If you’re a fan of this website, it’s no secret that Jeff Scott Soto is one of my favorite vocalists ever. Nearly 40 years into his career he is putting out some of the best music of his career. His new record, Complicated, was once again created with the amazingly talented Alessandro DelVecchio and is out everywhere on May 6. Once again, Jeff took some time to talk about it and so much more!
Please press the PLAY icon for the MisplacedStraws Conversation with Jeff Scott Soto –
On how his partnership with Alessandro DelVecchio continues to be successful – I think the main reason, and it’s funny, I’ll tap into a little of the heat that Alessandro seems to be getting, he gets a lot of heat from fans basically saying he’s over doing it, he’s working with many artists, all the artists are starting to sound the same or starting to sound like things that he would be doing and working on for his own. I think that’s absolutely untrue, and especially when he works with me, he puts a concerted effort into making sure that he’s tapping into the music in the body of work that I’ve already done, the stuff that he really enjoys about my career. So he’s not writing with the idea of, “Well, this song could work for Journey, Survivor, Chicago, and Jeff Scott Soto”. Everything he writes is always for me, is always based on what would work for me, and if you could take it to somebody else, yeah, it might be different, it might work, but it’s not gonna have the same personality that it has when he writes it specifically for me. That’s the difference in working with other people that I work with in the past. I worked with a lot of people, and in terms of their involvement, again, sounds like it could work for a multitude of people, and I find the stuff I do with Alessandro personally sounds like it can only work for me. 1:39
On writing for other artists like Spektra – That’s the same thing, writing the stuff for August Zadra or writing the stuff for Spektra. When we were writing together, I do the same thing, I know BJ, I’ve been trying to get BJ, the singer from Spektra, heard and known around the world for the longest time. He just hasn’t had the right vehicles for labels to jump on it. Every time I take one of his projects to frontiers, they go, “Great boys, but it’s not what we want, it’s what we’re looking for”. Then I had to find what they were looking for in terms of what they would say yes to in BJ’s voice. So once again, when I was writing the first two songs I wrote for spectra with Alessandro, they were not specified for me, they were specified for BJ’s voice, his tone in his range. There’s a lot of stuff on there I wouldn’t do because it’s a lot higher than I would want to sing these days, but I’m not gonna shy away from it in terms of making sure it fits his thing, because if I make it more catered to what I would do, that is gonna sound more like he’s trying to cover a JSS original song and we didn’t want that either. We have the same kind of process when I’m writing lyrics and melodies. I think the artists and Alessandro thinks the same way when he’s writing music and the production that’s going behind everything he’s sending forth. 3:13
On the creative process behind the song “Love is the Revolution” – (Alessandro’s) pretty much a 90%, always everything’s already there kind of person when he writes. If he hears a sitar that might go in later or something to that effect, it’s gonna go on the demo before I even start working on it. That’s one of the things that really got me excited about that song, when I heard the demo version of it, it had that sitar on it, and immediately it took me to so many Beatle songs and Aerosmith songs that have that vibe to them. I have always wanted to have that kind of thing. Without him even knowing that I’ve always wanted something like that, he gave it to me and I was so excited, I said, “This song is not only gonna be special, but this has to be a single”. I love that song so much because of the intro, and the intro pretty much set the precedence, set the kind of course of where I was going with the song. Again, we’re talking about the Beatles, they use sitar on a lot of stuff when they started getting more into the experimental years of their recordings, and what’s the one thing they always talked about in the later years? Love, peace, and harmony. So I took the same idea to “Love is the Revolution”, because of the sitar and what the sitar represents in peace in harmony, I kinda went with that theme in terms of everything that’s going on in the world currently, from Ukraine to the division politically, religious, social injustice, all those different things. I wanted the “All You Need is Love” message for this particular song. That, for me, is the next step further with love is, is the revolution that will get us through everything in the end. 5:08
On the use of a sitar – Well, it’s the idea behind it, again, (the Beatles) took an instrument that you wouldn’t commonly you use in pop music or rock music, and they utilize it with the message of peace and love and harmony behind it. If they use it in a dark way for a song, like “Helter Skelter” or something that was a little deeper and darker in the message, that might have given that instrument in the future, that same kind of idea. If you use that instrument, don’t try to use it in something with peace, love, and harmony, you’d probably be better suited at something that’s talking a little darker. So because of that, that’s where the influence in itself came from, you hear that and you automatically think, “Oh, I feel like I’m in a zen kind of mood”, it’s putting it in that kind of peaceful loving feeling, and so I wanted to make sure the message behind the song matched what do you hear when you hear that little piece of music starting up the song. 7:12
On how a song is recorded with his band located all around the world – Because I’m not the producer per se on the last few records, I’m not responsible for how the hows, wheres, and whens as much as Alessandro. I am responsible for making sure he is using my long-time drummer Edu (Cominato) because Edu basically has to play on everything of mine otherwise it’s not gonna be released. That’s just the way it is. You’re not gonna sell me another drummer for my solo releases or the other things I do. I feel that Edu is the strongest representation as a drummer for it. But as far as the guitar is concerned, I totally entrusted Alessandro when he found Fabrizio (Sgattoni) for the Wide Awake album and I was so impressed with his guitar work, I had to bring them into this new album. He’s kind of set a new course, a standard for my solo records. I was so happy that he wanted to do yet another one with us, and whatever I had to do to make sure he was gonna be part of it, I told Alessandro, “Make sure that he’s gonna do it”. Ale is such a diverse artist in terms of his writing, but also his playing and his production, he’s one of those jack of all trades, so I can entrust somebody like Alessandro in every sense of the word. It’s like trusting somebody with your newborn. You know when you leave your newborn with grandma or somebody in the family that knows how to nurture a baby, that’s exactly what you’re gonna get in the end, and that’s what I do with Alessandro and my music. 8:24
On having cultivated a trust with Alessandro – Exactly, and this was one of the reasons why I have to trust him the way I could do because I don’t personally write anymore in terms of music. I don’t sit here with a guitar and a keyboard and come up and craft out a song, my skills are kind of limited as a musician, as a guitar player, or keyboard player. I would rather write a song with somebody who excels on their instrument to the point that they’re gonna come up with ideas I could never come up with because I can’t play them. I can hum ideas, but if I can’t plan them, I’m not gonna think about them. When it comes to vocals, melodies, and lyrics, that’s my forte. That’s where I step up. So you give me a piece of music, a kind of blank canvas or a sketched canvas, I’m gonna fill in the colors. That to me is the best way of creating. That’s why I entrust Alessandro. He’ll send me two or three songs at a time, and 98% of the time of you’re hearing exactly what I heard on the demo versions. You’re not getting “Well, this is kind of an idea, and then later we’re gonna start filling in the blanks”, and I love that he’s a visualist the same way I am when I’m creating, I wanna make sure you hear and see the whole picture without having to try to imagine it later. 10:16
On collaborating with different people in each of his projects – This is one of the reasons a lot of people think Mike Portnoy when he Dream Theater, he jumped into four or five different projects at a time simultaneously because he was trying to make a living or trying to find a new niche. Mike was basically fulfilling something he couldn’t do with just one band, and that’s kind of my mentality with everything. I know I can’t do with Sons of Apollo what I would do with a JSS kind of sound, or I can’t do with Talisman what I could do with Soto. There are so many different things that I want to happen musically that won’t work with one particular band. I think there’s only one band that was to pull that off and trying every avenue and trying and going to every lane, and that was Queen. Me being a student of Queen, that DNA is so injected into my soul, that I always knew I wanted to be more than just the genre-laden artist. I didn’t wanna be just a metal guy, rock guy, pop guy, blues guy, or jazz guy, I wanted to be all of the above. It’s kind of the reason I called this album Complicated. The best way to describe me as an artist, it’s just complicated. It’s impossible to describe me as an artist because I wanted to do all of the above. I don’t wanna just do A, B, C, or D, and with that being said, I’m able to tap into so many things that fulfill me and challenge me as an artist, my creation and even my bucket list items that I wouldn’t be able to do if I were just in one band and going down one lane. 11:56
On the message behind the song “Thank You” – When I was writing it, I did come up with the idea of wanting to thank an individual or individuals for exactly what the message of the song is, allowing me to be me. Allowing me to be the best that I can be. Allowing me to express myself in the way that I have as a person. It wasn’t even as an artist, it was more as a person. As I was going along with it, and I always write a double entendre, this is kind of my way of keeping things fresh and exciting, even for myself as an artist, I like to write things where you might think it’s about one thing and actually it’s about others, I think we’ve discussed this before. This particular song started as a kind of a “thanks”, it could be towards your parents, could be towards a loved one, can even be towards a friend that kind of supported you and followed you and kind of pushed you along the way and make sure that you didn’t give up your dreams. Then I realized, “You know what? I’m actually writing this about my fans”. I’m actually thanking my fans and the overall message started kind of shifting, and I focused more on making sure the song was a personal thank you to every single person that’s been there from day one and is still there today, pushing and making sure that I don’t walk away from this “living my dream”, so to speak. But then if you actually stop and read the lyrics, it can revert, back to exactly what I was starting the song as. It can have multiple meanings and reasons why I am thanking the person or persons and that song, and I wanted to make sure that the message came across in all aspects and all sides, but the bottom line is that song is my “thank you” to the fans. If everything ended tomorrow, that’s kind of my swan song. That’s my, “Thanks for everything that you allowed me to do”, I can walk away now and feel fulfilled. 13:57
On using “Thank You” to look back on his career with Frontiers – To be honest with you as well, I just realize that as well, but there’s an extended entendre behind the song as well, this is my 20-year anniversary working with Frontiers Records. In a lot of ways, that’s even a “thank you” to them for believing in me and for staying the course with me, again, I’m reflecting on the lyrics now and I very much can be a gratification towards them for not giving me up on me. There are so many times I’ll go to them and say, “Hey, I wanna do a funk album or a solo album”, and they’ll go “Oh boy, this is not what we invested in, this is not gonna sell, your fans don’t want this”, but they allowed me to be me because they wanted me to be happy. If I wanna try something, let me try it, you never know what, but there might be a fluke, it actually happens in a big way. But in most senses, in most general terms, they kinda know what my audience wants, and they made sure that I stayed on course with that. Especially nowadays, I just try to stay the course of what people expect of me, and of course, I wanna give it a little extra. I don’t wanna repeat myself or just keep making the same record, but on the other hand, I do have a responsibility to the label and the responsibility to the people that buy the music. So I kinda keep all those ideas when I’m working on these records and making sure that they all kind of fit in the same bookcase. I could become the art that’s kind of artist like Queen, that every album is so different in every other song is different for one another, but at this point in my life where I have nothing to prove, I really just kinda wanna ride it out, and just continuing on the laurels that already lay behind me. 16:19
On recently reflecting on his career with Revisions and The Duets Collection, Vol 1 – Well. The thing about, especially doing an album like Duets, it just really took me back, it took me back to the, especially the older songs, took me back to those times. Of course, everything’s changed, my voice has changed the way I sing, my approach, and that’s normal, that’s life, you progressed in life, you move on, you find new avenues, new ways of dealing with things, you learn from mistakes you learned from regrets. But revisiting some of these songs, like I said, especially the older ones, like “Don’t Let End” or “Calling All Girls”, took me back to a time when I was writing for that time, but yet it still feels as strong, it still kind of holds up today, and this is one of the reasons why I didn’t stray too far away from redoing what I originally did. I let the singers kinda give their interpretations of how they would do them, but I tried to kind of stick to the script because nobody wants to hear you completely reinventing something that they’re so close to, and I’m just as close to a lot of this material. So I made sure that I was respecting not only the material and the ways I did those things, but I was respecting the fans and their feelings about those original versions of the songs. Because the last thing I wanna do is try to force anything on somebody, “Well, here’s the way I meant it to sound”, and like, “Oh, I don’t like this, I like what you did because it was a point in time in my life when I listen to this, that’s why it worked, and that’s why it still works for me today”. You try to change that interpretation and you’re basically forcing somebody to forget about what you did originally, to just remember this version, and they’re not gonna do that. I’ll give you another point in case. I’m sorry to harp on this, but there was a few years ago, we were talking about re-releasing the first twoTalisman albums with our drummer Jamie Borger, the drummer that’s still with us when we still play out today, he was the mainstay drummer during the course of the band. But those early albums were done on drum machines, they were all program drums, and when you listen to them, yes, it sounds dated. You can hear that they’re not real drums, it’s not a real drummer playing them. So we thought, “Why don’t we give the songs their due and actually re-record all the drums, remix them, leave all the other parts of the same. Not redo anything else except release them with real drums”. Everybody was on board. We thought “What a great idea”. I mentioned that in one interview, and first the journalist and the reviewer said, “That’s the worst idea you can actually do, those songs hold such a place in my heart, the way they sound, the way they are, I don’t give a crap if it’s not real drums, if it’s not mixed the right way, the way it is so embedded in my memory from 30 years ago, now you’re going to alter the course of history by re-doing something because you think it’s gonna make it better. It’s gonna make it worse because as a fan, I’m so connected to it the way it is”. I never thought of it that way, it wasn’t till that the interview came out and we got slammed, not slammed in a negative way, we got slammed with the same kind of point-counterpoint, people were coming back and saying, “Yes, great idea, the original line-up are all together on the original versions of the songs”, the counterpoint, “bad idea, because you’re changing the course of history”. It’s a long-winded reply to what you’re asking, but this is another reason why I had to do it the way I did it on the Duets thing, and if I do more in the future, I would keep that same idea. 16:19
On getting back on the road after Covid – Well, to be honest with you, we’re still dealing with the proper parameters, the mandates, the protocols. All the things that we have to do to stay safe. To keep each other safe, we have a responsibility for all of us, every one of us, including the ones that come see us, and the people that work for us and work with us. So we’re still navigating how to pull it off. It was challenging pulling off the TSO tour, and it just as challenging as it was for us to get used to wearing masks and locking down and doing all the things that we got so accustomed to during the whole Covid outbreak of the pandemic, it’s the same going back to real life. We are navigating how to get back to it because it’s not how we remember it, it’s not gonna be how I remember it, we have to find new ways and courses to make sure that every single thing we do, it’s not gonna end in disaster and pulling the plug and having to go home. 22:47
On the legacy of Trans-Siberian Orchestra – Obviously, the legacy of that band truly lies on the lap of Paul O’Neil, God rest his soul, not having him any longer, really is an injustice to everything that he lived for and worked before that he’s not still here to be able to have enjoyed not necessarily the fruits and the benefits, the rewards, but just looking at what this actually means to people in the end. One of the reasons why we could not go dark during the pandemic in 2020, there’s no way we could have done a tour, we couldn’t even have done one show. We had to do the live stream because the one thing that Paul and his stories and his words and Trans-Siberian Orchestra convey is hope. More than ever, especially at the end of 2020, we needed hope. We needed to know there was something to look forward to in the future, and by us rallying and the extremities that we have to go through from Covid officers and testing every day, and just the airtight bubble that we were in, we had to make sure we delivered that message of hope that year, as well as every other year that we’ve been doing this. Because more than ever, the TSO message was very important in the year 2020. The fact that we were able to pull it off in ’21, the same thing. We all have to rally together and make sure we were all as responsible as the last person because one person screws up, one person gets selfish or greedy or says, “I’m not gonna sit in my room on a day off, I’m gonna go out and have a beer I’m gonna go out to a restaurant”, and that basically spoils the whole soup, everybody has to go home and it’s not fair. So we all went in with the mentality. Whether you believe in Covid, what you believe in the vaccine, any of that, all of that was out the window. We were one united family to make sure we could pull this tour off without screwing up the whole idea of why we’re doing the tour. That’s our tribute, that’s our paying respect to Paul O’Neil. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and those kind of accolades are wonderful, it would be lovely to be acknowledged that way. We always joke that the TSO is the biggest underground band on the planet, because what other band can out-sell every other major tour, a lot of major tours in the two months that we go out annually, compared to other bands that are going out for seven, eight, nine, even 10 months in the year, and we’re grossing as much as they are because we have an underground following of people that that message is that important to. It continues to grow and it continues to spread, a that’s what I love about TSO, the message that comes behind that, on top of the music and the visuals and all the other things that are the live portions of what you’re getting out of it. When you pull all of that aside, that message of hope will always be there and that it’s just a great thing to have and be a part of. 24.33
