Ex-QUEENSRŸCHE Singer GEOFF TATE: 'I Risk Losing My Audience All The Time' With My New Music

June 13, 2017

Chasing Strange Music recently conducted an interview with former QUEENSRŸCHE and current OPERATION: MINDCRIME frontman Geoff Tate. You can now listen to the chat below.

When asked if he feels as creative today as he did twenty or thirty years ago, Tate said: "I feel equally as creative. I think what happens over time is that you have a measure of success doing what you're doing, and you build your lifestyle around that success. And then to deviate from that success and that way of doing things puts your livelihood at risk, so a lot of people choose not to do that — they choose not to put their livelihood at risk; they hit upon a formula, something that works for them, and they just continue doing that. And some people find joy in that and they build their lives around that. Other people are constantly pushing that envelope and experimenting with what they do, and I tend to fall into that category of a person — I push it readily. And I risk losing my audience all the time with what I write. I probably have lost some people along the way, but I've gained other people as well."

He continued: "To me, it's important to not keep repeating yourself, but to try different things and experiment with what it is you do, your ideas — keep 'em coming and keep experimenting with them. And music is so… There's so much you can do, so many things you can do with them now. And it's actually so much easier to compose and to create music nowadays than it was back then, because of the recording abilities you have now. You don't have to wait, schedule studio time, go in there and go through the whole rigor of the studio set-up, and hopefully pick the right people to work with that know what they're doing and can capture what it is that you're trying to do, and hopefully you can communicate with them well enough so that you can get your ideas across to them so they can record them accurately. You can bypass all that bullshit now and you do it yourself. [Laughs] You can have an idea and put it down and put it up for sale the next day. It makes art so much more immediate. And you can actually be part of the global conversation these days with what you do, because you're not waiting and waiting and waiting and months and months and months aren't going by, and you can comment on a situation that's happening in a song and create a piece of music around something that's happening topically right now and be current with what's going on. Before, you just had to wait and wait and wait and work around people's schedules and you had to wait for the record company to fit your album release into their fiscal calendar."

Tate's recent acoustic tour, dubbed "The Whole Story 'Rÿche' Acoustic Tour", saw him performing songs from all seventeen albums he has done throughout his illustrious thirty-five-year career. Geoff was backed during the show by a seven-piece acoustic band of musicians from the United States and Ireland, with three guitar players, mandolin, cello, saxophone, violin and multiple percussion instruments to produce high-energy acoustic versions of some of the Tate's former band's most recognized songs, including "Silent Lucidity", "Jet City Woman", "Empire", "I Don't Believe In Love" and "Eyes Of A Stranger".

"Resurrection", the second album from OPERATION: MINDCRIME, was released last September via Frontiers Music Srl. The album is the second part of Tate's musical trilogy.

Find more on Geoff tate
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • reddit
  • email

Comments Disclaimer And Information

BLABBERMOUTH.NET uses the Facebook Comments plugin to let people comment on content on the site using their Facebook account. The comments reside on Facebook servers and are not stored on BLABBERMOUTH.NET. To comment on a BLABBERMOUTH.NET story or review, you must be logged in to an active personal account on Facebook. Once you're logged in, you will be able to comment. User comments or postings do not reflect the viewpoint of BLABBERMOUTH.NET and BLABBERMOUTH.NET does not endorse, or guarantee the accuracy of, any user comment. To report spam or any abusive, obscene, defamatory, racist, homophobic or threatening comments, or anything that may violate any applicable laws, use the "Report to Facebook" and "Mark as spam" links that appear next to the comments themselves. To do so, click the downward arrow on the top-right corner of the Facebook comment (the arrow is invisible until you roll over it) and select the appropriate action. You can also send an e-mail to blabbermouthinbox(@)gmail.com with pertinent details. BLABBERMOUTH.NET reserves the right to "hide" comments that may be considered offensive, illegal or inappropriate and to "ban" users that violate the site's Terms Of Service. Hidden comments will still appear to the user and to the user's Facebook friends. If a new comment is published from a "banned" user or contains a blacklisted word, this comment will automatically have limited visibility (the "banned" user's comments will only be visible to the user and the user's Facebook friends).