QUEENSRŸCHE's LUNDGREN Says 'Chaos' Album Contained Songs He'd Never Heard Prior To CD Release

Jody Hickman of Ice Vajal recently conducted an interview with QUEENSRŸCHE guitarist Parker Lundgren. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Ice Vajal: Starting out, you were in Geoff's [Tate] first solo band, right?

Parker: Yeah.

Ice Vajal: Then you had the unique position to be married to his daughter for a while. How was that, joining the band with your father-in-law?

Parker: Um, you know, that whole thing was pretty short-lived. It only lasted about six months. So it was awkward for different reasons, before, during, and after. But I didn't see Geoff that way. At the time, we were just pretty close friends. It was like being on tour with your buddy, that kind of relationship.

Ice Vajal: Was there any trouble gaining acceptance, that you may have had some favoritism with Geoff when you joined QUEENSRŸCHE?

Parker: Yeah, of course. Almost like an Eddie Van Halen-Wolfgang kind of thing. So that kind of worked against me. I could tell the rest of the band was hesitant because of that, because what if it ends badly? Which it did, but we got through it. What happened was, I was playing in Geoff's solo band so I knew a lot of the material already. I was friends with the rest of the guys in the band. When Mike Stone left, they needed someone who knew the material, who they'd be comfortable living with on a bus for nine months. So basically, I just learned all the material and auditioned with Michael [Wilton], and it all worked out.

Ice Vajal: Once you were in the band, when did you notice friction between Geoff and the rest of the band?

Parker: You know, it's one of those things where I just wanted to be there and do a good job. Whatever they had going on, it was all behind closed doors. I wasn't really part of it, the business aspect of it, so I really didn't know what was going on until this year when all the court documents became public. I just kinda tried to stay out of it. But there's always differences in little things, like what songs everybody wanted to play in the set, or what kind of tour to do...just little things like that. There were always creative differences, but it was never anything out of hand like that.

Ice Vajal: You were on the last album with Geoff, [2011's] "Dedicated To Chaos". How was that album different than the one you just finished, QUEENSRŸCHE?

Parker: It was so different. Previously, it almost felt like there was a battle between what songs to use, mainly the producers. It was almost like they wanted to cut the band out of it, even being a part of the process. That's how I felt. There were songs that ended up on the record that I never even heard. The record comes out and I'm like, "I never heard that song when we were in the studio." It was just bizarre. Whereas this record, we worked on every song together. It all happened super organically. Everybody would contribute to everything, and it worked out a lot better. We're really happy about this record.

Read the entire interview from Ice Vajal.