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Moving onto a smaller label could also mean that you don't reach out to all the people, as you would do being on a bigger label. Was this something that you thought about? 
     "They have the best distribution in Europe. We checked that out. Their distribution is just as good as Warner/Electra/Atlantic so we weren't really concerned with that. Instead of giving Atlantic another Savatage record to do nothing with I had to make what I thought was the right business move, which was to get it to a label where the people at the label was excited about having the band. I had people at Atlantic Records who didn't know that Savatage still was on the label. How can you have a working relationship with people like that? It's not gonna work. It was obvious that the attention wasn't there. So for me things are much better for Savatage now. 
     They're doing their best in the States too. At least they put ads out and the record is in the stores. They are not on the level that they are in Europe but they'll get there and we'll reap the benefits from it. At least I have a company that knows the band is on the label and is doing things to help the band. Most of the things in America have been our own faults. We have shied away from touring in America because of the money situation here. Nobody has wanted to pay for us to go on tour so we've been spending most of our time in the studio or touring Europe and South America because that's were we've been selling a lot."

Isn't it frustrating to have such a huge potential market in the States and not being able to do anything with it? 
     "For Savatage it is. We are a million selling act here in the States with Trans-Siberian Orchestra. The way we have achieved that success is by a different mean but it is still the same guys writing the songs that are playing in the Savatage records. It's just much easier to get played on the American radio with Trans-Siberian Orchestra. American radio is not interested in playing Savatage songs and without the support from radio you're dead, you're not gonna sell or make any money unless you tour a couple of times each year. We realised that Savatage isn't gonna get any radio play on the American radio and that is frustrating. We do get played on heavy metal and rock stations occasionally and as long as we tour we do OK. They are not playing any heavy metal bands on the radio. What they play is mostly pop and disco music. They have classical rock stations that play Led Zeppelin and stuff like that but they are not playing anything new. You might have a station that might play a little bit of Limp Bizkit or something like that but it is very difficult to get radio play here in America unless you either do pop music or dance music."

From what I've understood Poets & Madmen is another concept album. When you write your concepts are they based on facts or fiction alone? 
     "Our concepts are based on facts and when we put them into story form sometime we have to add a little bit of fiction into the to make the story work. On the new record the story is based on a photographer who in real life hung himself but in our version we could not have him kill himself because then he couldn't be around to tell the story himself. So in our version instead of committing suicide as he did in real life, he hid out in the basement of this old mental institution and when it burnt out he got away. He's just been sitting there and these three guys find him and he tells them the story about the little girl and the desert dying and all that stuff and that is basically what the record is all about. Sometime you have to add a little bit of fiction to make the story work. Our concepts are 90% facts and 10% fiction."

When you started doing the concept albums, what was the idea behind it? 
      "It comes from all different things. When we started doing this record we had no concept. We were just recording music, recording songs. We had no idea for a concept and then Paul came up with the idea when he saw the picture of the little girl and the vulture that this guy took and won a Pulitzer Price for. Paul told me the story behind this guy. How he took this picture and came back to the States, got very rich of off it and he couldn't deal with that and ended up killing himself because he couldn't handle the image of the vulture eating this girl alive and profiting from it. In real life he ended up hanging himself but in our story these three travellers ended up finding him and he told his story to them. Paul came up with that idea at the last minute."

Locking at the cover there are some symbols that intrigue me. What is the meaning of the raven and the creature in the moon? 
     "The raven always symbolises death. That is what that symbolises on the cover, that there's death or tragedy involved. The thing in the moon was I'd seen a tattoo once that somebody had and it was this rising moon with this dragon. I thought it looked cool so I said why not put a dragon in the moon. It is not real. In a real picture there would be nothing in the moon. It symbolises that there's fiction involved. I wanted to add something that you'd not normally see. You have the bird that symbolises tragedy and you have the creature in the moon symbolises fantasy. That's the way I was looking at it. 

To me as an outsider it seems unusual that a producer is so involved in the song writing process too. Was there a point were you said that you needed outside help? 
     "It's just the way we've always worked with Paul. He's been almost like an equal member of the band, it just that he's not a performer. I think that if Paul had the musical talent to be a performer he would but he don't so his contributions to the band comes in the studio and the song writing process and that is how he gets his hands into the pie. 
     I write great lyrics too but I don't enjoy writing lyrics. I had to do it in the early days before Paul was around and I got stuck doing it. It was something I never enjoyed doing so having Paul around was a great release to know that I had a great lyricist that could take some of my ideas and put them to words that make sense. I always had a problem of making sense of the words. I come up with great verses or choruses but I have a problem making it all tie together. That is his forte, that is what he does so well and it makes me a better song writer because I can concentrate more on the melodies and the music and not having to worry about the lyrics and all that stuff. It's a very good relationship for me. 
     We are all working on the stuff at the same time. All of us and we bounce ideas of each other. Paul doesn't write anything unless he puts it by us first. He doesn't force anything on us. We always work together on the material."

Savatage has had a lot of line-up changes through the years but where some seem to loose focus with the changes Savatage seem to have kept its direction. What's your secret to being a band? 
     "Once Criss died we knew we had to go through some line-up changes. The nucleus of the band - myself, Chris Caffery, Paul O'Neill, Johnny Middleton and Jeff Plate the drummer who's been with us for ten years now - we been the nucleus. We had Al Pitrelli who was with us for a couple of records. He only contributed on a couple of songs so he wasn't part of the writing team. So long the nucleus stay the same and you have quality musicians coming in to play. I never ever expected them to be in the band for the rest of the band. With Chris I knew it would be different because Savatage is the life to him. With Al, he had so many other things to do I knew it was just a matter of time before he'd up and do something else. With Zach Stevens it was that we were doing too much. Zach doesn't want to work as much as Savatage does. That was the problem for
him because he was unhappy with all the travelling. He just wanted to do a record every now and then and do some shows and then go home to spend time with his family. That is not what Savatage has to be able to do so we had Zach to leave. 
      That is what happens in life. People grow up, have babies, get divorces and it changes their lives. Unfortunately it affects the life of the band because when Zach had a baby we knew it was gonna be a problem to continue having his act in the band because he didn't want to be away from his baby and wife. It started to come across on the tours. If you have one guy who is really unhappy it makes everybody miserable. We have respect for him wanting to give up his career to raise his baby but we're not gonna shut down the band just because Zach doesn't want to tour anymore. The nucleus of the band is still the same. You still have me and Johnny, Chris, Jeff and Paul. The four of us plus Paul is the longest anybody been together in the history of the band. Now we have new members and they're working out well. I can't wait to get them into the studio."

Even though it was you who sang on the album you have a new vocalist now. Was that something you intended all the time? 
      "I can't do it. There's no way I can do this job by myself anymore. I don't have any egos. I'm not 22 years any more. I don't want to go up there and sing like shit and rip off the fans. I like to sing but I don't want to hurt myself again. There's so much singing going on in Savatage now that we need at least two three guys who can sing. 
     I did the vocals myself because we didn't want to hold up the record. Zach told us at the last minute that he was going to leave so once he decided to leave I had to make a decision to either look for a new singer or do it myself. It had been so long between Savatage records that I thought it would be best to get the record out and then look for a new singer. Not just to grab somebody just to finish the record and then on tour find out that he's an asshole. I wanted to make sure I found somebody who would be there. I think we found him in Damond Jiniya."

Where did you find him and did you intentionally seek an unknown? 
     "I looked for someone who'd fit what we do. It could have been an unknown, it could have been a known. We just wanted somebody who could do the job. That was the most important thing to me. Zach was an unknown, Chris Caffery was an unknown when we got him, Johnny Middleton was an unknown when we got him. I can see the challenge in people. I saw something in Damond that I can build around on the next four or five records."

Something that I've been thinking about is if it's easier to find a new member without a public persona than it is to find someone that is already known? 
     "Cause everybody who already has been doing something want a shitload of money and I'm not gonna pay anybody a shitload of money, I'm not gonna pay rock star prices."

I remember that back in the 80s the European press wasn't easy on the albums you released for Atlantic at that time. How do you view these albums today, do you agree with some of the criticism you received back then? 
     The only album I album I know that got beat up by the press over in Europe was the Fight For The Rock which got beat up by everybody, including the band. Hall Of The Mountain King got great reviews, Gutter Ballet got Great reviews there, Streets got great reviews so the only record I know that got beat of is the Fight For The Rock and rightfully so because it's was a terrible album. We have 15 albums and were going to have one album that's not so great I'll take that. It was a bad year for us. We were very misdirected at that time. We were young and stupid. But we learned our lesson and we came back strong after we'd made a mistake. We did a thing we shouldn't have done but we came back and kicked everybody's ass. 
     It's like anything. You can have a bad day at work or bad days in your marriage and that's the way it is. You're going to have a bad album once and I think that there's not a band out there that hasn't put out a bad album. Take Black Sabbath for example. Technical Ecstasy stinks compared to Sabbath Bloody Sabbath or Sabotage. Never Say Die was beat up by the press and the same thing with Deep Purple. They had great albums like Machine Head, Burn and Who Do We Think We Are and then Stormbringer came out and everyone hated it. You can't be at that level all the time. You're going to have a time when you try to do something and it doesn't work. That is what we tried to do with Fight For The Rock.