Jon Oliva is one of the most underrated vocalists in metal. He fronted Savatage, which eventually metamorphosized into the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Savatage never made any money and they were actually three million dollars in debt at some point during the 1980s. The band was either going to have to quit. They were a classic metal band at a time when glam metal ruled and thrash metal bands were the wild, rebellious upstarts who were going against the grain in a decidedly non-glam style. Savatage didn't fit into the glam or the thrash scene. They had the songs, but they weren't what was trendy at the time and they never got radio play in the 80s when they were trying to break through. They ascended as far as opening for Dio and Ronnie James was quite impressed by the way Jon Oliva sang, but Dio was skeptical that Oliva's voice would actually make it through the entire tour. When Oliva was asked how he sang, he said: "You know how you yell when you're at a football team and then team you like scores a touchdown? That's how I sing." Despite having no formal training or a solid understanding of what he was doing, the man was so damn talented that he developed into an amazingly versatile singer who had a knack for being able to imitate almost any vocalist. Paul O'Neill was the man who stepped in when Atlantic Records was going to drop Savatage and said let me produce this band. I have a vision for them. That was 1987 and the first Savatage album O'Neill produced was Hall Of The Mountain King from that year. Their successive albums showed a distinctly progressive metal direction to their sound, with many songs that transcended the metal sub-genre of rock and at times, went beyond what would even typically qualify as rock. They'd have a totally heavy metal song on an album that would be followed by a song that sounded like it belonged in a Broadway musical. With each album, Savatage began to get closer to the project that Paul O'Neill had in mind for them - to turn them into the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. He was gradually getting that band acclimated to playing and writing in that style.

Why do you suppose it is that whenever somebody wants to talk about what impressive range a lead vocalist has, they almost unanimously praise the vocalists who can sing the highest notes i.e. , notes in the 5th and 6th octave, while they all but ignore the whole other side of the spectrum? There have been vocalists who sing extremely high notes with beautiful tone and it's a great thing, but so many others have sung high just for the sake of it and it's no more musical than a guitarist who thinks he's going to be praised as the next Eddie Van Halen or Yngwie Malmsteen without realizing that those musicians aren't unique because they could play fast just for the sake of speed. Those players became legends because they were unique and because they could play with great touch, tone and feel. They had impeccable intonation. Their vibrato was a thing of beauty....and yes, they could play as fast as they wanted to, but they were at their most exciting when they used speed in moderation. To place speed as a goal first and foremost and think that if you just run scales and play mindless repeating licks with no melody, that's nothing more than a fast way to get nowhere. The vocal equivalent is to squeeze out the highest notes a vocalist can possibly muster, at the expense of being screechy. It amounts to valuing quantity over quality. Without great tone, does it really matter if you can sing a G5? Axl Rose still sings high notes, but do they sound good to you? I'd rather hear him take his lines down an octave and sing them in chest than to hear him use that Mickey Mouse tone. Robert Plant did his best to sing the highest notes he could possibly crank out and guess what? At the ripe old age of 32, Robert Plant's career as a hard rock lead vocalist was over. His doctors told him that if he continued to scream out notes the way he had been, before much longer, his larynx would be reduced to rubble. Suddenly, singing a softer, lighter type of rock seemed appealing to him.

In heavy metal there are two main eras: Before Pantera and after Pantera Phil Anselmo set the standard for what a modern metal vocalist could be. Phil could seemingly do it all. He could hit Rob Halford type high notes. He could sing in the really gritty hyper-compressed style of James Hetfield. He had the physicality of Henry Rollins of Black Flag and Rollins Band. He could even sing and make it sound pretty, like he did in the intro to Cemetery Gates. Then something unusual happened. Phil cut his hair. As a heavy metal vocalist in that era, that's somethin' ya just didn't do! Then he stopped singing the soaring high notes like he did at the end of Cemetery Gates or in Shattered, also from the Cowboys From Hell album. You didn't hear him sing pretty anymore. Anselmo was seemingly on top of the world, but his life was becoming anything but pretty....and it was about to get a whole lot more trying. The destination Phil's body was headed for was sheer misery. Phil had asked no quarter and given no quarter during the early days of Pantera. As he put it: "I would either dive into the waiting crowd or into the waiting concrete. It made no difference. I would attack! When we're young we've got a tendency to think we're invincible. When you're hopped up on a lot of booze, that tendency grows. Phil had paid a serious price for his dives off the P.A. system and the bill was just now coming due. The cost was: Two blown out discs and degenerative disc disease. His doctor told him he needed surgery or it would surely get worse. Phil asked what the recovery time would be and when the doctor told him it could be a year or more, Phil replied: "I've got gigs to play." The 90s had been a tough time for heavy metal. Even legends like Judas Priest and Dio were relegated to playing venues that weren't even half the size of what they had played in the 80s. Grunge and alternative were the anti-virtuosic trend , but Pantera was a band full of musicians who could play their asses off! Darrell Abbott is widely considered the greatest lead guitarist of his time.

Modern bands with the same level of influence as Led Zeppelin during their peak? You could mean several different things by modern rock band, but I’m going to interpret it as a band that still makes albums and tours. Also, remember that metal is a sub-genre of rock. Metallica is the one that comes closest, but their fame is not as great as Led Zeppelin’s though and maybe more importantly, Metallica never cultivated the mystique Led Zeppelin did. You have no idea how much it hurts to be writing this now when I should be singing. I am counting the days, I am salivating over the prospect of coming back and when I do, look out! Nobody knows how to cultivate mystique anymore. They don’t understand it. It’s a lost art. I’m gonna bring it back. I get it. Mystique brings about excitement. What you imagine in your mind is so much more powerful than what you see, but nobody dares to leave anything to the imagination anymore. They want to put it all out there on social media and that is the single biggest culprit in the disappearance of mystique. Led Zep set a standard that nobody else ever reached. People like Metallica only get half the message. Jimmy Page understood there had to be light and shade. That’s exactly how he put it: "light and shade." Metallica gets the heavy part, they get the shade part, but they wouldn’t have a clue as to how to go about producing the light part. Therefore, the dynamics are just not there. Ya understand me? When you have two critical ingredients to a sound and people rip one of them off all to hell, but they’re mystified by the other, then they will never be anything more than pretenders to your throne. Oh, Metallica got a little bit of it in a song like Fade To Black and in a song like One, but they have no idea how to just do a song that’s light all the way through. Led Zeppelin could…and did! Think of Tangerine from Led Zeppelin III or Going To California from their fourth album. Metallica has nothing remotely like those songs, yet Led Zeppelin made some of the heaviest music of their day!

This is just something that everybody should be able to have a little fun with and it will give other members a little more insight into your musical taste. It's very simple. Just list the band and the year of the tour or the album the band was touring on. For me it is: 1. Fleetwood Mac 1977 Rumours Tour - seeing Stevie Nicks at her peak and seeing the whole band tour on one of the best selling, most iconic rock albums of all time would have been incredible! 2 W.A.S.P. - I would guess it would probably have either been for The Last Command Tour - 1985 or for The Crimson Idol Tour - 1992 3 Led Zeppelin - Houses Of The Holy Tour