NEWS

QUEENSRYCHE'S VOCAL GEOFF TATE EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

By Anarchy

Queensryche has been one of the most popular rock bands in the country for decades. The band has released 10 studio records, each with their own unique voice, yet all the while remaining true to the heart and soul of this band. From their early metal and glam/goth work, to the passionate hard rock of the multi-platinum hit Empire and beyond, there has been a constant commitment to crafting complex and beautiful music that not only reflects our society, but helps to define it. The bands breakthrough release was 1988's Operation: Mindcrime, the story of Nicki, a drug addict who fell in love with a former prostitute named Mary while being recruited into an underground revolutionary organization led by the evil Dr. X. The album became a classic and the story left open-ended. For years fans have begged for a sequel. In 2006 the time was right, and the world we live in dark enough, and Operation: Mindcrime 2 was released. The band has now embarked on a tour in support of the album, but it's unlike any tour you've ever seen. Queensryche is playing both albums in their entirety, with actors and props on stage with them to help tell the story. Part rock concert, part theatrical performance, but all absolutely breath-taking. Queensryche invited Anarchy Music out to see the show, and afterwards Queensryche vocalist Geoff Tate called us to answer some of the questions that fans have been wanting to ask. As an added bonus, I brought along Amy, one of the bands biggest fans, to conduct the interview with me. Here's how it went down...

Amy: I've seen the Mindcrime show the past three years and you really get into the character. How do you prepare yourself to take on the persona of Nicki?

Geoff Tate: Well, I dont know. I don't have a really easy answer for that. I don't think it's that much of a stretch for me, honestly. I kind of relate to the guy in a lot of respects. I guess I just sort of know him inside and out and when the music starts it just kind of launches me into the character.

Anarchy Music: You guys are playing a setlist thats twice as long as most bands, is there a special preparation that goes into playing a 2 or 3 hour set every night for months on end?

Geoff Tate: Yeah, lots of rehearsal really helped. We started rehearsals a couple of months ago and rehearsed very well for the show, musically with the band. That really helps, the more rehearsal the better you are with the material, the more comfortable you are with it. Then it becomes second nature where you don't think about it anymore. You start thinking about the other things regarding the show and where you should be at certain points, for the lighting and different scenes. That sort of takes precedence after awhile. Then you get comfortable with that and that all becomes second nature too and you just kind of go to the spot every time you need to go there and it starts running like clockwork which is what I'm kind of looking forward too. We've done 10 shows and it's starting to gel with our crew and everyone knows where theyre supposed to be and where the props are coming out and where the lighting is going to be at a certain time. It's starting to happen. A few more shows, it'll be just like a complete second nature thing. I really love that because then you don't think about anything it just sort of starts happening and that's always when the shows are the best.

Anarchy Music: Well, the preparation definitely comes through in the performance, its fun to watch.

Geoff Tate: Well good

Anarchy Music: Speaking of the performance, how were the actors chosen? I know Christian (Sorenson) has really embraced his role as Nicki and a few more actors have been talen on as well. How were they chosen?

Geoff Tate: Well, it really comes down to can you do this? Do you want to do it? Just talking about it with them, describing the character and fine-tuning it. Christian's really good to work with. He comes from a theater background in college and he's really into blocking and putting people where they should be in certain times. We look at show tapes sort of like an athlete would look at a game tape. We videotape the show and we watch it, critique it, and change things up here and there. Fozzy, for example, who's playing several roles, He's really startiing to come into his own with it. He really likes it. You've got to like and it and that's really the key, I think you've got to like what you're doing. Hopefully that will come out in your performance.

Anarchy Music: Mindrime 2 was the byproduct of you writing the screenplay for Mindcrime, where are you with that and is it still something that you're working on?

Geoff Tate: No, it's finished. I worked with a professional screenwriter named Mark Sheppard for about 8 months on the screenplay and he finished that in January/February, something like that. The scripts been going around Hollywood now and our agent is shopping it to various producers and production companies. We actually recently about a month ago got the green light on the first phase, which is really good news. Warner Brothers is looking at it very seriously. So, we're in that "green light pattern", I guess they call it in Hollywood. It's not like music where you make a record and then you put it out. Hollywood works in a different way and you have to go through all these different phases of development. We're in the second phase now. We've written the screenplay and that's out and its being shopped to production companies. That's the second phase. Apparently there's several more phases we have to go through, so we are waiting.

Anarchy Music: Is it going to be presented as a musical production or just using some of the music as a soundtrack?

Geoff Tate: Well, its all debatable at this moment. It really depends on what company wants to take it on and what their vision for it is. There's a number of different ways you can present it and I'd like to see it done more as a dramatic presentation and less emphasis on the music. Using music as the mood settings and the background vibe for the film like most films would be made, rather than taking it into sort of like "Tommy" or something like that was done. I'd rather not go that route.

Anarchy Music: I imagine Scott (Rockenfeld, Queensryche's drummer) will want a hand in some of that soundtracking, given his background

Geoff Tate: Yeah, thats part of our stipulations is that we have to approve what the presentation is and we definitely want to be involved in the music end of it.

Anarchy Music: I have a question that I've wondered for several years. Can you explain to me the meaning of the title of the song "Waiting For 22"?

Geoff Tate: Originally it was a musical piece, an interlude. It was meant as sort of a lament. Sort of a bittersweet piece of music to set the tone for that particular part of the record. I envisioned Nicki going through this really rough year and he's pretty much just waiting for the next year to come about which hopefully in his mind is a better year than this year was. So he's waiting for his 22nd year.

Anarchy Music: Okay..I thought it had something to with the the 10 o'clock which is mentioned in the song "Suite Sister Mary". 22 would be military time. I thought it had something to do with waiting for the time when Mary is supposed to come.

Geoff Tate: That's one of the reasons why we chose that title as well. It has a couple of different menaings and could be taken a couple different ways which is something we like to do with our stuff. We like to make it somewhat ambiguous.

Anarchy Music: We really like how you guys do your meet and greets, where fans really get a chance to talk with you guys. Whats been the response so far to Mindcrime 2 and whats been the most memorable comment so far.

Geoff Tate: Well, people are really liking the show a lot. I think that what I'm hearing is that there's quite a lot to the show so people are wanting to see it multiple times in order to fully understand it and appreciate it. So, some people get it right away. It's like making a record in a sense. As a writer you try to be pretty direct with what youre doing, you try to make it interesting but at the end of the day people interpret things in different ways. There's no way around it. They take in information at diferent levels. I think one of the things about this show thats cool is that its one that you can appreciate on a number of different levels. You can appreciate it from a musical standpoint, strictly. I think you can appreciate it from a musical performance standpoint. You can appreciate it as a nod towards theater. We had a really nice write-up in the Jacksonville newspaper about the show that said it was on par with most things you'd see on Broadway now. Thats a really nice compliment, which is what we were trying to go for which was making it an interesting delivery of music and theater together. So, people are getting it. They like the fact that it's very complex and also that they can follow the storyline and they're forgetting in a sense that they're at a rock concert and they're watching the show and they're relating to it and following the characters sort of unraveling and theyre understanding that which is good. thats the first of most importance is that they follow and relate to the character.

Anarchy Music: You've been touring with the Mindcrime show for 3 years now, this is the first year with Mindcrime 2 added. Do you have any plans for future tours as far as goig back to some of the old stuff. I know there was a great response to the Judas Priest tour where you played a lot of the self-titled EP, The Warning and Rage for Order albums. Any talk about future tours and going back to that old stuff?

Geoff Tate: Well, you know, there's always talk. It's always sort of challenging to figure out what you're going to do next. In a way, I like that period of time when youre wondering what youre going to do and on another hand I loathe it because its so uncertain. Yeah, there's been talk within the band of presenting some of our other records in their entirety. I know our European promoters have been asking us about next year on the tour presenting one of our past albums in its entirety. We might do Empire, or maybe Promised Land or something like that.

Anarchy Music: We're voting for Rage For Order, by the way

Geoff Tate: Yeah, who knows? We dont!

Anarchy Music: Any plans for a new album in the near future?

Geoff Tate: We've begun writing for the next Queensryche release. We've got some songs on the table. It's in the really early stages so I don't have much to comment on other than, yeah, we have begun.

Anarchy Music: When you write a song, can you tell, okay, this is a Geoff Tate solo song or this is for Queensryche? Whats the thought process there?

Geoff Tate: I pretty much write for the project. I get an idea in mind and I focus on that idea and what its going to develop into. Before I even make any plans I pretty much know what I'm going to do, as far as what the goal is. Right now I'm completely involved neck deep in another project thats a completely outside project from Queensryche and its not a solo project at all. It's a project thats kind of a dramatic presentation thats similiar to what we are doing with Mindcrime but it involves different people and diferent musicians outside of the band. So, I'm kind of neck deep in that. That'll probably be the next release that I'm involved with. So, my writing at the moment is really directed towards that and finishing that up and rounding it out.

Anarchy Music: Any plans on utilizing Pamela Moore's vocals on upcoming albums (Pamela plays the role of Sister Mary in the Operation Mindcrime saga)?

Geoff Tate: I hope so. I love working with Pamela. She's a great singer and I think she's one of the best female singers out there. I just love her voice, the sound of it. she can get very very strong and she's got a lot of emotion in her delivery and I think she's turned out to be quite a good actress as well. She puts a lot of herself into the role and I like that about her. Plus, shes a trooper. She gets up there even if she's feeling ill and really lets it go. She's always commendable, she not a prissy type person at all.

Anarchy Music: I have one last question for you, but Dave may have a couple more, but its been tossed around on the message boards quite a bit. Since I have the opportunity I'm going to ask you. Broadway? Any desire or ambition? Everybody talks about seeing you as the phantom (in Phantom Of The Opera)

Geoff Tate: Yeah...you know, I would like to do some Broadway work. the problem I have with it is, honestly, and I don't mean this to sound arrogant, but as a songwriter I really don't like most of the songs I hear from Broadway musicals. I have to love the music I'm doing in order to do it faithfully with any kind of commitment. I recently saw Lestat in New York, and gosh I was so disappointed in the music. It was so...it was nothing. No intensity to it, no sticky melodies or anything like that. It was sort of like throw-away stuff that they stuck together and turned into a production. The production itself I thought was really well done and it was really nice to look at. The performers were all top notch, good singers and all that. But the story and the music was...I can't even remember anything about it. That's my biggest problem with Broadway. Honestly, I've listened to The Phantom several times and nothing about it really inspires me to want to work that hard at doing it. I'd rather do something on my own, or I'm involved with a team of people and I can shape the music in a way that means something to me. Some people might think thats really egocentric but thats really the only way i can wrap my head around it.

Anarchy Music: Going through the early music where you talked about technological advances, you see a lot of that stuff coming into the news to the political, kind of shadow government things that are dealt with on Operation Mindcrime. You see a lot of that stuff happening and it's almost like people need to listen to Queensryche to find out whats going to be happening in the next couple of years. What is your view of the way things are going right now in society and America in particular?

Geoff Tate: A lot of people think that we have some sort of crystal ball or something because of what we've written about, a lot of it has sort of happened. Really its nothing so mystical, its really just reading and paying attention to current events and knowing something about human nature. Thats one of my interests, sociology and the study of civilzations and how they develop, where we've been and where we're going. And you know that adage that history repeats itself. It sounds so cliche' but its so darn true. Human beings seem to sort of grow at some incredibly slow rate. Yeah, technology we advance pretty quick, but often times we miss the big picture event of whats really happening around us. We're so focused on the minutiae of technology and development, whos making money,whos not and that sort of thing. I think the basic flaw in the way the system works is that its so competitive. Its all based on competition. Youre always going to have winners and youre always going to have losers when you have a competition based society. The problem with that is, what do you do with the losers? What do you do with them? They are definitely a part of the population. They're part of society. you can't just write them off just because they didn't compete. Theres a lot of bitterness and in a mystical sounding way theres a lot of bad energy surrounding that whole system. So, its doomed to fail and its failed at every level throughout history. you can look back at all sorts of examples. What do you do with that? I like to write songs about it. I like to write songs about whats happening and how we can get past whats happening or how we can learn from it and better ourselves.
I think another basic problem with our particular society, in America...I'm speaking in a real general sense here, We've really lost the ability to be happy. We don't know what that means anymore. We're on television and commercials and buying stuff. Try to get through the day without buying something, it's almost impossible. We live such a controlled life. Now we've created reality shows so we can watch somebody else living an exciting life while we go to our boring job and punch the time clock and get paid our set amount of money so we can buy all the crap that they keep selling us. It's a miserable existance. the adventure of life is completely decapitated. That's a very, very sad thing about our modern life. Our country of course, we've been sold that for generations. We've raised several generations on tv commercials that keep telling us how worthless we are unless we own this. Freedom is this new sports car that promises you freedom as you sit in line with all the other idiots who bought the same commercial in traffic every day. You know, there's no freedom in that. It's just a psychology exercize that works to sell you something. It's a very complex situation that really is great for songwriting I think.

Anarchy Music: Its definitely worked out great for you. One more question from me and that is...You we're relevant in the 80's, you we're relevant in the 90's and you're certainly relevant now, whereas other trends have kind of come and gone. What do you attribute the longetivity of Queensryche to?

Geoff Tate: Tenacity. Really, just not giving into what other people think you should be but just following your heart and doing what it is you want to do and making the music that we feel good about. To me, thats the key to success and happiness in this business that has really been boxed in. When I grew up on music in the 60's and the 70's was the real birthplace of rock, and the whole industry grew out of that. It used to be that as a young person you were exposed to all kinds of different music. It was all called rock music then. Everything from Fleetwood Mac to Yes to Genesis, Floyd, Wishbone Ash, Creedence. Everybody was rock music. Then sometime in the 80's the industry really took over and they started selling to a demographic and slicing up the music and putting labels on it and selling to that demographic. Thats when the magic started leaving. It got incredibly corporate. In the 90's it got even worse when they fired everybody in the record companies that had any kind of history and replaced them with people getting out of college that were majoring in business and bean counting. The industry just really lost its soul. Nowadays, its not even the same at all anymore. Its a completely different world. In trying to survive that, I think the only thing you can do is not give in to what people say. Everybody's got an opinion and thats cool, but it doesn't mean that you have to adhere to their opinion of what you should be doing or shouldn't be doing. You just really have to follow your musical heart and keep that as sort of your mantra.

Anarchy Music: Something I've really admired about you guys is that you've never given in to what everyone else says, that you do your own thing.

Geoff Tate: Well, you know you can't. Public opinion changes so much, and if you're always chasing that you never can do anything. You're completely cut off at the knees. You have to do what it is you bellieve in. That''s at least always worked for us. When we came out with Mindcrime, people didn't get it. "What are you doing?" "Why aren't you doing music like Motley Crue is doing, look how successful they are". Well, that's not how we base success. We don't look at other peoples success as our own model. We try to define what our model is and push towards that. And honestly, I would feel ridiculous singing "Girls, Girls, Girls"

Anarchy Music: Well, I think the industry needs bands like Queensryche right now to show us how its supposed to be done, and hopefully you have a lot more left to show us.

Geoff Tate: I don't see us hanging up the hat as of yet, There's still a lot of things we want to do and accomplish in our areas of interest. But I gotta say that the older I get, the more I start leaning towards doing something different in my life. I think its probably just the age I'm at. You get to a certain age where your go "okay, I've done that". "I've kind of accomplished those goals I set out to do and you know I'd really like to do this now" And you start leaning in that direction and once that starts happening its almost like you cant fight it. Its like gravity. You cant stop it.

Anarchy Music: I would like to thank Geoff Tate for taking time out to do this interview. Queensryche has a very busy touring schedule but he made time to answer some of the questions his fans wanted to ask. With as much of a musical legacy as Queensryche has, he really didn't have to do that, but he was incredibly down to earth and friendly, and I can't say how much we appreciate his time and conversation.
I also want to thank Jeff (Queensryches publicist) for setting this up and for sending us an autographed copy of Operation Mindcrime: 2 for us to give away to one lucky fan! You are AWESOME Jeff, and Queensryche fans all over the country appreciate you helping us out!