As everyone knows, I absolutely LOVE it when musicians talk smack about each other. I get to spread the word around and gossip like a school girl about it without any sort of repercussions. It's the best of both worlds. Well, today Queensryche's Geoff Tate is affording me the ability to do just that. In a recent interview with BigMusicGeek.com Geoff had some fabulously insulting things to say about his former bandmates.
BigMusicGeek.com: At this point, is your goal to reconcile with the other members of [Queensryche]? Is that really even possible?
Geoff: I think the situation has deteriorated quite badly. It would take quite a bit of communication with all of us sitting in the same room having discussions for any type of reconciliation to occur. Honestly, I don't see that happening from their side. I don't think any of them have the balls to sit in a room with me and be honest about how they feel and works towards some sort of understanding. They're way too cowardly to do anything like that. That may come across as cold and brash, and I apologize if that offends anyone, but that's my honest opinion on the matter. They didn't approach me in a friendly, gentlemanly friendship way when they fired me. They did it behind my back through a lawyer, ya know? So I really don't have any high hopes that they'd have the integrity to sit in a room with me now and try to come up with some sort of compromises for our situation.
BigMusicGeek.com: Prior to them dismissing you, were there any obvious indications that everything wasn't going very well? I can remember reading interviews with the group during the '90s where the group seemed like a brotherhood...
Geoff: No. There was nothing like that. A band is a democracy and if it had to come down to a vote, I'm only one guy, ya know? You probably read an interview with either (former Queensryche guitarist) Chris (DeGarmo) or myself. Our main focus was always to create an image that the band was cohesive and a band that was as close as brothers, ya know? In our minds, that was the best way to project our band and our project, ya know? Whatever dirty laundry or disagreements wasn't talked about in public. We were always very, very interested in presenting a positive image, ya know? The image that Chris and created is the image that most people saw and that's how people formed their opinions, ya know? Through the images Chris and I conveyed. We switched gears throughout our entire career. That was the whole goal. The whole motto that Chris and I had when we started writing together was "no limits." Naturally, we weren't interested in being limited by any imaginations except our own, ya know? So we drove that vehicle with that in mind. We were always trying to change things up and bring different things into the compositions, stretch out as much as we could musically and keep pushing, pushing and pushing the envelope on the musical chemistry that we had. After he left, I always held that goal in mind. The problem was that I was the only one who had that idea at that point. [laughs] The other three were very non-committal musically and didn't stand by their belief system when it came to music. They were very influenced by the opinions of others around them and didn't really trust their own musical integrity. I was constantly being limited by their lack of imagination and their unwillingness to stand on their own convictions. They were always very interested in being what other people thought they could be.Everyone loves a good bitch-slap and I am no different!! Well done, Mr. Tate. Read more of the interview after the jump...
