Paul O'Neill is one of the most popular and richest Composer who was born on February 23, 1956 in Columbus, Ohio, United States. O’Neill was in the middle of several projects, and the band’s future was uncertain. On the 24th of June the 24th of June, 2017 TSO posted on Facebook that they would carry on the year-long Winter Tour of “The Ghost of Christmas Eve” in O’Neill’s memory and in honor of. The tour included a ceremony in which the group (with Kayla Reeves on the east along with Dino Jelusic on the west) celebrated O’Neill’s life by playing “The Safest Way Into Tomorrow” and featured images of motorcycle gloves and sunglasses (both hallmarks of the late O’Neill) projected on the stage’s video projection.
However, when Romanov got temporarily put on the back burner, the first installment of the Christmas trilogy, Christmas Eve and Other Stories became TSO’s debut album. Fueled by the single “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24” (originally released on the Savatage concept album Dead Winter Dead) the album went double platinum. More platinum certifications followed with 1998’s The Christmas Attic, and the final installment of the Christmas trilogy, The Lost Christmas Eve in 2004. In the midst of completing the trilogy, TSO released their first non-holiday rock opera, Beethoven’s Last Night.
O’Neill took the idea to Atlantic Records which, to his surprise, went for it and financed the creation of Romanov which was initially to be TSO’s first release. “We were very fortunate,” he says. “It was one of the only labels left that still did an “old school” kind of artist development.” My original concept was; “We were going to do six rock operas, a trilogy about Christmas and maybe one or two regular albums.”
“I wanted to take the very best of all the forms of music I grew up on and merge them into a new style,” O’Neill declared in the year the year 2011. “Basically the idea was to build off the work of all the musicians I loved such as the rock opera elements of bands like the Who as well as the union of rock and classical from bands such as Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Queen as well as the flamboyant lighting show of bands like Pink Floyd… I’ve always wanted to create the full rock opera using an entire progressive band with at least 24 singers.
He was offered a job in Leber-Krebs Inc., the management company which started career paths for Aerosmith, AC/DC, Def Leppard, Ted Nugent, New York Dolls, Scorpions, Joan Jett and others. Particularly, he served as the personal assistant to the manager David Krebs. The 1980s saw he became an important music promoter from Japan and was responsible for promoting each tour that Madonna and Sting performed during that decade, and also the largest rock festival held in Japan up to that point and promoting acts such including Foreigner, Bon Jovi, Whitesnake and Ronnie James Dio.
O’Neill’s body was discovered in an Embassy Suites hotel room in Tampa, Florida. O’Neill’s death was announced in a brief note posted on the Trans-Siberian Orchestra website on April 5, 2017, which cited chronic illness. The Hillsborough, Florida medical examiner’s office determined the official cause of Paul O’Neill’s death as accidental, resulting from an unexpected reaction to prescribed medications to treat his numerous chronic illnesses (including bone augmentation surgery, complications from spinal fusion surgery, heart disease, and hypertension). Found along with O’Neill’s body were more than 30 prescription pill bottles in his name.
