Paul O'Neill

All right, Rick.

Badlands debut album produced by the band and which future TSO producer? Your choices are Bob Rock, Paul O'Neill, Keith Olsen, or Michael Wagner.

It was Wagner.

I don't think it was Olsen.

Uh...

Who was the first two again? First two were Bob Rock and Paul O'Neill.

Bob Rock was huge at the time.

He was coming up.

that you've worked into the TSO second part of the show.

I believe last year was the first time, but in tribute to Paul O'Neill, who we've spent a lot of time talking about, the empresario that thought of all this, left us too soon years ago.

And there's a song from Sabotage's back catalog called When the Crowds Have Gone.

And you guys...

Yes, it will have Christmas moments.

But it's also a theatrical or Broadway-esque presentation of Paul O'Neill's wonderful timeless story, The Ghost of Christmas Eve.

That's what I was about to ask you about.

So the title, The Ghost of Christmas Eve, how do you interpret that? What does that look like in the show?

You know, we filmed it back in 1998, and we basically took the themes, the presentation that we had back then, and just put it on an arena stage.

So instead of it coming through your TV, we're bringing this film, if you will, live to the stage.

And all the production is just kind of enhancement to what Paul O'Neill's story really is all about.

And we want to take the listener and the viewer on this journey, both musically and visually.

It's almost like people ask me that, and I'm like, well, you know, do you ever get tired of your children saying that I love you, Daddy, or, you know, kiss goodnight? No, you never do, and it changes every day or every year, so on and so forth.

If Paul O'Neill was TSO's father, he, like, gave birth to this thing 30 years ago, then I'm like the weird uncle in the corner.

You follow me? I love this thing.

I've watched it grow from infancy to being 30 years old, especially people in your community who have continually fallen in love with it.

You were one of the original founders with Paul 30 years ago.

So when you look back at what Paul O'Neill envisioned back in 1996, can you believe it, compared with what TSO has become today, what do you think he would be most surprised or proud of to see today?

know i don't know that he'd be surprised about anything because he saw this thing on the horizon 30 something years ago you know when we first started recording together it was like i don't know winter 95 and um he said i just want to make great art i don't care about commerce i don't care about commercial success i just want to make a musical statement and i think he made that statement now If you go through it over 30 something years or certainly 30 years since the album's first release, you know, you put a record out.

OK.

I owe it to you as a friend.

I owe it to the community of Birmingham.

And I owe it to Paul O'Neill to make sure that every year we rebuild it, we take it apart.

We started having our meetings the second week of January.