Trivia / Savatage

• Creator Backlash: Fight for the Rock, which had been nicknamed Fight for the Nightmare by the band. With all the Executive Meddling surrounding the album the band had never been satisfied with the final product, and even while on tour for it barely played any songs from it live. However, Jon Olivia still really likes "Hyde" a lot and has performed it a with times with his band, Pain.
• Executive Meddling:
  • Fight For The Rock could almost be called Executive Meddling: The Album. The label had hired Jon to write pop-rock songs for other bands and then decided the collection should be the new Savatage release. They also insisted on a photo of the band which led to the disliked Iwo Jima cover. Finally, the album had a "sales-boosting" content warning sticker added to a squeaky-clean album.
  • Streets had the subtitle "A Rock Opera" added despite the band's protests.
• False Credit: The liner notes for the album Handful of Rain list longtime bassist Johnny Lee Middleton and founding drummer Steve Wacholz, neither of which performed on the album. Both chose to not participate in the album's recording due to the death of Criss Oliva, though Middleton would return to the band for the album's tour and all albums afterward. Drum and bass parts on the album were actually handled by former lead vocalist Jon Oliva, who is only credited on the album as a session keyboardist and co-producer.
• No Export for You: Most of the special release albums were released overseas and not in the US.
• Similarly Named Works:
  • Two different songs by the name "Lady in Disguise".
  • "Visions" is the name of a song on Sirens as well as an instrumental piece on Handful of Rain
  • Consider also "Believe" (Streets) vs. "I Believe" (Sirens)
  • Later, Savatage apparently became affected with putting "Child" in the titles of epic ballads, resulting in "One Child" (Dead Winter Dead) and "Morphine Child" (Poets and Madmen). This is brought back in Trans-Siberian Orchestra's song "Child Unseen", which has heavy Savatage elements. The vocalist even wears a Music/Gutter Ballet shirt.
• What Could Have Been: Streets was initially meant to be longer and a few of the cut songs have been released. For example, "When the Crowds are Gone" was released on Gutter Ballet, another of D.T.'s pre-comeback songs, and re-written versions of "Stay" and "Desiree" were released with Wake of Magellan, songs about who D.T. reached out to during his wanderings. It wasn't until 2013 that the intended version was released.