TESTAMENT Guitarist ALEX SKOLNICK: 'Joining SAVATAGE Just Didn't Feel Right'

Will Romano of Goldmine magazine recently conducted an interview with TESTAMENT/ex-SAVATAGE guitarist and leader of ALEX SKOLNICK TRIO, Alex Skolnick. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Goldmine: [ALEX SKOLNICK TRIO's] new record, "Veritas", has touches of metal, but is mostly a jazz album.

Skolnick: It's definitely jazz. I'm playing with jazz musicians and even an upright bassist [Nathan Peck]. I'm playing a hollow guitar with F holes. It's the music I love and these days I want to play the music I love.

Goldmine: Why did you switch from metal to jazz?

Skolnick: I can't explain why I'm drawn to certain things. I think it's like explaining why I played guitar in the first place. I had come from an academic background. My mother's a law professor and I was expected to go into some profession similar to that, like law or medicine. The thing is, I don't like hospitals. I do like guitar strings, however. I think it's that simple. I like holding the guitar. It feels good. So, when it came to jazz it became such a part of me as a listener and fan. I was compelled to make that a part of me as a musician.

Goldmine: The title of the TRIO's new album is "Veritas". What does the idea of truth mean to you as a musician?

Skolnick: Two main thoughts that come to mind: one is that when you play music, or you're any kind of artist in the public eye, you are written about, a lot. You are described; it is part of the process. It's not often that your own voice and your own image of yourself get through all the clutter. This was doubly true for me, because I come from the heavy metal world, which I was playing professionally since I was 16. You're immediately categorized as a certain type of person, a certain type of musician, and I feel like I'm finally able to assert who I am outside of all of that stuff. So that's one reason. The other is that the artists that I gravitate towards are truth tellers. One example would be Pat Metheny. When you see Pat Metheny play, he's telling it like it is. He's not looking for trends.

Goldmine: Your interpretation of other artists' material is intriguing. In some cases it's difficult to discern what song you're actually playing.

Skolnick: I think RUSH's "Tom Sawyer", from "Last Day in Paradise", was the first time we'd recorded a cover and it wasn't obvious, until late in the song, that we were covering anybody. The JUDAS PRIEST song, "Electric Eye", from "Transformation", was a little bit like that, because we changed the beat. It was arranged in the style of modern jazz piano music. The first album, "Goodbye to Romance: Standards for a New Generation", was nearly all covers. Since then we've recorded a number of original songs that we're really proud of and are going over well live. While we were in rehearsals on the road we just decided to jam on [METALLICA's] "Fade to Black". But we're in the process of including more originals in our live sets. So, the fact that we chose to record "Fade to Black" is perfect, because it's like a statement about phasing out the covers.

Goldmine: After TESTAMENT, you recorded with SAVATAGE and later the band that evolved from it, TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA (TSO). What can you tell us about those experiences?

Skolnick: SAVATAGE was a very bittersweet situation. On the one hand, I got to do an album with a band that I liked in high school. The flipside is that the gig came about because of a tragedy: SAVATAGE guitarist Criss Oliva had passed away in 1993. That was around the time that I had left my band, TESTAMENT, because things hadn't been working out, and I found playing with SAVATAGE appealing. It was like, "Hey, why not?" Then again, I knew I was heading in a different direction from the band, but I just didn't know where. For some reason, joining SAVATAGE just didn't feel right. I'm not sure why that is. It's a little like our conversation earlier who knows why things happen? It wasn't one particular thing. Maybe I felt I needed to be one of the main creative voices in the band. If I had stayed with SAVATAGE, I wouldn't have been.

Read the entire interview from Goldmine magazine.