A record and a tour. Those were drummer Jeff Plate‘s modest career goals once upon a time, but more than three decades after he joined SAVATAGE for their tour in support of 1994’s “Handful Of Rain”, he’s assembled a far more impressive list of accomplishments: three legendary SAVATAGE studio albums, as well as a live record capturing the final show of the “Handful” tour; multiple gold and platinum records with sister group TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA; five albums with METAL CHURCH, with whom he played from 2006 to 2017; and hundreds of shows around the world with the three bands.
Apart from a one-off performance at Germany’s Wacken Open Air festival in 2015, SAVATAGE has been on extended hiatus since the completion of their world tour in support of 2001’s “Poets And Madmen”. Since then, TSO — which launched in the wake of the success of the “Dead Winter Dead” instrumental “Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24)” and quickly became one of America’s top concert draws — has consumed most of the group’s energies. The Wacken gig hinted at a possible resurrection, but for multiple reasons – namely, the 2017 death of longtime producer and lyricist Paul O’Neill; the global pandemic in 2020; and ongoing health issues of the group’s heart and soul, Jon Oliva — a proper reunion never materialized.
That changed late last year, when SAVATAGE announced their first tour in 23 years. They’ll kick things off this month with gigs in Brazil, Argentina and Chile before heading to Europe this summer to play a mix of festival and headline dates. They’ll do so, however, without Oliva, who hopes to rejoin the band on tour as soon as his health permits. In the meantime, he’s serving as the band’s musical director while the “Dead Winter Dead”-era lineup — Plate, bassist Johnny Lee Middleton, vocalist Zak Stevens and guitarists Chris Caffery and Al Pitrelli — rehearses for their upcoming shows at the former Morrisound Recording studio in Tampa, Florida, where Plate first met Oliva and O’Neill 31 years ago this month.
Plate recently spoke with BLABBERMOUTH.NET‘s Clay Marshall about SAVATAGE‘s return. An excerpt from the conversation appears below. (A previous excerpt saw Plate discuss the band’s ongoing rehearsals and the prospect of performing without Oliva. Additional excerpts will follow soon. The full interview will be posted shortly.)
Blabbermouth: Turning back the clock, you and Zak were originally bandmates in the Boston-based WICKED WITCH. How’d you take the news when he told you he was leaving to join SAVATAGE?
Jeff: “There’s such a funny story that leads up to all of this. Zak was living in California, going to VIT — the Vocal Institute of Technology [now Musicians Institute]. Matt Leff, the guitarist and songwriter for WICKED WITCH, was going to [sister school] GIT. Those two met out there in California. Zak, I believe, also had gone to school for hotel management and was working at a hotel out there where SAVATAGE stayed. He meets SAVATAGE in, like, ’88-’89, and they talk and hit it up and probably exchange numbers. Then we flew Zak to Boston to join WICKED WITCH, because Matt kept telling me, ‘I got the singer. This guy is great. We’ve got to get him out here,’ so we did. Ironically, Zak lands at Logan Airport, we pick him up and it’s like, ‘Let’s take this guy out to have a couple beers,’ so we go to this club called The Channel, and SAVATAGE is playing. I walk in the door, and Zak is like, ‘I know these guys!’ It was the first and only time I ever saw them play.
“WICKED WITCH, we got our setlist together. We got our songs together. We went out and played our asses off. We played, I think, 150 shows in our first year of existence. We hit the street, and we were working hard — a lot of rehearsal, a lot of gigs — but without proper management and without somebody really leading us in a certain direction, we were kind of in a place that we needed somebody else to help us get out of [the starting block]. Then also all of a sudden, grunge came along. Everything was just kind of changing. We hit this rut, and then Jon steps out of SAVATAGE and these guys reach out to Zak. Honestly, I think we kind of ran our course, so Zak made the move. And you know what? I was happy he did. I love Zak as a singer. He’s also a drummer, so he and I had a pretty cool rhythmic connection. I was sad to see Zak go because I knew we couldn’t replace him, but I was also in the position where it was like, ‘Well, I’m glad one of us is getting a shot.’ When Zak went and joined the band, this was obviously a turning point for me in my life, and that’s when I decided to leave Boston and head back to New York to rethink my life. I was never planning on quitting drums. I was like, ‘I just have to rethink what I’m doing.'”
Blabbermouth: You said that 1990 was the only time you attended a SAVATAGE show, which presumably means that you never had the chance to see them with Zak.
Jeff: “I moved back home, I think, in the spring of 1993. And they played in upstate New York [that year]. It was probably about two hours away from me. I was working construction. I had to be up at, like, 6:30 in the morning or whatever. It was one of those things — ‘Should I go see him, or shouldn’t I?’ I wish I would’ve, because I would’ve been able to at least meet Criss [Oliva, SAVATAGE‘s late guitarist]. That was kind of a missed opportunity — one of those things that if I could do over again, I certainly would’ve made the road trip.”
Blabbermouth: In an unexpected twist, you reunited with Zak the following year in SAVATAGE.
Jeff: “When Criss died, Matt Leff and I were still in touch. We gave it some time, and Matt called me up and said, ‘Hey, why don’t you reach out to Zak and see what he’s going to do? He’s got his foot in the door now; maybe we can fire up WICKED WITCH again and actually make something work this time.’ So, I called Zak just as a friend and said, ‘Hey, how are you doing? Are you okay?’ He’s like, ‘SAVATAGE is going to continue, and they want you to be the drummer.’ I’m standing in my living room in Horseheads, New York going, ‘What?’ He says, ‘Yep — they’ve listened to the [WICKED WITCH] demo tape; they’ve seen your picture. [I gave them] my word. These guys want you to join the band.’ I was like, ‘Holy shit — I wasn’t expecting this!’ Next thing you know, I’m in my truck driving to Florida. 31 years ago, I walked into Morrisound and met Paul and Jon. It was unbelievable just how that even came about. I spent 10 years in Boston trying to be a rock star, and now I’m back home building houses and wondering what I’m going to do, and holy crap — now it’s here; now it’s happening.
“Joining the band at that time, I was so excited. I had the gig I was looking for. I was reuniting with Zak, who was a friend and one of my favorite vocalists. [I thought,] ‘This is great. This is what I’ve been busting my butt for all these years,’ but I came into this group that was such an emotional wreck from losing Criss. I’m excited, but I felt so bad for these guys at the same time. Johnny couldn’t even do the ‘Handful Of Rain’ record, let alone want to leave home and go on tour. Thank God he did, and we stuck this out. That was just an awesome experience altogether. Within months, my dream of doing a tour and recording a record became a reality, because I did this tour of America. Next thing I know, I’m in Japan recording this live record. I felt like I’d won the lottery.”
Blabbermouth: Just as Zak did before you, you successfully stepped into the shoes of a founding member of the band. Did Zak give you any tips or pointers, friend to friend or musician to musician?
Jeff: “When I first came down to Florida and met everybody, I couldn’t believe how upbeat and friendly and accepting Jon and Paul were. It was like, ‘Hey, man! Come on into the studio! Come check out what we’re doing!’ It was such a difficult time for all those guys, but they had a really good head about them, and they were moving forward — but along with that, I knew that these guys were all just going through hell at the time. My approach was, ‘Keep your mouth shut. Do what you do. Do it well, and you’re going to be fine.’ It wasn’t so much Zak talking to me about how to approach this. It was evident how I needed to approach this, and if I came in there like some mouthy, arrogant jackass, who knows? The tour may not have ever happened, because they were all just like on the verge of saying, ‘We can’t do this.’ My job was to go in there and drum. Coming in after Steve [Wacholz, SAVATAGE‘s original drummer], sure, I had some shoes to fill, but I knew I could do it. I just had to do what I do, do it well and be an adult — be quiet, be respectful of the situation and kind of stay out of the way.”
Blabbermouth: As you noted, when the ‘Handful’ tour began, the band was still on shaky ground.
Jeff: “We started the tour in Fort Lauderdale. Between Fort Lauderdale and Orlando, our bus broke down, or maybe the air conditioning went out. I can’t remember the exact order, but all of a sudden, we were having bus trouble right out of the gate. Compound that with how difficult this is for Johnny and Jon and Zak. Then, I think our third show was Tampa — a homecoming without Criss Oliva. Here I am — I’m excited and so happy I got this gig, and people are so upset. There were tears everywhere — ‘What are we doing? Why are we doing this?’
“We got on the bus in Tampa, and our next show is in Atlanta. Somewhere between Tampa and Atlanta, I’m sitting in the back lounge with Johnny drinking a beer. He looks right at me and says, ‘I don’t know if I can do this. This is just too hard.’ By this point, Johnny and I had connected pretty well – we were pretty tight — and I was like, ‘Dude, I don’t know what to tell you. I can’t even imagine what you’re going through right now.’ No sooner did we have this conversation, the transmission goes [out] — the bus just starts grinding and making all this noise. And Johnny sat there, lifted his head and looked at me and goes, ‘Well, Jeff — I guess we need a new bus.’ And from there on, it all just kind of clicked. It was funny, because Johnny had one foot out the door, and now the damn bus broke down. He could’ve easily stepped out the door and said, ‘I’m going home. See you later’ — but no. ‘Looks like we need to get a new bus, Jeff.’ It’s like, ‘Oh, thank God.'”
SAVATAGE will kick off its first tour since 2002 at the Monsters Of Rock festival in Sao Paulo, Brazil on April 19.
Source: blabbermouth.net
