At the time ‘Angelfire’ was released to massive critical acclaim, lead vocalist Todd Plant left the band. Immediate worries were soon alleviated with the recruitment of former Vagabond/The Snakes vocalist Jorn Lande, and the inclusion of the songs ‘Chasing Time’ and a cover of Rainbow’s ‘I Surrender’ on the Frontiers ‘Union 3’ sampler showed that the band were still on fire. With the new album ‘Hourglass’ just recently completed, I thought it was a good time to hook up with guitar supremo Ralph Santolla for an over-view of past events and a look to the future.

Let’s go back to the Eyewitness days. How did the group originally get together?

“I wanted to put a band together, and I went to a band rehearsal for this singer I knew - they wanted me to produce their demo - and Oliver was the drummer for that band, and they were absolutely terrible. So me and Oliver got together and we recruited a bass player Keith Hancock and Shawn Phillips, and eventually we found Todd through trying out different singers.”

You had a fantastic live UK debut at the Gods ‘95 in London. How much of that day do you remember?

“Oh, I remember it quite well. We had just a fantastic time and I remember doing the interview with Vanessa from MTV and that was fun, and the gig went down really well. I remember walking in that day and seeing The Quest on stage - and we had to go on after them - and the were so tight and so intricate and sounded so good that I thought ‘Oh oh...it’s going to be very hard for us to follow these guys’ because live we play more like an old school Aerosmith or Guns ‘n’ Roses style, we just bang out the songs really aggressively, so it’s a lot loser. But everything turned out well and we had a fantastic time”

Whose idea was it to do the UFO cover on the debut album?

“It was a combination of me and Mark Ashton. Actually, we had already recorded the drums and most of the tracks for the rest of the album, and then went back and did ‘Only You Can Rock Me’ later, although in retrospect it was a mistake for us to do that song because their version is definitive and it’s hard to top something that is magic from the get-go.”

You are a bit of a Schenker fan, aren’t you?

“Yes, Michael Schenker is definitely my biggest influence as a guitar player. Actually, when I was about 12 I had already been playing the guitar for a long time but I did lots of other things too, but when I heard ‘Only You Can Rock Me’ that is what made me decide that I only wanted to play guitar. I’ve since met him a couple of times, and he’s eccentric but really cool.”

You tend to be very much influenced by the European side of music rather than the American. Why do you think that is?

“Because that same thing. When I first heard Schenker, at that time the ‘Obsession’ album was out about the same time as the first Van Halen album, and all my guitar-playing friends were into the Van Halen thing but I wasn’t into guitar enough yet to really care how great Eddie Van Halen was, the guitar was just something I did along with a lot of other things. When I heard Schenker play it was so melodic and had so much feeling that that was the thing that I needed to hear to turn me onto music, and then the rest of that album I loved every single bit of it, and then the next thing I heard that I was really into was Scorpions ‘Lovedrive’, and I was into Deep Purple too, and that is the kind of thing that I have always liked.”

The debut album was released on the same day as the Gods ‘95 show and got rave reviews world-wide. Now the follow up, ‘Messiah Complex’, was a much more intense album which wasn’t embraced as readily as the debut, and subsequently lead to the demise of the band. What’s your thoughts looking back to that album now?

“We didn’t put quite as many over-dubs on that album as we should have, so all of the ideas didn’t come across quite as we had intended. We also should have sequenced the album differently - if we had started the album with ‘The Circle’ or ‘Sea of Sadness’ instead of ‘Messiah Complex’ then I think it would have come across better, and I wish we would have had a little more time to mix it. But having said that, we are very, very proud of that album and we feel like it has a lot more depth and originality than the first Eyewitness album and we are definitely not sorry that we did it - we don’t look at it as a mistake, we just think people just didn’t get it. If you’re gonna do art of any kind....not to sound pretentious but you need to create and try and express yourself, and not just think ‘Well people liked this thing we did, so let’s just do the exact same thing again’. That is making pizzas, it’s not making a statement.”

So how did you feel about going back in a more melodic direction with Millenium?

“Well, like this. There’s been a pattern with our releases...we did the first Eyewitness album, and I thought it was a very good album. Then we did the second Eyewitness album and it was something completely different, and I thought that was also a very good album. So we had already done that, so no matter what happened, if ‘Messiah Complex’ had gone platinum we would not have done that album again. So then we did the first Millenium and that was totally different from ‘Messiah Complex’. ‘Angelfire’ is different from the first Millenium - it is more intricate and layered and has more depth. And now ‘Hourglass’ is a lot different from ‘Angelfire’ - it is a lot brighter. What it is, I think in each album there are a lot more influences in this band than Eyewitness and different influences come to the surface more on different albums. As an example, on the first Eyewitness it would have been a combination of Scorpions and TNT and at the same time we all listened to stuff that was outside [the rock scene] like Seal, Jellyfish and KD Lang, and those influences are on every album. The second Eyewitness album, ‘Messiah Complex’...we also all love Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and things like that and that influence came out more on that album. On ‘Angelfire’ more of the UFO, Thin Lizzy influence came out, and on ‘Hourglass’ you have a lot of The Sweet, Queen, TNT and Kansas influences coming out. It just depends where everybody’s head is at the time you are writing songs.”

‘Angelfire’ to me was a storming melodic metal masterpiece. How freaked out were you when Todd told you he was leaving the band just as it was being released?

“Well here’s how that happened. It was more mutual than him saying he was leaving. He wanted to go off with the Doobie Brothers and said ‘In six months, when I see how this goes, I’ll let you guys know what I want to do’ and we just said ‘Listen, we’ll see you around. We’re not waiting around six months for you.’ For about literally two days we were freaked out, and them somehow, and I don’t know why this happened - there was no logical reason for it, but Mark Ashton, Oliver, Shane and myself all got this idea in our heads that something better was going to come along and it was actually going to be a good thing for us. And looking back, there was absolutely no reason to think that at all - replacing a singer is extremely difficult, and doing so right when a successful album comes out, when you have everything together finally, is disastrous - and I’ll be damned if that’s not exactly what happened as we then met Jorn, and the guy is like other-worldly he is so good.”

Yeah, the chemistry seems amazing between you both, so how do you find writing with him?

“I have had two main singers that I’ve worked with in my life - Jesse Forte and Todd Plant. Jesse Forte is the kind of person who is always filled with music. I can play two chords tuning up my guitar and he’ll say ‘Wait’ and he’ll sing something over it that right there and then is amazing, and he never stops. For instance, the song ‘Gabriella’ of the first Millenium, those lyrics and that melody are the first thing he ever did when I showed him my idea for the music. I played about a minute’s worth of stuff for him and he said ‘Wait, stop’ and he went into the other room for about five minutes and came back in and sang the whole song exactly like it is. But Jesse is not a great, powerful vocalist. He’s a good singer but not a fantastic vocal talent. Todd Plant is a great singer, but on the other hand he is a good writer, but is not someone who is full of music all the time and spontaneous and quick and inspired. Jorn is as good a singer as there is and is constantly filled with musical ideas that are amazing, and it’s completely natural for him. He sings a great melody as easily as he responds to someone’s question. It’s the most natural thing in the world. So it’s really easy to write with him because he is an endless well of good ideas. He’s always inspired, even when he is in a bad mood.”

You recorded six songs that were originally intended for an EP - 2 originals and four cover versions. This has now transformed into two albums - ‘Hourglass’ and a covers album. Doing a covers album might seem a strange idea to some people. What was the thinking behind that?

“The original thinking was - we’ve got a new singer, ‘Angelfire’ did well, let’s put something together to get something out there to give ourselves time to work on the next album. So we did the two new songs and four covers. Well, the two originals came out so good that we didn’t want to waste them on an EP. Then we needed something to do with the covers, so we just figured we’d record six more covers and put them out together as an album, because the covers came out really good too.”

How did you manage to get Don Airey involved in those recordings?

“Jorn was in The Snakes with Don Airey, so when Jorn was in Florida the first time we were working on stuff and we knew we were coming over to England to finish up what was then the EP, we were talking about keyboard players and Jorn said ‘Well, I can get Don Airey’. And we were like ‘Sure Jorn’. Well, he called him and talked to him and he said he’d be totally into it. Working with Don Airey was a highlight for me. That guy as a musician is absolutely spectacular. When he came in to the studio and set up his keyboards and started to play around, I felt very small. He’s as good a musician as I’ve ever been in the same room with.”

The new album ‘Hourglass’ was recorded across three countries; America, England and Norway. So how did you find the production process?

“Complicated. It was not intended for it to be done like that but because of time constraints and other things that were going on when we were doing the album, it had to be done that way and it was good in some ways - it was fun, and plus there’s a different vibe in every place you go, but there was an enormous amount of pressure to complete it. I mean, we did the album in eight weeks and it absolutely had to be finished by a certain date, so there was a lot of pressure, and looking back I wish we could have had two more weeks. I’m still proud of it - I think it came out amazingly well, but the circumstances were not ideal. Although going to Norway is always a good idea.

It was Ronnie Le Tekro’s studio you were in?

“Yeah, Ronnie Le Tekro and Dag Stokke have a studio there. I had gone to Norway in January to write songs with Jorn and play on his solo album - Shane went with me, and we just completely fell in love with Oslo. It is just a fantastic city and the people are great - everything about it, except how expensive it is, is just wonderful. And the studio is where TNT have done a lot of their stuff . It outside of Oslo in the country and it’s in a converted, haunted 16th century farm-house and there’s a great vibe there except at night if you are by yourself. I wouldn’t sleep in those building at night by myself cos it’s too creepy and they’ve had a lot of weird things happen there. And the guys are really cool. Dag Stokke engineered a lot while we were there and he is a really, really easy guy to work with, and he was into what we were doing. Ronnie Le Tekro hung around a lot and we just made jokes and screwed around a lot while Dag and Jorn worked. He’s a great guy too, and the other guys that work at that studio really bend over backwards for you, so it was a great experience.”

Something that we touched on previously - the three Millenium albums have all had a very different sound, for obvious reasons. So what can we expect from the next album?

“Well I’ve thought about this already. And this is what’s in my head right now - I don’t know what the other guys are thinking and things never turn out exactly like you plan need, but just the mood I’m in writing-wise for myself right now is more like the song ‘Hourglass’, that type of thing - a little bit more metal, a little bit darker.....the kind of songs like ‘Run’ of ‘Angelfire’, ‘Hourglass’ of this album, ‘Killing Words’ off the first Eyewitness album - that’s the kind of thing I’m thinking right now, but you never know. I’m one person out of five and I could wake up tomorrow and feel totally different. Although when we finished ‘Angelfire’ I had a clear idea - this album is the album I wanted it to be originally when Todd was still in the band. After ‘Angelfire’ I wanted the next album to be ten three-minute songs that are very British, like the Sweet, that kinda thing....not long instrumental sections but really bright and that influence is definitely strong on ‘Hourglass’ - on the other hand, it’s not ten three-minute songs with no long instrumental sections. So we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”

I have heard rumours about the possibility of further Eyewitness albums. Is there any truth in that?

“It’s possible, and we have discussed it, that we will do a third Eyewitness album. And if we do it will be a combination of the first two albums - in other words it’ll be heavy like the second Eyewitness but melodic like the first one, although we think ‘Messiah Complex’ is melodic, just melodic in a dark way. But we are thinking of doing a concept album and it would be heavy, maybe kind of Queensryche/Dream Theatre-esque with lots of intricate instrumental parts. We’ve talked about it, and if we do it, it’s going to be a long concept album and we’re gonna go all out with the production and playing and make it statement -something we would never be able to recreate live. Of course, living in three different countries with Millenium it would be hard for us to recreate ‘Back In Black’ live. But we’ve talked about it, although nothing has been definitely decided yet.”

So how do you get on with Todd these days?

“Oh fine, completely fine. There’s no hard feelings or anything. He’s doing what he wants to do and we’re completely happy with the situation we ended up with, so there were no losers.”

So what other projects are you working on at the moment.

“My instrumental solo album which should hopefully be done by the end of January, a side project for Now & Then which I can’t go into detail about because the details are not decided, then I’ll be working with Ted Poley and Stan Bush in the very near future. Ted Poley’s album I should have done long ago, but with all the problems that came up with the Millenium stuff over the past year, logistically it just hasn’t been possible.”

It looks like the next twelve months are going to be very busy for Mr Santolla, who is currently rehearsing hard with his band for November’s Gods appearance. Fate has not always been kind to the band at this show, but this time Ralph is really psyched.

“We’re planning on destroying this year because we have a statement to make.”

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