Savatage – interview met Chris Caffery and Johny Lee Middleton
Chris: “We have three weeks of rehearsing together and Jon is going to be there every single day. We have talked about possible ways of sneaking him into the show on a video screen.“
If there is one word that characterizes the band Savatage, it must be “survivors”. In the history of the band which by now spans over fourty years, the group originally featuring brothers Jon and Criss Oliva has had to cope with thieving managers, drug addictions, the tragic loss of guitarist Criss Oliva in a car accident, endless line-up changes, and finally the overshadowing succes of a little side project called Trans-Siberian Orchestra (TSO), which finally put the band on an indefinite hiatus. A glimmer of hope appeared in 2015, when the band played its first live show in over a decade, a blistering double show along with TSO at Wacken. Afterwards, fans were disappointed to see their heroes take to the twilight again. Another decade of silence passed, until a few months ago Savatage announced their comeback. A tour of South America and Europe was announced, together with a new album. I spoke with current guitar player Chris Caffery and bass player Johnny Lee Middleton to catch up with the things happening in the Savatage camp.
Jori van de Worp Ι 5 maart 2025
Thanks guys for taking some time for Arrow Lords of Metal for the Dutch and Belgium metalheads. First of all, how are you doing?
Chris: I’m extremely busy, it was freezing in New York and now it’s gotten warm, so everything is melting. So I’m actually able to get an eye on what other work I’ll have to do now that the snow is disappearing. I do a bit of beekeeping as a hobby, and the season is starting now.
It’s less than two months now until the first Savatage shows in almost ten years, and over twenty years if we exclude the Wacken 2015 show. I’m sure you must be excited as hell?
Chris: I said yesterday that I feel like a kid in the candy shop. Remember the anticipation af a kid befire you got back there? That’s kind of how I feel now with this. I can’t wait to get back out and and be a part of Savatage on stage again.
Johnny: We have been talking about doing this since the Wacken 2015 gig that we played. But we were just plagued with life. We lost Paul, we had the COVID thing and we had some health issues with Jon. So it has taken us a while to get to a point where we we were able to do this. And we’re really super excited now. I think the Netherlands was one of my favorite countries to visit and to be, it’s just a great place. So we’re really looking forward to getting back on the stage and doing our thing.
The topic of a Savatage reunion has never been off the table, yet you took the whole metal scene completely by surprise. So after you announced your come-back a few months ago, the first question that popped in my mind was ”why now?”
Johnny: Well, it’s now or never. I mean, I’m 61 years old. We are at the point where we really want to get back and give our fans something to remember us by, and we really want to play that music again. We have been doing TSO for twenty five years, so it’s not like we have stopped playing. We just have not been playing Savatage music, and we really wanna get back and get into the ‘Dead Winter Dead’ and ‘Edge Of Thorns’ and all that material. All the stuff that got us to where we are today. We’re really super stoked.
Chris: Like Johnny said before, after we played Wacken we wanted to carry on. But then Paul had passed. And then we blinked your eyes and ten years were gone. We could not let another ten years be gone, so it’s like this is the time to get out there and do it right now. We are in top performing and playing shape because we’ve been doing lots of shows with TSO for all these years. Those schedules are pretty brutal, playing six hours a day on really big stages. So physically and musically we are ready to go out there, and let people see a Savatage show that is hopefully going to be the best that they have ever had a chance to see. I know a lot of people are missing the fact that Jon’s physical health isn’t able to get him there, but he is a huge part of of getting the music together that we will play. When I mentioned to Jon that I have never never done Savatage without him he just said “would you please go play this fucking music?” So he wants us to get out there and let the fans see the music now. And we are all really excited, not only just to see the fans that had seen us before. Someone who is 20 years old now was not alive the last time we played. So it’s gonna be exciting to see these new fans that have discovered Savatage in the last 25 years.
You already mentioned Jon’s health issues, how is he now?
Johnny: He’s hanging in there, he’s getting by. He has some issues getting around mobility-wise. We were in the studio a couple weeks ago, and he is in the control room while we are doing our thing. He writes our setlist, he is basically our music director. He is still a part of the band, but he is physically just not able to get on a plane and travel. Like Chris said, touring is really hard on your body, especially a TSO tour. We just did 54 shows in 48 days, that is pretty brutal. Fortunately Savatage isn’t that brutal, but the travel involved in touring, the lack of sleep and physical abuse on your body, it takes its toll. So it is not a good idea for Jon to come out with us at this point. So he’s doing okay considering the conditions that he is dealing with.
No matter how much Jon seems to endorse this reunion line-up, in online reactions statements that “without Jon, it ain’t Savatage” do not seem to dry up. What can you say to those people?
Chris: Johnny was there on the ‘Edge Of Thorns’ tour where there was no Jon, and it was Savatage. Johnny can answer that better than me, but he is there. It’s not like he’s not in the band. He’s not going to be at these shows, so I’ll have Johnny continue from there.
Johnny: We did a whole lot of touring with the ‘Edge Of Thorns’ band without Jon, ‘Dead Winter Dead’ and all the Zak-records. Jon didn’t perform on it but he was still there. It’s not like we kicked the man out of the band, he just cannot do it now. He has given us our blessing and he is basically kicking us out the door saying “go play guys, come on!” We always had a thing that if something happens to one of us we would want the others to carry on. I had to deal with the loss of Criss Oliva and we kept going. Then we lost Paul and we kept going. It was hard to do, but we kept going for that was the pact that the band had and still has. If the purists out there don’t want to show up, that’s fine. There’s a lot of people that will, and we’re gonna put on a hell of a show.
Chris: I see it online like you say, but it’s it’s it’s actually a pretty small amount of people that are being so dead-set in that kind of way. Most people are excited to be seeing us play. There is a couple decades of fans that have never seen the band and would rather get a chance to see this lineup than never see Savatage at all and. If you add all of us together, me, Johnny, Zak, Jeff, and Al, we have a hundred and seventy years of Savatage in this band. And I get it, Jon Oliva is the Mountain King. But Jon himself said “Go play the fucking music” and if Jon is okay with it then I am. If these fans really love Jon that much, they would care about Jon’s health more than whether or not he will be at the shows. That’s my opinion on that one.
I also read some some snippets here and there that Jon might play a song or two, might go on tour with the band. But as I hear you guys, that that’s kind of off the table now?
Johnny: That won’t happen, not overseas. At the moment he gets around using a mobility scooter and a cane, just getting through the airport would be a problem. When he recovers from this, as we all pray he will, it will be game on like it used to be, him and us all together.
Chris: We have three weeks of rehearsing together and Jon is going to be there every single day. We have talked about possible ways of sneaking him into the show on a video screen. Jon is aboard here, he’s the one who is sending me the setlists like I said. Jon is still the Mountain King and still in Savatage. I don’t think it is bothering anybody more than him that he will not be there, he really wants to. I think the fact that we are playing is going to push him to get himself ready, more than anything. I think if we were just to lay around and wait, it might never happen. I have a lot of faith in the Mountain King, he is one of the strongest people I have ever met.
Since the last time Savatage was active there is, as you already mentioned, another very important character in the history of the band who did not live to see this happen. How do you feel about going back on stage with Savatage after the passing of Paul O’Neil?
Johnny: That was a tough one indeed. Paul gave us the blessing to do this before he passed, so I think he would be proud of us. I think he is gonna be down looking at us and enjoying the show just like everybody else out there in the audience will be.
Chris: We had we had to go through getting out and and playing with TSO the year that Paul passed. And we have every year since other than 2020 because of the COVID thing, but we still did a a “pay-per-view” then. Like Johnny said, that is what Paul had wanted for us, to go and play. It was really hard for for me in the beginning, as it is sometimes hard to be out there and playing and thinking about Criss Oliva. And there will always be times that will connect you to those people. They are always going to be there with us when we are on stage, whether it’s through the songs, through places we have been with them, and just their music and them in general. The main thing for me is performing the legacy of those people for all these people that never had an opportunity to see that music. When I looked into the audiences at the Pantera tours, I see that half of those kids were not old enough to be alive when when Dimebag and and his brother were playing. And they are getting an opportunity to see something that’s really special to them. I feel every time that that I do TSO and everytime that I’ve done Savatage since Criss had passed, there’s times I will look away from the audience because I will be bawling my eyes out crying.
Losing people like Paul and and Criss is never easy, but it actually helps you focus on doing it better because you don’t want to let them down. Paul was like an older brother or dad figure to me ever since I was a kid. I met him when I was 17 and he he took me under his wings and he was a big reason why I got the opportunity to play with Savatage. When he was producing the ‘Hall Of The Mountain King’ record, he told the guys about having an additional guitar player live and introduced me, 38 years ago. And then all throughout my career he would always be backing me. If there was ever a problem with me personally or if there was a problem in the world, I would call Paul. So when Paul had passed away, I could not call Paul to talk about Paul. I learned from the way he wrote music and lyrics, the way he treated people, the way he did his business. He had a part in shaping me as a human being, as a musician, as a writer, as a performer.
And now you have to go on without Paul, but also without Jon on stage. Jon sang a majority of the of the Savatage songs. How does this affect the setlist that you’re going to play? Are you focusing on the Zak-records to call them that, or are you trying to make an all around set?
Chris: It may not be a majority but Zak had four full albums of songs, that’s a lot of material. We will be doing songs from the whole catalog. What Jon has assembled and what we all want to do is a lot of the favorite songs which are gonna mix and match. If you watch ‘Japan Live’ or video’s from the ‘Dead Winter Dead’ and ‘The Wake Of Magellan’ tours, Jon is there, and Zak is singing Jon’s songs. He is very capable of of singing that music and doing doing it justice. We’re not gonna have him do the ‘Mountain King’ screams all the time and be that side of Jon, Zak is gonna be Zak and that’s that’s what he has always done. He did the best way that Zak Stevens can sing the Savatage songs and that is all he will do. It is not anything that was not done before. Zak will not be singing something that he is not comfortable with singing. And Zak sounds better than ever! I am excited for people to see him, he’s singing his ass off.
In Jon you are not only missing a singer, you’re also missing a keyboard/piano player. A lot of Savatage music is really dependant on piano or keyboards, especially the later stuff that Zak sings. How are you going to resolve this live? Will you use samples or will you bring a session keyboardist, for example John Zahner who played with Savatage before?
Johnny: We actually hired two guys. If you listen to the records you hear string parts and piano parts. And when we had Jon with us, a lot of times either of these would be left out because you had one guy doing it. Sometimes he could pull it off with two keyboards, but it was never as on the albums. So to bring the music as it is meant to be, we needed to have two players and that’s what we will do. We we were down in Florida a few weeks ago, and we wound up finding two really good, talented and nice guys who will travel with us as support. We have never used tracks. Also with TSO we sing everything and play everything. We are doing the same thing with Savatage.
Chris: When we did Wacken and we had Jon was playing the piano and Vitalij (Kuprij) was playing the keyboards with him. With every single TSO show we have ever done, we had separate keyboard players dividing the piano, the strings and the Hammond organ. This is going to be the tour with Savatage where we can have the keyboards done in ways that they were on the record. And both guys sing really good, so that is gonna help us be able to carry a lot of the counterpoint parts and the and the harmonies and and keep that part of the music at a high level. So we are making it be as as close as possible with these guys, it will sound great.
Arrow Lords of Metal is a magazine that mainly has followers from the Netherlands and Belgium. These are two countries you are not skipping on your festival run in the coming summer with Graspop in Belgium and Into the Grave in the Netherlands. Furthermore, you are playing a headlining show in Oberhaussen which is very close to the Dutch border. But then, I believe that our countries and Savatage have always shared a special bond? With Aardschok being the first European magazine ever to cover the band and Tilburg being visited as early as 1986. What are your fondest memories from being in the Netherlands and Belgium as a band?
Johnny: Ah, Tilburg… (laughs). Yeah I have a story about that place, the “Noorderlicht” venue right? Me and Jon are there, and there is this guy smoking his joint. And we were like, where did you get that? We didn’t even know weed was legal there.The guy said they sold it across the street. So me and Jon look at each other and go across the street to the pharmacy there. So we go in and we said to the pharmacist “Hey, we’d like to buy some weed”. And the guy looks at us like we were crazy. So he said “We don’t sell weed here”. And I said “Well, the guy across the street said you did” and he goes “No, that’s next door at the coffee shop”. So there was coffee shop next door where you could buy drugs, and me and John went into the pharmacy. But that place, the Noorderlicht, was our favorite gig of all time. And it I think we were one of the last bands to play there, and if I am not mistaken we were the first band to play the new place in Tilburg, 013. I remember they were putting a spotlight up on the railing up on the top. The guy dropped it and it crashed to the ground and exploded. We got a lot of love out of the Dutch and the Belgian people. We played Ghent, Antwerp, Eindhoven, that whole area just showed us a lot of love and the band felt it. We really felt home in in that area and I still do. After the tour I’m planning on spending a little time in the Netherlands before I fly back home.
Chris: I remember the first time I played the Noorderlicht. It was the last time that I did something with the guitar that I would never do again. Like how Malmsteen and the guys in Cinderella throw the guitar around the back, I took a turn and my strap broke, and the guitar was flying across the stage. Johnny and Criss Oliva were looking at me laughing as my guitar flew across the floor.
Johnny: Of all of the clubs that I have done in my career, I would say the Noorderlicht was my favorite place. Being an American and seeing like 500 bicycles parked outside the venue. It just did not register, we are all driving cars. It was quite the culture shock of first traveling to Europe and that being the first place that we played, it just holds a special place in my heart. And hey, we could always play another gig there?
Sounds like a good plan. The Noorderlicht is no more, but there is the 013 venue which you baptized, that one is still in business.
Johnny: Yeah that could be on the list for 2026!
Chris: I think on that gutter ballet tour too, we were doing shows with King Diamond and Candlemas, and I am pretty sure the Tilburg show was a headline show. And I think the first time I have done a full Savatage concert in Europe was that one.
You have already announced that you are working on one final album, which so far has ‘Curtain Call’ as an appropriate working title. So let’s say that we have a roadmap from zero to ten, with zero being starting to think about an album and ten being the day of release, at what number would you say ‘Curtain Call’ is along this road?
Johnny: I would say about six. There is a lot of stuff written and Jon luckily sang a lot of his stuff about two years ago. Jon just keeps coming up with more stuff, always improving on his work.
Chris: The other day I was talking about the title because originally Jon was saying curtain call as far as the curtain going down. But with all this material and us starting to play again, maybe it is going to be a new beginning. It will be a curtain call, but we didn’t say in which direction. With all the material we have it is going to be more than one record probably anyway.
The final song will be just Jon with the piano, saying goodbye and thank you to his fans. Frankly, the idea alone almost gets the tears to my eyes. What can you tell me about this song?
Johnny: Well, there may be some upright bass on it too. It’s almost like a Frank Sinatra song, It has that vibe. It is indeed a goodbye to to the fans, and it would be the last song that he releases. It is an emotional song, I cried the first time I heard it. Jon asked me to throw a little upright bass on there so I did, if we use it we use it. But it is basically piano solo and him saying goodbye.
Savatage has had many different elements in their music for twenty years of active music making, many of them groundbreaking for the genre at the time. So how would you say the sound of the coming album or albums will be like? Will it be more conceptual like the later albums or more old school like the earlier albums, or maybe a mixtu..?
Chris (half interrupting): YES! (laughs) You answered the question in the question. It is Savatage. As we went through the years and developed in time, all those new elements joined into what was the Savatage sound. And now as we are doign the new music, it’s just that. No one is going to say like let’s pick a time or era of the band, we never worked that way. Savatage has always just been Savatage and there is a lot of Paul’s attitude there. When somebody said people did not like this style, Paul would be like “they will!”. So the songs I hear could probably go on just about any record, especially since Jon does a tremendous amount of his writing now on both guitar and keyboards. In the old days when he was traveling around, he would have one of Criss’ guitars upside down on the tour bus, playing it backwards and writing songs. Now he is home or in the studio, and then he still has the guitars and keyboards. Not only does he play the righty guitar’s upside down tuned backwards, but he does play the left-handed guitar tuned lefty with the strings in the right direction. How he is able to play both ways with the chords in either direction beats me. But the music is is Savatage, it took decades for Savatage to go through all those different moods and styles and emotions and that is going to ring in the new music.
Many of the fans believe the coming tour and album will be the absolute end for Savatage, and maybe it will be, maybe it will not be. But it will likely be one of the last things that you do. I mean, TSO will be calling after this tour is done. So how does this future Savatage look like?
Johnny: We plan on doing a lot more than we are doing right now in 2026. This year, we decided we were going to do it a little late in the game. So we put some feelers out there and waited, and we got a warm reception.Our canary in the coal mine would be our own shows. Everyone goes to the festivals, that’s a given. But our headline shows sold surprisingly well, so we decided that we’re gonna go ahead and start planning now for next year and do a more extensive European tour. We’re looking at Asia. We’re looking at another a a much bigger South American run, and we’re also looking at an North American run. We are just getting this boat back in the water this year. Next year we will run both engines and circle around the world.
Chris: Savatage is is coming back, curtain’s rising. You know? When Jon first mentioned the ‘Curtain Call’ thing, we just got out of COVID and Paul had just passed. Jon just came out and said, I wanna do a record. When we get together as a band in the same room and that energy and that chemistry comes together, it makes us ready to pull the curtain up instead of down.
Well at least I’m counting on one more curtain being pulled up, that being in Tilburg.
Johnny: Yeah, we are definitely making that happen!
Many of you have had different side projects in the past years. Chris you have your solo thing, Zak has Circle II Circle, Jon was active in Jon Oliva’s Pain. So next to Savatage and TSO, I guess the chances of seeing those project revived in the near future are pretty slim?
Chris: Jon wanted to have Savatage come back, I cannot say for sure what he’s doing. I know Zak is so happy to be doing Savatage like I am. I can’t say what anybody’s gonna do personally. I have been doing my stuff since 2004 so there is a twenty-year anniversary thing planned with a gig and a vinyl that I am releasing. Until there is the time where I feel that I want to do solo stuff again, I will do it. But right now I am so happy with the ability to be a part of this part of my life again, so I don’t have the desire to do so. When Jon calls me up and needs stuff for Savatage songs, solo’s and endings and stuff, that’s what I write now. A lot of song ideas that I had for my first records is stuff I intended for Savatage records anyway. A song like ‘Abandoned’ was music that I wrote for Savatage.
I believe that is all that I could possible ask you. As for myself, I say “see you in Oberhaussen”. Do you have any closing remarks for the Savatage fans in the Netherlands and Belgium?
Chris: It has been a while, I know. Like I said, ten went by just like that and twenty years went by just like that. But it feels like yesterday in a way, and the energy is there that makes me feel like we are just a little slow getting back out after the last tour.
Johnny: I can’t wait, we are really stoked to get this. The first show in Europe once again just happens to be in Holland. Into The Grave festival, and we are dying to get there. We are going to do a some pre-production there so we get to spend a few days in your beautiful country, working our gear out, making sure everything is ready to go. So really looking forward to getting back to the Netherlands, enjoying some nice beer. We’re good. Can’t wait to see you guys!