In a recent interview with The Metal Voice, Chris Caffery (guitarist) and Jeff Plate (drummer) of reactivated progressive metal legends Savatage discussed their highly anticipated return to the stage in 2025. After decades of fan-driven hope, the band is preparing to headline live shows for the first time in over 20 years.
Jeff Plate reflected on the long journey leading to this moment and credited the fans as the driving force behind the reunion: “Well, I think the catalyst has just been the fanbase. The fanbase never gave up on us. They’ve been beating the drum for this reunion for years.”
“The band never broke up,” the drummer clarified. “We haven’t done a proper tour in over 20 years, but we never officially broke up. Obviously, we all work together in TSO (Trans-Siberian Orchestra). We’ve played a lot of this Savatage music in the TSO shows. Throughout the years, we’ve done at least one Savatage song per tour, I believe — at least one. So the music has been out there. And the fanbase has been clamoring for this for the longest time. And, man, I’ve gotta hand it to them.“
“Jon Oliva, several years ago… Jon is always writing music, and the plan was to do some recording — he’s got a bunch of new ideas — do some recording and get out there and let’s do this again. Jon has obviously run into a number of health problems, which are serious, and I’m sure everybody’s read about them. But in Jon‘s wisdom, he’s, like, ‘You know what?’ The ball kind of started rolling again. He’s not going to stop it this time. Jon’s gonna be involved in everything that we’re doing from here forward. He can’t go out and do these tours right now, and he’s gonna work himself back into it. We’ve got our fingers crossed. But I tell you, man, the music in general, the fanbase, there’s just a strength behind all that that’s really kept the name alive, kept the interest alive.”
“We’re all here,” Plate continued. “We’re all playing probably as well or better than we’ve ever played. It’s not like we’ve been sitting around for 20 years doing nothing and decided to reunite. Chris and I, Johnny and Al, we’ve been doing these TSO tours every year, plus a number of things in the offseason. So there’s a lot of factors to this. But the excitement of seeing the reality of it, seeing the confirmed shows, seeing the posters…”
“Chris and I have been basically joined at the hip since 1995,” Jeff added. “We’ve done a lot of stuff together. We talk about this all the time, and it really is exciting just to be able to get back out there and do this and play this music.”
For Chris Caffery, the return has been emotional and deeply personal. He recalled how the group initially planned to resume after their 2015 performance at Wacken Open Air, but life had other plans:
“The plan was, after we did Wacken, to start playing. But Paul O’Neill passed, and then we had to get over that. Then COVID came. And then Jon wanted to get started, and then his injuries came. Like Johnny Lee had said when I was just speaking with him, 10 years went by like that. And we need to do this now. It’s, like, if you blink your eyes, 10 more years will go by. And I don’t wanna get emotional about things, but every other day, somebody in my life passes, it seems nowadays, as you get older. So we wanna take the advantage now of getting us together and celebrating what Jon and Paul and Criss Oliva and all of us have done with Savatage’s music and give the fans that had a chance to see it a chance to see us again and the ones that never saw us a chance to see it.”
Jeff Plate expanded on the importance of honoring the band’s legacy: “And I’ll tell you something. Chris mentioned losing Paul, and that obviously threw a huge wrench into everything. But in the infinite wisdom of Jon and Paul, they never dissolved the band. We’ve had this discussion several times. ‘Well, what is Savatage? Are we still a thing?’ Paul refused to ever say that we were done. ‘We’re still a band,’ yada, yada. So here we are all these years later. It may have been frustrating for a lot of people that we haven’t played, but we never broke up. So now we’re back. And I think this is gonna be really interesting and it’s gonna be awesome.”
For Caffery, the reunion marks a return to a family-like bond that was missing for years. “I used to tell the fans, ‘My crystal ball isn’t working. When it happens, I will be there.’ And I wanted it probably as much [as], if not 10 times more than, the fans, because it was such an important part of my everyday life. The fans are fans of a band, and Savatage was a lot of my life for decades. And then TSO came along, but that piece of Savatage not being there… I’m the one who’s not married and I don’t have kids, so it’s, like, that part of my life being gone was a big part of me. So it means a lot for me to be back in that family and that world. It really does.”
For fans of Savatage, the announcement of the band’s first headlining shows since 2002 is the fulfillment of a long-held dream. This reunion will bring forth a chance to experience their powerful performances once again and celebrate a band that never truly went away.
