(12-30-2020, 08:43 AM)Johny35 Wrote: Has anybody noticed that the songs credits at the end of the stream differ from the well-known ones? I don't remember them by heart but I know that Believe was definitely written by both the Oliva brothers and Paul O'Neill.
A lot of us noticed that. That has to be way more than an oversight. I am not an expert on how that stuff works, but I do know Paul - through various dealings - owned the Savatage brand/band as well as much of the royalties. Perhaps this is the result of one of those dealings. Its a crime, regardless. Heck, even through all of the lawsuits and bad feelings between Henly/Frey and Don Felder, Felder still gets his proper songwriting credit on "Hotel California".
It is also not the first time that songwriting credits have changed - check out Silk and Steel from Savatage. It was originally a Slowburn song written by Paul Silverstein. When it was released by Savatage, the songwriting credit changed to Silver/Criss Oliva. Then later, it was changed again to "Oliva/O'Neill/Oliva".
(12-30-2020, 08:43 AM)Johny35 Wrote: It made me search for the original CEAOS booklet. One of the surprising things I learnt there is that Chris didn't record anything on that album. Does anybody have any onfo about that? Why he would be the only one ommitted from the whole band? I thought he and Al were responsible for all the guitars on all the records with some of the touring members contributing parts on the most recent ones.
Credits in the TSO albums are always suspect, particularly on the later releases. They very often just list whoever is in the current touring band at that time whether they played on it or not. CEAOS is interesting because Caffery is notably not listed, but then in later editions he was added to show "rhythm guitar" on Christmas Eve Sarajevo, which was the earlier Savatage recording.
As for who plays guitar, Al Pitrelli pretty much plays all the guitars on all the TSO records. I know people like to think that Caffery as well as others participate in the studio when it comes to these recordings....and they do indeed have them in to record stuff.....but much of it is never used and Pitrelli plays pretty much ALL of it! Including much of the bass guitar as well. There have been some songs here and there where solos were done by others - Skolnick ("Believe") and Avakian ("Christmas Canon Rock") - but 95% of the guitar work you hear on TSO records is Al.