my flavor and my taste, I like hearing the story. I like hearing the lyrics. I like to know what the song’s about and where the person that’s writing the song’s head is at. You know, that’s kinda what music’s about. It’s supposed to take you on a ride, take you on an emotional roller coaster.

BM: Are you a half-full or half-empty kind of guy?

JO: [laughs] Half-empty, probably.

BM: [laughs] And yet your lyrics, like on “Walk Upon the Water” are “Life is a game, a game we all must play, it’s gonna be alright.”

JO: Right.

BM: You know, that’s the thing I hear in this album. It’s like, there’s a lot that sucks, but, dude, it’s gonna be alright.

JO: But there’s a positive side. Sure. And that’s what I meant on that line. You know, we’re all in this together, and it does, when you look back, it looks like it’s a game. But you know, it’s gonna be alright, man. You know what I mean? That’s kinda what I was trying to say in that song, it’s gonna be alright. You know, that song’s about not knowing if you’re dead or alive, like having to dream and being like caught in the middle. And you’re in a place, but you don’t know if you’re dreaming about this place, or if you really are dead and are in this new place. And it’s like, that’s, if you listen to the lyrics, and that’s when it comes to that thing, he’s just like summarizing. You know, “Life’s a game, I guess we all play. But you know, whatever, I’m gonna be alright after this is over with. I’ll figure this out if I’m dead, I’ll be alright, and if I’m not dead I’ll be alright.”

BM: What is your goal as a musician? When you’re writing these songs, you’re telling people to open their eyes, you’re telling them what’s wrong with the world, what do you want listeners to do with your music?

JO: I don’t know. Just maybe, be aware. Just, you know, you see things and you realize that maybe there’s a different approach to getting people to think about things. I guess in a lot of ways, I’m just trying to make people think a little bit, you know, give them something to think about. This is what I see, and this is what I think, and if you open your eyes and listen to what I’m saying, maybe you’ll see what I’m talking about, and maybe you’ll feel the same way. Or maybe you don’t feel the same way. But that’s just my way of bringing awareness to things that I see. I’m tired of writing about ghosts and goblins.

BM: [laughs]

JO: You know, I want stuff to have meaning to it. And a lot of stuff I write, I spent many months working on those lyrics and they’re things that mean something, you know. And if you look deep enough into them, you’ll catch it. Obviously you’ve caught some of them, so.

BM: Oh, brilliant lyrics, yeah. I enjoy your lyrics a lot.

JO: Thank you. It’s very real. I mean, if you listen to “Adding the Cost”, and it’s true, it’s true, we spend millions of dollars on airplanes and bombs and

- end part one

NOTE: The entire interview can be found in the ProgPower USA IX program given to all attendees at this year’s metal fest.

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