“I heard some criticism that I didn’t play the parts enough like Criss, but I didn’t want to just go in there and try to be a clone of him”: When Alex Skolnick quit Testament – and was recruited to replace the late Criss Oliva in Tampa metallers Savatage

In the spring of 1990, Bay Area thrashers Testament – considered by many metal fans to be the leading contender if the “Big 4” were to ever expand by one – spent seven weeks touring across America in support of their recently released third studio album, Practice What You Preach.

The trek also featured another band who were on the rise at the time – the Tampa, Florida-based Savatage, whose lead guitarist, Criss Oliva, turned 27 on the tour’s 12th stop.

Oliva’s counterpart in Testament was former Joe Satriani student Alex Skolnick, who joined the group – then called Legacy – in 1984 at the tender age of 16. Despite his youth, Skolnick had achieved international recognition in the metal guitar community for his blistering solos on his band’s first three albums, records for which he co-wrote the majority of the music and even a handful of lyrics.

In 1992, however, Skolnick decided to leave Testament. “I felt like I wanted new experiences, musically and personally, and I just felt limited at the time,” he says, noting that he was only 23 when he gave notice. (He would rejoin in 2005.) “I wasn’t able to be in the band without feeling those limitations.”

Approximately one year later, Skolnick – who remained active in the Bay Area music scene after separating from Testament – was in the crowd at a local concert, where he struck up a conversation with an industry acquaintance. Oliva, he was told, had been killed by a drunk driver.

“It was much like when I heard about the passing of [Metallica bassist] Cliff Burton – just word-of-mouth, and musicians were talking about it,” Skolnick says. “I was kind of in shock – like, ‘Wow, oh my God.’ It was just unthinkable.”

Prior to touring together, Skolnick had admired Savatage from afar, even trading tapes of the band’s early recordings as a high schooler before joining Testament. He cites the title track of the group’s 1983 debut, Sirens, as particularly notable in his development as a player.

“I had started getting into the jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery, who used octaves,” he says. “I’d heard about him from Joe Satriani, and I realized, ‘This is somebody you should listen to.’

“Then I heard a few examples of octaves in metal, and I think the first one was Breaking the Chains by Dokken. It was very well-played but very commercial. Then when I heard Savatage, I realized, ‘Oh, you can actually do that and make it dark and heavy.’ It was definitely Sirens that led to that inspiration.”

As he watched Savatage perform in 1990, Skolnick learned that Oliva had even more to offer. “The playing on Sirens was great,” he says, “but when I saw them live when we were touring together, Criss was just burning all over the fretboard and had broken through any barriers that might have been there on Sirens. He’d grown by leaps and bounds as a player, as touring and dedication will do.”

Skolnick says that Testament and Savatage got along famously during the Practice What You Preach tour, and the band’s two lead guitarists were no exception (“I remember us tossing the guitar around one time,” Skolnick says). In a time before email, cell phones and social media, though, it was much easier to lose touch, and Skolnick doesn’t recall crossing paths with Oliva again after the tour concluded.

He was therefore surprised to receive a phone call in early 1994 from Oliva’s brother Jon, Savatage’s original vocalist. (While he’d officially left the band two years prior, Jon remained a key figure in the Savatage ecosystem.)

Soon after Criss’s passing, Jon and his primary songwriting partner, Paul O’Neill, composed a tribute song for the late guitarist, which they initially planned to release as Savatage’s final recording. O’Neill subsequently encouraged Jon to continue writing as a means of navigating the grieving process, and soon enough, the pair had a full album’s worth of material on their hands. What they didn’t have, however, was a guitarist.

Skolnick initially said he was flattered to be asked to contribute, but that he was not ready to commit to another band after what he described as a “brutal separation” from Testament.

“We had an explosion like you see on all those Behind the Music documentaries,” he says. “It’s almost like your marriage splits up, and suddenly the girl from high school that you’ve always liked and probably would have connected with instantly under other circumstances comes around, but you’re just not ready for another relationship.

“It wasn’t that I didn’t want to jump into that band; it’s that I didn’t want to jump into any band. If Dave Mustaine called me the same week, it would have been the same thing.”

Jon proceeded to say that his brother admired Skolnick’s playing and that no long-term commitment was required, as Savatage’s future was anything but certain.

“If they were just asking around, ‘Hey, we need a fill-in player’ or ‘We need a guy fast,’ then my thought was, ‘I’m terribly, terribly sorry for what happened, but there’s plenty of guitar players around,’” Skolnick says. “But when Jon reached out, I realized it really did mean something to them and to him.”

Skolnick subsequently agreed to play lead guitar on the Savatage record that would ultimately be released in late 1994 under the title Handful of Rain. It was tracked at the legendary Morrisound Recording studio in Tampa, where many of death metal’s landmark albums were put to tape.

If you know Jon and Paul, it’s impossible not to have moments of levity and jest. That’s just their nature – a lot of funny stories and jokes, even when talking about Criss

“I didn’t even realize until years later that, ‘Oh, yeah – this is the studio where all that is happening,’” Skolnick says. “I did meet a bunch of key players at that time, though. I remember the band Cynic came in just to pick up a rough mix or something. The current bassist of Testament, Steve Di Giorgio, was commuting to Florida at the time, and he was a big part of the Florida death metal scene; essential albums by Death, for example.”

Surprisingly, Skolnick says the vibe at Morrisound wasn’t at all morose as Handful of Rain was being recorded. And while many would likely wilt under the pressure of stepping into someone else’s shoes as his surviving brother watched on, Skolnick performed his role admirably, even though he was just 25 at the time.

“I felt mostly good about it, just because Jon and Paul made me feel good about it,” he says. “If you know Jon and Paul, it’s impossible not to have moments of levity and jest. That’s just their nature – a lot of funny stories and jokes, even when talking about Criss.”

Musically, Handful of Rain, which saw Savatage continue to explore theatrical, symphonic hard rock, marked a departure from the blazing thrash on which Skolnick had built his reputation.

“It felt like a wide-open road,” he says. “There were a lot of the types of parts that I’d been lobbying for with some of my Testament solos – I guess what we’d call modal chord progressions, and not just riffs that sounded great and heavy for vocals, but harmonically were really tough for guitar, unless you just kind of wail over it.

“I’m a big fan of melody, and I heard a lot of opportunities to do melody with these modal chord progressions and chords that were held instead of chugging the whole time. It was refreshing, because I was used to playing songs that were so fast in tempo, and it was a nice change to work with tempos that I associated more with rock ’n’ roll like Deep Purple and Ozzy and Dio. It really gave me a chance to play some more expressive stuff.”

Many songs on Handful of Rain also prominently featured keyboards, which was “exciting” to Skolnick. “Keep in mind, all I had done professionally at that point was the two-guitar/bass/drums/vocal format. I hadn’t played with keyboards at all,” he says. “With Savatage, there was very cool keyboard and piano stuff. A lot of us [in metal], we’re sort of trained not to like keyboards.

“I totally appreciate [Van Halen’s] Jump as a song now, but when it came out, I was ready to riot. But a few years later, I’d grown so much as a musician, and I was listening to a lot of fusion and jazz pianists and keyboardists. Hearing the stuff that those guys were working on, with piano, I was really digging it.”

I had started getting into the jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery, who used octaves. I’d heard about him from Joe Satriani, and I realized, ‘This is somebody you should listen to’

At the time Handful of Rain was recorded, Skolnick was endorsed by Ibanez, and he recalls using a Ghostrider during the album’s sessions. “It was a really cool guitar,” he says. “The shape was a little closer to a Telecaster, and it sounded good. There was also a purple Ibanez, but I don’t remember if it was a Satriani model or if it was just similar, sort of a stock model that the Satriani one was based on.”

Another guitar would feature prominently on the album as well – Oliva’s “Gargoyle,” an ESP Mirage that featured a custom paint job by Gary Smith, a Tampa artist who was responsible for Savatage’s best-known album covers.

“That guitar just had the magic,” Skolnick says. “It had a presence that was just so identified with Savatage, and it was hard not to feel Criss’s presence and the weight of the whole thing once that guitar was taken out of the case and set on a stand.”

The biggest thing in radio at that point is still Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Jane’s Addiction. I liked a lot of that music, but the industry was very strange; suddenly, it became much more difficult if you weren’t that type of music

In 1994, hard rock and heavy metal were in something of an existential crisis. Virtuosity was out; grunge was in. Skolnick remembers the time well.

“The biggest thing in radio at that point is still Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Jane’s Addiction,” he says. “I liked a lot of that music, but the industry was very strange; suddenly, it became much more difficult if you weren’t [playing] that type of music.

“There was just a sense that groups like Savatage, and even Testament to a certain extent, all got kind of lumped in with what was being rebelled against, which really had nothing to do with what any of our bands were doing.”

Much like Handful of Rain made little effort to mimic the popular guitar rock of the era, Skolnick opted for originality when composing his solos for the album, especially on songs like the progressive rock-influenced Chance and the bluesy Stare into the Sun.

He says he wasn’t concerned about alienating Testament fans who came along for the ride.

“I learned this lesson more and more later, but the less I cared about getting anyone’s approval, the better it was,” he says. “I knew some people weren’t going to get it, but it was not my responsibility for them to like it; it was my responsibility to do my best, to do a good job and to make it as good as possible for Savatage.”

That same mentality prevailed when Skolnick agreed to embark on a short tour in support of Handful of Rain in late 1994, which saw Savatage traverse America for four weeks before performing four shows in Japan. (The final show of the tour was recorded for a live album, Japan Live ’94, which was recently released on vinyl for the first time in conjunction with its pearl anniversary.)

The tour saw Skolnick perform material from not only Handful of Rain, but also Savatage classics such as Hall of the Mountain King, Edge of Thorns and Sirens.

“I definitely heard some criticism that I didn’t play the parts enough like Criss, but I didn’t want to just go in there and try to be a clone of him,” he says. “I understand that’s what some fans expect, and I totally understand that with the riffs and the melodies – the main parts of the songs – but part of who I am is that I’m an improviser.

“Even with Testament, I sneak in improvisations. It’s not always obvious because I play the landmark parts of the solos, but I like to sneak things in. Obviously, I meant no disrespect by changing anything around, but I did have my own identity as a player.”

Skolnick also drew inspiration from his experience touring alongside Oliva four years prior.

“I saw the band a bunch of times, and I knew some of the early Savatage work, and Criss didn’t play it exactly like it was [on the record],” he says.

“He was stretching out quite a bit. I remember Sirens having all these fills that weren’t there before, and the solo was different than he had done originally. Maybe it had some of the [same] hooks, but I just thought I was approaching it like he would approach it.”

Even though it was great to play the solos with Savatage, and the band was terrific, I still felt like I wanted to at least contribute to the songwriting

On the U.S. dates of the tour, Skolnick performed double-duty, as he also played with openers Exhibit-A, a band he launched soon after leaving Testament. 30 years later, Skolnick describes the group – which might be best described as alternative metal – as “directionless.”

“I was really in a period of experimentation,” he says. “I was so young, and I had no experience leading a band. I wanted to do my own thing, but I didn’t feel quite ready to do my thing. I learned not to plan too much, but to go with something when there’s momentum and when a project or a circumstance just happens naturally. You can nurture that and go with it, but you can’t try to force things to happen.”

By the time the tour reached Japan, Skolnick says he’d developed a strong bond with Jon, who toured with Savatage as a rhythm guitarist and keyboardist, and who introduced Skolnick to several Deep Purple records with which he was unfamiliar.

While it seemed unlikely a few months prior that Savatage would be able to continue after Criss’s passing, the positive overseas reception to Handful of Rain led to talk about the future, and Skolnick found himself reconsidering his “no commitments” mindset.

“I felt like we were planting seeds to work on the next record together, and I was definitely open to see where things went,” he says. “I knew whatever I was involved with next, I wanted more creative input than I had with Testament. Even though it was great to play the solos with Savatage, and the band was terrific, I still felt like I wanted to at least contribute to the songwriting.

“I contributed to some of the best-known Testament songs, and I was a major writer on many of them. Obviously, I wouldn’t try to do the same type of parts [with Savatage] – I recognized it was different – but I could imagine being part of the writing team and writing a new Savatage record, giving it more edge, making it work for the ’90s [with] some of that ’70s Deep Purple influence.”

A few weeks after returning from Japan, though, Skolnick received a call from O’Neill, Savatage’s longtime producer and primary lyricist.

“Paul told me that he and Jon got inspired and wrote the whole [next] record,” Skolnick says. “There was poetry involved, and Paul’s reading it to me over the phone, and I can’t get a word in edgewise. [Laughs] I just knew right then, ‘OK, this isn’t what I’m going to do right now.’

“I thought I made it clear that I needed to at least have the creative voice I had in Testament, and hopefully a little more – but as Paul was reading me the poetry, I knew, ‘If I do this, it’s not going to be the creative situation I want.’”

Insert quote here

The album O’Neill described to Skolnick, the 1995 rock opera Dead Winter Dead, would prove to be the most important release of Savatage’s career. It included a holiday-themed instrumental, Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24), which would ultimately become a gigantic hit the following year when it was re-released by a sister group founded by O’Neill and Jon Oliva called Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

Still, Dead Winter Dead, which featured the guitar team of Al Pitrelli and Chris Caffery, who would both go on to play key roles with TSO, might never have gotten off the ground without the foundation laid by Skolnick, whose contributions to Savatage in the studio and on tour helped to stabilize a band that was reeling.

Ironically, even though he passed up the opportunity to play on the studio recording of Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24), Skolnick would end up performing the song several hundred times between 2000 and 2009, when he served as lead guitarist for TSO’s “east” troupe during their annual winter tour.

“It ended up becoming a major part of my life,” Skolnick says. “I’d been defined by Testament, and if I’d stayed with Savatage, I would have been defined by Savatage; but with TSO, it was something I could step into and step out of, and I did for a long time.”

In a way, TSO even aided Skolnick’s eventual return to Testament. “Playing for TSO, you become an arena musician, and you learn how to play for the back rafters,” he says.

“Paul was really a motivational coach when it comes to performing, and I’d never had that before. I might have had a little bit of resistance to it at first – ‘What do I need to do this crazy performance stuff for?’ – but then I did it, and I think it helped the music be heard.

“My guitar parts seemed to be noticed more, because I was performing better. When you’re doing TSO, you’re sharing the stage with video screens, attractive female singers that are doing this dance, fire that’s coming out of nowhere.

“So much stuff is happening, you can’t phone it in; you have to give it your all. After a number of years of that, when I came back to Testament, I think they were shocked because my performance skills and confidence were so much higher.”

While Savatage remains on indefinite hiatus today, some of the songs Skolnick recorded with the band live on with TSO, which continues to incorporate Savatage material into its repertoire. The title track from Handful of Rain was performed during the group’s tours in 2012, 2014 and 2019, and Chance has been played live dozens of times as well.

Although Skolnick never had the opportunity to perform either song with TSO, he says he was “psyched” when the group started playing them. “It was great to see those songs done live, and they did them really well,” he says. “Al’s a fantastic player, and I liked how he approached them. I got to hear somebody approach my stuff!”