For over twenty years Queensryche have been one of the innovative and influential bands around, not to mentioned successful. With over twenty million albums sold worldwide the band are currently getting ready to hit the UK for a comprehensive nationwide tour alongside Thin Lizzy. As if that wasn't enough the band have also got a lot of new product out on the market for fans to enjoy. There's a new Greatest Hits album and of course the live DVD/CD Mindcrime At The Moore which sees the band performing both of the Operation Mindcrime albums in full in their home city, Seattle. To make this an even busier period for the band they also plan on releasing an album of cover songs in November to tie in with the tour. HRH caught up with Queensryche vocalist Geoff Tate to mull things over

Geoff Tate

GT - Hi Steve, how ya doin?  

I’m fine thank you very much, and yourself?  

GT - Oh doing ok, can’t complain. 

It’s gotta be a rather busy time for Queensryche at the minute I would say?  

GT - Yeah, we’ve got a lot going on really.  

So I believe, which, I brings us to the first thing I want to talk about, your forthcoming  UK tour with Thin Lizzy.  

GT - Yeah  

Not a pairing I would initially have thought of, how did that come about?  

GT - Gosh, I think they just asked us, you know.  I think  the promoters were looking for an interesting couple of bands to play together and they thought it would work.  So having never toured with them, it sounds like an experience that, we wanted to try. So we’re looking forward to it.  I think it’s gonna be really fun.  They’re great players those guys.  Very, very well known. 

It’s a co -headline tour I believe. How does that work with regard who opens and closes - do you swap around each night? 

GT - You know I don’t think that we’ve worked all that out yet.  You know, I think that we’ll probably get there and see how things are going and,  kind of make it work. 

And how do you build a set list for a tour like this, do you look at playing a greatest hits, or are you actually going to be promoting, say, the new covers album? 

GT - Ah, well yeah, kind of a combination of both really.  We’re playing some of the cover songs that we’re releasing on the new album and,  quite a few of our own songs of course.  And we’re just gonna mix and match and see what works. 

Do you find it easier to do something like the Lizzy tour, rather than say the Mindcrime Tour, where this time round it’s more of a straight ahead rock concert, rather than a theatrical production? 

GT - Well yeah, each has its pluses and minuses I think.  Doing a dramatic show is very challenging of course, but you know, the downside of it is you have to kind of play the same songs every night.  And when you do a  kind of greatest hits package, you can kind of change things up and it’s a little looser, it’s a whole different kind of presentation really, So, each is good in it’s own way. 

Queensryche

I  just finished re-watching the Mindcrime at the Moore DVD this afternoon, and it seemed as though that show was as emotionally draining for you as it was physically? 

GT -  Yeah, yeah it really was.  It was really a wonderful experience performing those albums back to back and I’d never trade it again, trade the experience because it was very special.  But being that character, you know, for that long a period of time, definitely takes it toll on you.  I was ready, I was really happy when the tour ended. 

Do you think it was harder on you than for the rest of the band? 

GT - I think so.  I guess each person would probably interpret it in a different way.  For me, you know, of course it’s very vocally challenging and all that stuff.  And then emotionally, of course, trying to become the character, who isn’t a very pleasant fellow.  On one hand  I was very happy when the tour ended, but on the other hand I was very sad too because it was such a wonderful experience and we played so many shows together.  Singing with Pamela Moore every night was really a pleasure, she’s an incredible performer and we had a real fun time dreaming up the stage production and working out all the blocking for it.  It was just wonderful. 

There must have been an awful lot of rehearsal went into the visual side of that show I guess? 

GT - Absolutely.  Well we began working on the stage show right after we finished with the record and it was really months and months of planning and, dreaming up things to do with it and that was really really challenging.  And, of course, taking it out on the road.   A lot of times you visualize things and conceptualize how you want it to be, and then when you actually put it into actual use it doesn’t quite work so you have to modify it and change things around here and there.  But the planning seems to be the real key, you know, when you’re doing something like that. You really have to set aside the time and focus on all the aspects of what it could entail and I think when we decided we were going to film the show, that again took a lot of planning and picking the right production company and planning the shots and what kind of cameras we were gonna use.  And then, of course, the venue choice, all those things we took into consideration.  I guess we had, probably, about three months of planning before we actually shot the show.  And for the first time in our career we actually waited to film the tour so everybody was very rehearsed and used to the music and used to the show.  And it turned out really well, I’m glad we did that because in previous DVD projects we’ve had to film the first week of the tour and nobody was really comfortable with the music yet or had the show worked out.  It never turned out as good as we’d hoped.  But the Mindcrime At The Moore was really an exception to that, and I think of course, the key to that was the planning. 

The one thing that did strike me was how much anger there is in the second part of Mindcrime.  It’s a very much darker album than the first one. Was that inherent in how you were feeling at the time? 

GT - Well, it was sort of a logical step I think, for the character, because he’s just bitter and with revenge on his mind. He feels like he’s been taken advantage of throughout his life, and he had a lot of resentment and anger built up.  And most of the songs on the second record deal with his struggle within himself really, to justify his intent to kill Dr X.  Because really Nikki isn’t a willing murderer, you know he’s a sort of victim of circumstance, of mind control.  But on the second record he definitely takes matters into his own hands and consciously pulls the trigger. So he’s tormented by that, and that torment, I think, I try to present, in a live scenario.  Try to present how my body would be feeling. 

That came across with the acting in the show which you, and to an extent, the rest of the cast did. You very rarely see in live rock shows these days, it harkens back, perhaps, to an older time? 

GT - Well we grew up in the 60’s and the 70’s and we were exposed to all the great music and the freedom to create great music that was prevalent then. Nowadays it’s a very industry driven industry with lots of controls and the music is so sub-categorized and niche oriented, sub genre-ist and everything. It’s just a whole different time you know.  So, when we grew up we listened to everything, and everything was called rock music.  It wasn’t broken down into little pieces of pie like it is these days.  So we had exposure to a vast array of music that was coming out at the time, and I think that was a very special two decades in musical history, the 60’s and the 70’s. 

Mindcrime At The Moore

Just to wrap up the little bit about the Mindcrime story. and  The first album was brought out around the time of Bush Snr, the second one with George W in office. Does this mean that if a third generation of Bush’s  gets into the Whitehouse at some point we could expect a third Mindcrime album? 

GT - (Laughs) Well it would seem logical huh?  But no I think that the story’s finished now and we’re moving onto different things and in fact we’re working on the new album right now that we hope to have out to the public sometime next summer.  It’s a conceptual record as well. 

Moving on, the new covers album that is released in November, that originates from sound checks on the Mindcrime tour I believe, was that to relieve the fact you were playing the same songs every night, just something different? 

GT - Yeah, for years we’ve kind of played this game with each other where we play “name that tune”, and somebody will play a guitar riff and we’ll all jump in and try and finish the . It’s amazing how much musical information you kind of retain in the back of your head, you know.  Sometimes we could make it through the entire song and sometimes it’d just be up to the first chorus, you know, but it’s kind of a fun exercise.  We were at sound check playing our game and Kenny Nemis, who is the head of our record company, Rhino, was there, and afterwards he said, you know, you guys should record this stuff and if you do, we’ll put a record out, what do you think?  So we started thinking that sounded like a good idea, so we all picked a few songs that we loved, and songs that were influential to us, individually, and kind of worked out some different arrangements, kind of Ryche’d them up a bit, you know.  So I guess you could see that for us it’s quite an eclectic list of songs covering show tunes to an opera song to classic rock as well, and throw some punk stuff in as well with the OJ’s song in there. 

It certainly looks like an interesting list, the one that jumped out was the track Jesus Christ Superstar, not something you’d expect from a rock band. 

GT - If you listen to the original, my gosh it’s a very strange song. It was mixed very, I dunno, I would say poorly for the time, and just the tempos are kind of all over the place and it didn’t strike me initially as a very interesting song to do.  But Stone, our guitar player Michael just had an idea for it and said well wait till you hear our rendition of it. So they went in the studio and cut a really interesting version, it’s very cool and very inspiring. At the time I was going off the original and I was thinking, “Oh My God I don’t really want to sing this”, but when they brought their rendition in it was very cool, I just had to be a part of it.  That was the kind of the pleasing aspect of the whole project really was that each of us, we have different musical tastes and it was kind of fun to hear what our band mates liked, you know, and what they were interested in and then try to understand that and find something that we could individually do to that song to make it, you know, uniquely Queensryche. I found myself working on songs that I’d normally wouldn’t have an interest in, but the way that they were done, you know, changed my mind. 

The other song that was, perhaps a brave choice, given the fact that you’ve just been on tour with them, was Neon Nights. Has Ronnie (James Dio) said anything, or has he heard your version yet? 

GT - Yeah, yeah, he heard it, he loves it. He was very pleased with it. He put his arm around me and goes “oh you did a really good job on that kid, I love it”. 

You’ve also chosen some difficult vocalists to actually emulate, not only Dio, but Freddie Mercury as well. 

GT - Freddie, yeah he was incredible, and one of the influences, musical influences for me growing up, and that song (Innuendo), especially, was really unique.  Apparently that was the last song that he wrote with the band, and listening to the lyrics on it it’s a real sort of philosophical look at life.  And I found that to be interesting coming, at that time, you know, from a man who was at death’s door. He had a sort of really, really big overview on life, and  I thought about him several times when I was recording that song, singing it from a wheelchair in the studio, you know, and how that must have been. 

It must be hard to imagine, knowing that your life is about to end and producing one of his best songs ever. 

GT - Yeah, really me too, I’m with ya. 

You also have a new current hits album out as well. 

GT - Yeah, that was August I think that came out. 

I believe that is from your old record company Capitol, how much input did you have into the album? 

GT - They came to us and said “we want to put out a ‘best of’ record. Our initial reaction was “well didn’t we already do that?” and they came back with “well yeah we did, but we wanna put out another one”. So I guess we thought “well, how can we make it unique and different?”  So we all sat down and put our thinking caps on and a couple of the guys at the record company are big Queensryche fans and they started asking about certain songs, and certain version of those songs, and it all started snowballing, you know.  So we kind of went through a tape collection and found a bunch of stuff that had been buried and lost.  We had some demos on there of songs from records that, I think, is kind of an interesting thing for fans to listen to, coz they sort of see a song at it’s beginning stages, and then they can compare it to the one that came on the record and then see the evolution, you know, of the song.   Which I find, as a musician, to be really interesting. 

Of course the song that is getting the most publicity is Justified? 

GT - Yeah, yeah. 

A Song which sees you working with Chris (DeGarmo) again 

GT - Yeah, well that’s kind of a funny story.  He and I, we meet probably once a month for lunch and kinda catch up, see what’s going on with each other.  So we were at lunch and we started having a conversation about relationships, and people in our lives, and towards the end of the meal he said, “hey you wanna pop over to my house, maybe work on a song”?  And I said, “yeah let’s do that”.  So we ended up being at the studio and writing that song and recording it, and when it was done EMI said what do you think about putting that on the record?  Well it sounded like a good idea to us. 

Is it an open invitation to Chris to work with you whenever he feels like he needs to or wants to?  

GT - Well yeah. He’s a very talented writer and incredible musician, and he gets the burning desire sometimes to hit the studio and collaborate, you know and I love working with him.  Almost every time we get together we write a song together, so it’s it’s a great relationship really.  We try to keep it going and of course it’s not necessarily a Queensryche thing we always work on.  We’re musicians, you know, we just love writing music. 

Talking of not working outside of Queensryche, I understand you’ve also been working on a second solo album? 

GT - Oh yeah, I’m always working on that.  I’ve got a couple of records that are in various stages of completion that are currently awaiting the right time to release.  But, you know, Queensryche is my main gig, you know and when the band’s on fire, everybody’s working and excited about a project, like they are for the new Queensryche record that we’re working on now,  I can’t really put the brakes on and say ok, well I’m gonna take a year off guys and do my own thing, you know.  So I have to wait for the right moment when everybody’s ready to take some downtime, you know. 

So Queensryche remains the priority for you? 

GT - Oh yeah, yeah, very much so. 

One of the interesting things that I’ve read about you personally is how interested you are in sociology, how much people in general appeal to you 

GT – Oh yeah, I’m interested in people and what they do, and why they do the things they do.  And kind of how we evolve, you know as a human consciousness.  We’ve come a long ways, and we’re moving very rapidly now, communication being what it is now, technological advancements.  So it’s an interesting time to be alive, you know, and to observe what’s going on and how we deal with each other and the pressures of modern life, and all that.  It’s fascinating stuff for writing songs around. 

I guess it’s got to provide no end of material for you. 

GT - Oh, yeah, yeah.  You just have to keep your eyes open really.  There’s just so much to talk about and write about. 

So during the, what, the 20 plus years that Queensryche have been going, do you see the whole path of evolution over that time as being a positive or negative for mankind as a whole? 

GT - Well I think we’ve taken a lot of forward steps, you know.  I think there’s quite a lot of room to grow of course.  It seems to me just a much shorter life span, I’m nearing 50 now and people’s priorities in general are kind of changing. Where we’re questioning a lot of things. We’re understanding now that everyday we’re bombarded with a sales pitch, somebody’s always trying to sell you something. Either a product or a lifestyle or a political agenda, a healthcare programme, you name it.  Everybody is trying to talk you into seeing their point of view you know.  I think modern life can get very confusing at times, because unless you realize that you’re always being sold something you’re kind of a mark in a sense.  I think we’re kind of wising up to that right now and realizing that’s happening.  People are questioning things quite a bit, and I think that’s good. 

And the whole sales thing, the money making environment that we live in, has that affected the music business? It seems to be a here today - gone this afternoon mentality. 

GT -  Definitely.  It’s a whole different world now than it used to be.  You know somewhere, well when we started 1982, when we first released our first record, the industry really wasn’t what I would call an industry at the time.  It was more music people who really liked music, figuring out ways to expose music and an artist  to the public.  Somewhere around the 90’s, early 90’s, the whole record industry changed, and companies fired off all the music people and hired, well in the States, Harvard educated business people to run the record companies and they really weren’t interested in the music.  They were interested in making money for the investors and the people that owned the companies.  You saw a huge change there in the way things were done.  It used to be very common that a record company would sign an artist and it wouldn’t, it would be expected that it would take three albums for the band to sort of find themselves, and to establish an audience through touring - and that’s when the record company would have, usually, a successful record, you know.  Nowadays it’s not even like that at all, You have basically one shot, your first single’s gotta make a huge return or else you’re done. Bands don’t get the chance to tour like they used to.  The whole touring industry’s changed right now and, I think, for younger bands it’s quite challenging to establish a career.  In fact I don’t think people really even think in terms of career anymore.  They just sort of think of their musical life as sort of  being a one shot thing.  Which is too bad because it is a wonderful way to live and it is a much needed career for, you know, we need music, we need musicians talking about things, you know, we need that in our culture. 

If you look at some of the bands you’ve covered on this new covers album, from Pink Floyd to Peter Gabriel, Genesis I suppose, none of them made it straight out of the box and, I guess, in today’s culture they wouldn’t be around very long? 

GT - That’s right, they wouldn’t have a chance to develop. 

It’ll be interesting to see where things develop over the next 20 years and whether we can have conversations like this one with bands who have had 20 year careers. 

GT - Yeah, exactly.  I’m hoping that things change, you know, and bands do have that chance because it would be a shame not to have that. 

Well that brings me to my final two questions is, we a lot of bands we talk to cite Queensryche as an influence.  How does that feel to you? 

GT -  I think that’s very flattering and I think that’s the way it should be, you know.  That musicians are all influenced by what each other does to a certain extent.  And, as a writer, you take all the influences you have musically and you take bits and pieces from everybody and you combine those with your own style, or your own vision, and try and to create something unique out of that.  I think we’re all uniquely derivative That's the beauty of music, it just translates through religious boundaries, political boundaries, cultural boundaries, it just goes everywhere.  I can be in my studio in Seattle and be thinking of a subject and feeling very passionate about it, writing a song about it, and then put it out on a record.  Then I can be playing that same song for an audience, maybe in a different country Turkey for example, Istanbul, and  I can see people in the front row singing the lyrics and that is an amazing thing right there. That people are relating to what you do and those people are from an entirely different culture. 

Just to wrap it up, is there anything you’d like to add to your UK fans out there? 

GT - Oh I’d just say thanks so much for listening to Queensryche all these years and supporting the band, and we’re really looking forward to coming over and playing there in Britain. It’s gonna be a real treat.  We haven’t actually done a tour, a long tour, you know, in England in many years. 

The Empire tour would probably be the last one 

GT - Yeah, so we’re going to quite a few cities that we haven’t been to in a long time.                                                                                       

Well we’ll look forward to seeing you and hope that the tour goes well 

GT - Well thank you very much Steve, we appreciate the time and the interview, thank you.

Many thanks to Geoff for taking the time to talk to HRH. Queensryche's greatest hits set, 'Sign Of The Times', along with the Mindcrime At The Moore DVD/CD are out now. The Take Cover album is released through Rhino on November 12th. You can also catch Queensryche on tour with Thin Lizzy throughout November and December. Full details of the shows can be found in our gig guide

To find out more about Queensryche and Geoff Tate then you can visit their official websites at www.geofftate.com and www.queensryche.com