QUEENSRŸCHE's MICHAEL WILTON: 'We Have Our Band Back'

The Vinyl District recently conducted an interview with QUEENSRŸCHE guitarist Michael Wilton. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

The Vinyl District: Without going deep into it, do you think that the Internet played a key part in the breakdown of the relationship between you and your former singer [Geoff Tate]? Did it make things worse?

Wilton: It's kind of the old saying, "Any news is good news." You can look at it that way. In tearing apart the fabric that is the concrete assets of the band, it can be deemed as "not desirable," but in that sense, it gets people talking, not necessarily about any such topic in a positive manner, but really helps out the intimate news sites and music sites. It's kind of a 50-50 situation.

The Vinyl District: One where you appreciate the press, but sometimes those "news sites" just end up throwing gas on the fire.

Wilton: True. Then you have the whole situation which is confusion. That can be deemed positive or negative, depending on which way you're looking at it.

The Vinyl District: Tell us a bit about your new singer.

Wilton: Todd La Torre is an amazing musician, and that is the big difference now. He's not someone who just writes lyrics, he's an accomplished drummer, he plays guitar, he plays keyboards, he's musically inclined. He comes into the fold as a band member, as an entity that will give a spark to the band, and 100%. It's not a dictatorship or anything, [we're] open to all ideas. It's almost as if we've gone back to when we were in our young 20s doing the EP and "The Warning" album, when we worked together as a band and brothers. Bouncing ideas off of each other. He has made that happen again. He has so much of a genuine fire in him. There's nothing pretentious, there's nothing that's an act. What you see is what you get, and I think the fans love that in Todd. He's just a real genuine person that kicks ass.

The Vinyl District: That's good to hear, especially with a band that's been around as long as QUEENSRŸCHE. Once that spark gets reignited and the band sounds genuinely excited again…

Wilton: And you can see it onstage. The energy, we're playing the songs in the right tunings, we're playing the songs that the fans want to hear now. Let's face it, a lot of them want to hear the classic songs, they've wanted to hear the classic songs for twenty years, and now they're getting that chance. With that, now they're saying, "Hey, play the music from the new album." We've mixed the new album into the setlist, and they love it. They said it all works. We love it. We have our band back.

Read the entire interview at The Vinyl District.