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TSO'S BEETHOVEN IS A ROCK STAR
TSO’S ‘BEETHOVEN’ IS A ROCK STAR
By John Benson
In many ways, Trans- Siberian Orchestra (TSO) creator Paul O’Neill has been waiting his entire life to write “Beethoven’s Last Night.”
The rock opera, which was released in 2000 and not toured for a decade, details the fictional tale of how on the last night of his life, Ludwig van Beethoven unwittingly tricked Mephistopheles and was allowed to keep his soul.
“It was easy to come up with because, as a kid, you always worship Mozart or Beethoven,” said O’Neill, calling from New York City. “Mozart was the world’s first rock star, lived like a rock star, died penniless at 33 like a rock star. Beethoven was the world’s first heavy-metal rock star. Look at his riffs, the Fifth Symphony in particular. If Led Zeppelin or Aerosmith had written that riff, everybody would have said that was modern.”
O’Neill added there was something about Beethoven’s story that endeared him to the classical composer who was born into a poor family in Germany with an alcoholic and abusive father. It would be sheer willpower that led Beethoven to Vienna. At the age of 21, he was recognized as the greatest piano player living. A few years later, he would begin to go completely deaf and suffer from massive lead poisoning, which caused not only his death but manic depression and mood swings.
The iconic figure’s story is beautifully told in 1995 feature film “Immortal Beloved.” O’Neill believes the TSO production, which comes to Youngstown’s Covelli Centre next Thursday, is not only the perfect compliment for family viewing but message-wise in the current tough economic climate.
“Beethoven is unbelievably appropriate,” O’Neill said. “A lot of people are going through rough times, so the key is we keep ticket prices low and give the best entertainment they can enjoy on multiple levels. They can just watch as an adventure story, but the underlying theme of what human beings can mess up is unbelievable; but what human beings can overcome is even more unbelievable. I think it’s no matter what your personal problems are in life, your kids or job or stock portfolio or your house falling in value, it’s hard to imagine a situation worse than being a deaf piano player with [lead] poisoning in the 1700s and 1800s. He’s a very tormented soul.”
The antithesis of tormented is how one would describe the TSO juggernaut, which over the past 10 years has sold more than 8 million concert tickets and 8 million albums. For the most part, TSO is known for its holiday trilogy — 1996’s “Christmas Eve and Other Stories,” 1998’s “The Christmas Attic” and 2004’s “The Lost Christmas Eve” — which when presented live combine the bombast of Pink Floyd with the reverence of Charles Dickens for what is arguably the largest yuletide phenomenon touring these days.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for O’Neill and TSO was successfully traversing the difficult waters from being an annual holiday show to a year-round touring rock act. Yet that’s exactly what the group has done. Up next for the outfit is a new nonseasonal album release, which will be either “The Gutter Ballet” or “Romanov: When Kings Must Whisper.” A notoriously slow and meticulous worker, O’Neill said both projects are about 70 percent complete, with one due out in the next year.
“We made the jump, but things for us kind of happened by accident,” O’Neill said. “Normally, bands do albums first and then release Christmas material. We did it backwards.”