QUEENSRŸCHE Drummer Discusses DEGARMO's Involvement On 'Tribe'

QUEENSRŸCHE drummer Scott Rockenfield recently spoke to Electricbasement.com about original guitarist Chris DeGarmo's brief return to the band during the recording process for the group's new album, "Tribe" (due July 22 through Sanctuary Records). "[Chris] knew we were going in the studio and I think he heard where we were going and what we wanted to do in terms of the content in the lyrical direction," he said. "And we've kept in contact over the last 6 years. Through some of those constant conversations, we thought it might be cool to put something together and work on some stuff. He had written a few songs that he had sitting around that he thought might fit. So we sat down and he listened in and then he joined us in the studio. He came in started working some stuff out. At the end of the whole project, his involvement was he co-wrote three songs with us: 'The Art of Life', 'Doing Fine', and 'Falling Behind'. That was his involvement because most of it was already done before he came in. Those three songs seem to fit really well. After it was all said and done, he wasn't interested in doing it anymore. . . He doesn't want to tour — it's not really what he wants to do. He's not interested in the commitment of what that entails. Once you're in, you're in, and we're going to be on the road for at least 9 months. But we really didn't expect that, but I kind of knew he wasn't going to do that because he's been involved with other things. . . [When Chris first came back to the band] we just didn't know what was going to happen. We figured we would kind of let it unfold. The thing for us was to get the record going — once we got in, we got extremely focused. But he basically didn't give us an answer until we were done. . . We pretty much just left it open and we didn't talk about it until the time came where we finally just said to him, 'either you are going, or you're not.' And he said, 'I definitely don't want to go.' That's because he flies jets for a living. . . Since [Chris] left, we made the decision that it is really just going to be the four of us and we have collaborated with a fifth guy. 'Q2K' was with Kelly Gray and then we did the 'Live Evolution' with him, but after those three years, he wanted to go and do other things. QUEENSRŸCHE's a lot of work (laughs). So he went do other things and we are still really good friends and so that was the beginning of QUEENSRŸCHE as a four-piece and yet rolling in the fifth person, which on this record has really expanded our 'tribe'. We collaborated with both Chris and Mike Stone, and now Mike is going to go out on the road with us." Read more.