QUEENSRŸCHE Frontman Discusses Upcoming Movie Role, Studio Album

Sandy Tomcho of the Times Herald-Record recently conducted an interview with QUEENSRŸCHE lead singer Geoff Tate. The question-and-answer session follows:

Times Herald-Record: Are you guys having a contest bringing fans up onstage to sing with you?

Tate: Yeah. Different radio stations are getting involved and they're holding sort of pre-contests, and there'll be three contestants and then those three will show up at our show and they'll each come onstage after Don Dokken leaves the stage. The winner gets to sing later on in our encore set with one of the cover songs.

Times Herald-Record: Some people might not know the band, but they definitely know the song "Silent Lucidity". Does that ever get old for you, or are you still very thankful for that song?

Tate: Oh no, no. It's never old for us. Every now and then we get an "Oh, you guys are still around?" Yup, we sure are. We're very proud of it. That song was a song that really connected with a lot of people, and it had a lot of record company money behind it and a lot of promotional money. Back then it was like $6,000 or $10,000 a station to put your song on the radio, and EMI, at the time, just had a lot of money to throw out and really pushed that song. That was the beauty of radio then.

Times Herald-Record: I read a review somewhere suggesting that the next time "Jesus Christ Superstar" comes around, you should be considered for the role of Judas based on what you did on your cover album, "Take Cover". What do you think about that?

Tate: It's a nice compliment. Yeah, I think I'd probably consider doing that. I love singing and I love Broadway-style musicals and presentations and I think if the right role happened along, I think I'd probably take something like that, yeah.

I just got my first movie role and I start shooting in April, which is gonna be really fun for me because I've never done anything like this before. I got a role as a villain, a character named Alder Grayson, and the name of the movie is called "House of Eternity". My part is four weeks.

Times Herald-Record: Do you have any plans to put out a new original album?

Tate: Actually, that's one of the reasons we're out touring right now. Course, the first is to promote the "Take Cover" album, and the second is to kind of get us up to speed for performance. We have a new album that we've written and we're in the recording stage now and we plan on hitting the recording studio in March when we get back. I'm not sure when it's gonna come out, but I'm sure we'll be done with it by July.

Times Herald-Record: You recently released a greatest hits album and a cover album and some of your concerts have featured actors and video. What can fans expect at the Chance [in Poughkeepsie on February 6]?

Tate: Well, we have a kind of interesting show. The stage looks kind of like an old vaudeville stage with curtains and gold trim and towers of lights. It looks like a combination of old and new technology, which is kind of fun for us, and there's no video on this particular tour. We chose to go with a focus-on-the-band approach because we're really playing a lot of our past history. We're playing something off each record and we're also focusing on a lot of songs that we haven't played in several years.

QUEENSRŸCHE performing "Take Hold of the Flame" on January 25, 2008 at Harrah's in Kansas City, MO: