CHRIS CAFFERY Discusses SAVATAGE's Return: 'We Never Should Have Left'

By Clay Marshall

In 1987, a young New York-based guitar player named Chris Caffery was introduced to SAVATAGE by the band's late producer Paul O'Neill, who encouraged the group to add a second guitarist to beef up their live sound as they prepared to tour North American arenas with DIO and MEGADETH in support of their recently released album "Hall Of The Mountain King".

Two years later, the band invited Caffery to join on a full-time basis just prior to the release of "Gutter Ballet". The tour cycle for that album saw the group perform more than 100 concerts across North America and Europe, including a Hollywood show that was recorded for a live album — or at least, that was the original plan. After 36 years in the vaults, "Madness Reigns From The Gutter (1990)" debuted at No. 14 on the German pop chart upon its belated release this summer. The recording captures Caffery and the late Criss Oliva riffing their way through 19 SAVATAGE classics while Criss's brother Jon eggs on a raucous crowd with abandon (sample banter: "Time to separate the men from the boys!").

In addition to celebrating the band's storied past this year, SAVATAGE has simultaneously gotten fans excited about the future. After initially returning to the stage in 2025 following a long period of dormancy, the band — which now sees Caffery sharing guitar duties with Al Pitrelli — performed 19 well-received European concerts this summer, including one in Pompeii, Italy that was recorded for a live album. (Here's hoping it won't take 36 years to get released.) If Caffery — who also serves as a sort of master of ceremonies for the eastern touring troupe of TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA (TSO) every winter — has his way, those shows will be followed by even more in 2027.

Blabbermouth: It's been about a year and a half since SAVATAGE returned to the stage. In the years prior, you were the band member who was most vocal about wanting the group to make a comeback.

Chris: "I always wanted to do it. I wouldn't have stopped if it was my decision only. Whenever anybody asked me about it, my only answer was, 'I am hoping, and if it happens, I'll be there.' Basically what happened was [Jon] Oliva did an interview with Rock Hard magazine in Greece. He opened up about wanting to do one last SAVATAGE record and this and that. The next day, my messages, my DMs, my e-mail, everything is like, 'SAVATAGE is doing another record? Oh my God, that's great news!' I was like, 'We are?'
It was one of those things where [Jon] was giving, like, his honest wish list about what he wanted to happen. But the thing that happened from that was all those festivals, they wanted SAVATAGE back so bad, and they knew that our following was actually growing in kind of the way that PANTERA's did even 20 years after the Abbotts [Darrell and Vinnie Paul] had passed. Younger kids that were 16 [who] were not alive [when the band was previously active] wanted to see this band that they'd been listening to. It was like, 'Holy shit, we're gonna play.'

"I didn't want another band. I never tried to join another band. I helped out Doro and I helped out METAL CHURCH and I did SPIRITS OF FIRE, but eventually, that became less fun than my solo records, and I kind of just wandered away into the sunset on that. I was like, 'All right, my band is back' — and I'm not saying 'my band' like SAVATAGE is my band, but when you have a band that next year, it'll be 40 years since I started playing in, it's like, I always think of SAVATAGE as my band, you know? You don't say it as if you own the band, but that's your band. TSO, I've been in since day one, but SAVATAGE had a little bit more of a personal connection to me, because of the music style and the history and how emotionally connected I was with that band throughout the years, so it was, like, the best news I'd ever heard."

Blabbermouth: How did it feel when the band took the stage in Brazil last spring for the first SAVATAGE concert in nearly a decade?

Chris: "I was nervous until I got onstage. It just felt right, and like it was the place we were supposed to be. It was the place that we never should have left, but, you know, things happen. Unfortunately, Jon's health wasn't there to marry the occasion at that particular time, but Jon was the one that spearheaded everything, and he put the setlist together and worked with us really closely on it. It's still Jon's band. Kind of the same thing that PANTERA was doing for the Abbotts, we were doing for the Olivas."

Blabbermouth: Let's rewind even further — in 2015, SAVATAGE played Germany's Wacken Open Air festival, which was the band's first show in more than a decade. Any follow-up plans never materialized, however.

Chris: "One thing that would always get on my nerves — people were like, 'They've got TSO. They don't want to do SAVATAGE.' It's not true. We were just about there, and then [longtime producer and lyricist Paul] O'Neill passed. Then COVID happened — not like it would have happened [during] the COVID year, but we were getting TSO back to the point where we were emotionally and mentally able to get up there and represent Paul. That was difficult, so we weren't thinking about SAVATAGE at that point in time. We were just like, 'What the hell are we gonna do? We lost our guy.' He was our mentor. He was everything — the visionary and the one who put it all together. We waited for the O'Neill family to give their blessing, but there was never a time where we hadn't talked about it.
It just never happened — we just never really got there."

Blabbermouth: SAVATAGE recently released a "lost" live album from 1990, when the band toured extensively to support "Gutter Ballet".

Chris: "When you listen to this new live recording, obviously, nothing was able to be fixed. It was what it was. [Drummer Steve] Wacholz didn't go in the studio. Criss [Oliva] didn't come in and fix his guitars. Everything that was there was there. I didn't even hear the recording until the mixes were done. When I finally heard it, I kind of remembered everything we did, but I didn't know exactly what to expect. I listened to it, and I was like, 'Holy shit — were we tight!' That [lineup] was a fucking machine. I listened to the mix, and that mix is two guitars, even — me and Criss. It's not like he was blasted out there, and you barely hear a rhythm guitar. It sounds like us live, and it made me feel so happy. It gave me a lot of peace of mind to know that a new version of an album was coming out with me and those four guys, and nobody can ever take a note or a minute of that album away from me."

Blabbermouth: How would you describe your chemistry with the late Criss Oliva?

Chris: "There was something that happened when we played together, which is why they created that position for me. It always gets to me when people go, 'Oh, there's no original members of SAVATAGE.' That's kind of incorrect, because maybe I wasn't there the very first day, but SAVATAGE was a four-piece band until me, and that fifth position was created for me. I was the original Chris Caffery. That, for me, is very important, because it gives me a chance to go back and show how much I appreciate that that position was made for me. I never had a chance to do it for Criss when he was alive, so it's always meant a lot for me to go up there, especially as I've gotten better as a guitar player, to dissect what he did and remember what he taught me, and remember what my eyes saw when he was playing and how he did things, and just go out there and play that music the way I think it spiritually should be done."

Blabbermouth: How would you compare that to your chemistry with Al Pitrelli?

Chris: "I like to use open strings and play all the riffs as traditionally as I can, and it works really well with me and him, because his style of playing some of those guitars, with the different fingerings on the chords, creates this really interesting wall of guitars. We're always very tight together on the rhythms like I was with Criss, but he makes the sound be really full, especially on a lot of the songs that he or I wrote in the more recent SAVATAGE records. It creates a really interesting wall of sound."

Blabbermouth: At SAVATAGE headline shows this summer, fans had the chance to hear you sing a Jon Oliva-era song — usually "Warriors".

Chris: "You can hear my influence of Jon as a vocalist. I always had a similar type of rasp in my voice.
That's why he used to hand the microphone to me and let me sing 'Power Of The Night' on the 'Gutter Ballet' tour — he thought it was funny that this little skinny kid was up there singing the heavy, metal stuff. Jon was the one who was picking the songs that he wanted me to do for this, and he doesn't like when other people [sing his songs] because he wants to be there, but me, for some reason — because I'm, like, his little brother — he thinks it's kind of cute and funny. I really dissected how the falsetto becomes raspy and distorted, and I do it well. It's almost haunting sometimes when we listen to me do that stuff. I don't want to become the lead singer of SAVATAGE, but it's fun for me to have the opportunity to do that, especially since I learned so much about singing [while] doing my solo thing. It's fun to let people see how much I've worked on that other instrument I have." 


Blabbermouth: You've surely told the story a million times, but for those who don't know, how'd you hook up with SAVATAGE in the first place?

Chris: "I worked with Paul [O'Neill] in the band HEAVEN when I was 17, turning 18. Paul told me about this band SAVATAGE that he was producing for Atlantic. I knew of SAVATAGE because I worked at the place in New Jersey that made gold records for bands, and we would listen to [legendary college radio station] WSOU all the time. I remember hearing 'Holocaust'. That was the first [SAVATAGE] song I heard, then I remember hearing 'Sirens'. When Paul told me he wanted me to play [with SAVATAGE], I got all the records. He gave me a '[Hall Of The] Mountain King' album, and I learned basically every song.

"There was just something that happened when we played together. I remember when we did the first rehearsal before the 'Gutter Ballet' tour — we did 'She's In Love', and the band stopped and clapped when it was over. It was better doubled. [Criss and I] were so similar in what we did rhythm-wise, and obviously, he was far ahead of me as a lead player and definitely had a style that was way different from mine, and I wasn't using metal picks and a lot of other things like that, but something happened when we played this stuff together.

"People always say to me, 'You didn't play on 'Gutter Ballet'.' That was my choice. The record was done, but they were willing to open tracks up for me to redo rhythms. I was like, 'Why?' I didn't realize because I was a young, stupid kid how much the Internet was gonna supply elements to those who wanted to jump on you. I should have just played, like, three notes. That's why I always felt really, really good about [the Criss Oliva live tribute album] 'Ghost In The Ruins'. I had a chance to go in the studio with Paul on that one, and he wanted to change the sound to be slightly more like the studio, so I doubled my rhythm. I was literally recording in the studio with Criss at that point in time. A lot of those classic songs, and a lot of songs that were on the 'Gutter' record, I did, so I felt really good about that."

Blabbermouth: Do you have any specific memories of the Hollywood concert — which was originally broadcast on the Los Angeles radio station KNAC — that yielded the new live album?

Chris: "I remember it being a great show, as most of those shows were. That band was just on fire. I can remember what the theater looked like. I can remember what the crowd looked like. It was a really full show and a very excited audience. It was just a lot of fun. One thing that's funny is I did Hell's Heroes with Doro in March, and headlining the indoor stage of that festival was Chris Holmes, and Chris Holmes was standing on stage right [in Hollywood in 1990], watching me and Johnny [Middleton, SAVATAGE bassist] that entire show. You want to talk about full circle?
I had not seen Chris since that day, and all of a sudden, there he was, wandering into Doro's soundcheck to say hello. It was pretty cool."

Blabbermouth: What's it like to play with Doro?

Chris: "She's pretty legendary, you know? She has such a strong presence and following. It's always different every show, because I'll either be playing instead of Bas [Maas], or I'll be playing instead of Bill [Hudson], or I'll be playing with neither of them there and with Tommy Bolan, who has his own list of ways he wants to do the set list, so I know every part in every song. It was really funny, because she did a show in New Jersey that was supposed to be acoustic, but she decided at the last minute to make it electric, and it was just me, [bassist] Nick Douglas, her and [drummer] Johnny Dee. I had so much fun not having to think of which part I had to play — I just played them all! I didn't have to worry about which songs [were] rhythm, which one was I starting, which one was I not starting. It's always fun with that."

Blabbermouth: Looking ahead to the holidays, 2026 marks the 30th anniversary of TSO's debut album. Care to give any spoilers for this year's tour?

Chris: "I've seen the itinerary, and I've started to do some radio and Pandora-type stuff for it. But as far as that goes, everything anybody is going to find out about that tour,
I always allow TSO to make that announcement first. I've taken to that same kind of thing with SAVATAGE — 'I'm not going to say anything until you guys do.'

"It was just really, really great to be part of that from day one. I always look forward to the tour because the show is so incredible. Brian Hartley's been doing our SAVATAGE lighting design, but I really haven't asked him too much about TSO, because I don't like to see that show until it gets put together. For me, that's my time to see it, like the fans, when I see it being assembled by the crew."

Blabbermouth: What's next for SAVATAGE?

Chris: "I've gotten to that point where I let Jon say what Jon wants to say, and from there, I will be like, 'Oh, okay, great. That's what's going on.' For now, look at it this way — we played Chile and Argentina last year. We'd never played there before. Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland — we'd never played there before [this year]. I'd love to go and play every single city in America that we used to play, but I'd also love to go play Australia, New Zealand, the Far East. [There are] so many places that we've never done a show."