Om even bij stil te staan: Chris Oliva, 10 jaar

Vandaag is het precies tien jaar geleden dat Christopher Michael Oliva werd doodgereden door een dronken bestuurder toen ze op weg waren naar het Livestock festival in Zephyrhills, Florida.

Voor wie niet weet wie Christopher M. Oliva nu eigenlijk was, hier een kort stukje over hem (in het Engels).

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Nothing characterizes the grade of undervaluation of Criss Oliva more than the fact that he was consistently ignored in life by the leading guitar magazines Guitar World and Guitar Player. Not only did both magizines never do an interview with him - even after his sudden death the editors of both magazines found it unnecessary to deem him worthy as one of the most substantial guitarists of his era.

Criss, grown like his brother without lessons on his instrument, amazed with unusual abilities since his earliest youth. Steve Wacholz remembers that Criss "played every other guitarist with just 14, 15 years literally under the table". At 17, he won with crushing lead a competition in Tampa by playing the Van Halen song "Eruption" live in a furiose manner "that Eddie Van Halen himself's jaw-bones would have fallen down".

In the end, the organizers of the event had nothing left to do except hand him out the announced white Strat. Later it annoyed Criss a lot that just this guitar was stolen after a clubgig in Florida and never appeared again.

Jon: "Criss was an extremely devoted musician. He made something, for what I would blow my brains out: Playing guitar for five, six, eight hours a day. Nearly every day. That was his life. More than everything else. Amazingly he has never cared about music theory. He totally relied on his hearing and on his feeling and was tremendously creatively. For me he was like Mozart. There was something divine about him".

Their personal relationship Jon describes "as more strict. We had a lot of fun together but in last consequence it was a 'small brother/big brother' relationship, how it is between brothers. He had his buddies and I had mine. It wasn't that we stuck together all the time, except if we were working on songs together. Then we were like twins."

Chris Caffery: "His special guitar sound came mainly from his hands. It wasn't very important which Amp he used. The more older and more experienced I get, the more I appreciate what an unbelievably good guitarist he was. He was perfect. He never made any mistakes. And if he slipped off anyway, he turned it into something meaningful and natural, that nobody would have noticed it as a mistake".

Paul O'Neill - and with this opinion he doesn't stand alone - recognized in Criss "the kindest man one can imagine. He treated everybody the way he wanted to be treated. Each time we are in the studio, I keep asking myself this question: What would be Criss' input to improve this or that song, and which songs we would never write, because of the lack of his artistic input?"

If you would like to visit Criss' grave: Curlew Memorial Gardens (Curlew Roughneck) is located in Palm Harbor, a few miles to the north of Clearwater. You can find the memorial stone at the left edge of the asphalt main road approx. 150 meters from the main gate.

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