JEFF PLATE Says Reunited SAVATAGE Is 'Deconstructing Every Song, Relearning Everything From Scratch'

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; additional excerpts will follow soon. (The full interview will be posted next week.)

Blabbermouth: How have rehearsals been going?

Jeff: “Extremely well. This has been a new approach to SAVATAGE. Obviously, the ringer in this is Jon Oliva. The fact that Jon is not going to be on stage with us opened up a whole different scenario for how we should approach this. We cannot replace Jon — we can’t replace his voice; we can’t replace his playing; we can’t replace his personality, his energy, his overall persona. He’s the Mountain King. When he’s on stage, he just has this energy and this persona that cannot be replaced, so we’re not even going to try. I give a lot of credit to Jon for saying, ‘Guys, go ahead and do this. I can’t get on stage with you, but I want you to go out and play this music. This needs to happen.’ Not only is Jon going through some physical stuff and his health issues, but to let his baby go out without him? That’s a tough call, and I give him a lot of credit for giving us his blessing and letting us do this.

“Looking at the set list, there’s obviously a number of songs that we have to play — there’s title tracks, and there’s hits, so to speak. Then, it was like, ‘What do we do that’s going to serve this lineup?’ The five of us have been playing this music for a long time, but we’ve also been in TSO for a long time, and the TSO machine is something where we’ve learned just how meticulous, focused and prepared you have to be to be that good. This is something that we never really did with SAVATAGE. When we came into these rehearsals, obviously, [the question was], ‘How do we supplement Jon not being there?’ I’m not going to give any names — this will come in due time — but we’ve employed two other musicians [who are] very good keyboard players [and] very good vocalists. This opens up the opportunity for us to do just about anything. The real orchestrated stuff, we don’t have to shy away from now; the real vocal-heavy stuff, we don’t have to shy away from.”

Blabbermouth: How did you prepare for the rehearsals?

Jeff: “Going into this, we all just looked at each other like, ‘Everybody, go home and relearn the records.’ I can speak for myself — a perfect example is the song ‘Sirens’. I’ve been playing the chorus wrong for 31 years. We get into the [rehearsal] room, and Johnny looks at me and goes, ‘Is that what Doc [Wacholz, former SAVATAGE drummer] was doing?’ Then I went and listened back to it, and it’s like, ‘It’s not what Doc was doing.’ Every one of us went through this — vocally, guitars, bass, drums, and then obviously these two new guys on keyboards.

“Muscle memory doesn’t let go for a while. For instance, certain drum fills, certain accents, certain things that either were or weren’t there. I’ve got stuff written out — I’m playing along, I’m reading along with my notes and everything, and I’m still playing it wrong. My body is referring back to what I did 20-some years ago, even though I’m reading it differently. This is all coming together, and it really, really makes a difference once the stuff is note-for-note relearned. We’re all doing it together and building this thing back up, and there is a noticeable difference in this music, and it’s really pretty cool.”

Blabbermouth: How does that differ from how SAVATAGE previously approached rehearsals?

Jeff: “When I first joined SAVATAGE in ’94, Johnny and Jon, they’d just lost Criss [Oliva, Jon‘s brother and SAVATAGE‘s original guitarist]. It was painful for them in a lot of respects. For me, I was so excited. I knew everything note-for-note, but there wasn’t that much time spent meticulously on everything, so some things were learned and played kind of just the way they were for years. [Now,] we’ve stripped it down, re-listened to everything and relearned it. We’re deconstructing every song, relearning everything from scratch. There [are] so many vocals and so much layering in these records, especially from ‘Gutter Ballet’ on. But the whole approach has been, ‘Everybody, strip down what you’ve been doing and relearn the album — every note, every hit, et cetera, et cetera. Let’s go out and recreate this music as it was recorded,’ and then as certain little things develop over time, fine. But everything is just being approached a lot differently than it has been before, and it will be noticeable. It’s going to sound fantastic.”

Blabbermouth: Revisiting SAVATAGE after all these years, did you hear anything in a different light or experience any sort of newfound appreciation for the band’s music?

Jeff: “Sure. Prior to when I joined the band in 1994, I think I saw the ‘[Hall Of The] Mountain King’ video and maybe ‘Jesus Saves’ on ‘Headbangers Ball’. But I didn’t know much at all about SAVATAGE. Ironically, it’s almost 31 years to the day that I’m here [in Florida] rehearsing for this new venture that we’re on, but I remember coming down and meeting Jon and Paul, and then Johnny and [‘Handful Of Rain’-era guitarist Alex] Skolnick, and obviously reconnecting with Zak. At that time, Paul told me, ‘We have no idea what the set is going to be. Just go home and learn everything. Get yourself acquainted with SAVATAGE.’ And I was surprised then at just how diverse the music was, because all I really knew at the time was kind of the harder-edged part of the band. But listening to ‘Gutter Ballet’ and ‘Streets’, it’s like, ‘Wow — there’s some really, really great music here.’ And all over again now, going back into this venture here and doing things the way we’re doing, there is a lot of fantastic music here that sometimes I think over the years, you kind of take for granted. Now that we’re revisiting all of this with a different mindset, it’s become apparent just how good a lot of this music is.

“This music really is something different. There’s something unique about the way the Oliva brothers wrote, the way Paul produced, the lyrics that Paul wrote, and there really isn’t anything else that sounds like it. I’ve talked to a couple other journalists during these interviews and [asked them], ‘Tell me a band that sounds like SAVATAGE.’ You really can’t. There’s been so many different versions of the group and so many different scenarios that the group was in when they were recording, but the underlying thing is Oliva/O’Neill — whether it was Jon and his brother when Criss was still here, or whether it was just Jon and Paul. Sure, ‘The Wake Of Magellan’ sounds a lot different than ‘Hall Of The Mountain King’, but you can certainly hear the similarities in there once you really start breaking this music down and then studying a little bit more. I wouldn’t be here, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation, if the music wasn’t that good. People still want to hear it.”