Kevin Wells of The Washington Times spoke with singer Geoff Tate about his new album, performing Operation: Mindcrime live and whether he has experienced any fan backlash since the splintering of the original Queensryche. Portions of the interview appear below.
KW: What kind of response have you gotten from Frequency Unknown, which was released last April?
GT: I don’t know. I don’t typically pay attention unless I’m talking with somebody and they bring up something specific.
KW: You also celebrated the 25th Anniversary of Operation: Mindcrime earlier this year by performing the album in its entirety. What was it like playing that album again?
GT: It’s great, yeah. I love that album. I love performing it. It’s challenging because you’re playing an entire record, so it’s challenging live to present it in a way that keeps the flow of the record, which I think is really important. When you’re presenting music live, you have to think a lot about how to present it, the pacing of it, the song order that sort of thing. So that album brings its own set of challenges to a live performance. It had some really great shows. We didn’t play the southeast yet and we’re playing there in January. So we’re gonna be presenting the Mindcrime show to the southeast in January.
KW: Did you feel when you were writing that album that it would end up being so well received by fans and critics alike?
GT: No. Never do, really. That album was really critiqued heavily when it came out [laughs], as all our records are, I guess. It takes people a while to, I guess, understand our music. That’s the thing with most music. You have to live with it a while. You have to have it playing and part of your life, you know? For it to truly affect you, you have to spend some time with it. In our kind of pop world we’ve constructed in our society, we don’t give music much of a chance to sit with us. We kind of judge it immediately and music isn’t like that. It’s something that is a personal experience that kind of accompanies you on your own personal experience.
KW: Has the legal battle over the Queensrÿche name been resolved?
GT: No. we have a court date that was set for November originally, but recently got pushed out to January. So, by January, we should have it all wrapped up.
KW: Have you noticed any sort of fan backlash due to the split with the other original members of Queensrÿche?
GT: I hardly have noticed a difference, really. It’s been really kind of smooth sailing. The shows have been well-attended and the energy at the shows is really intense with the band and the interaction with the audience. It’s probably actually a little more emotional now than it has been. I think change is probably a good thing.
KW: Have you spoken recently with any of the other original members?
GT: Uh, no. No.
KW: Is it strange playing Queensrÿche without the other guys?
GT: Oh, not at all, no. Actually, it’s a lot more organic now and there’s a real camaraderie in the band now. This group of people, we have a real positive kind of energy surrounding the band now that I find really very pleasing. I think that translates to an audience when you’re up on stage together and everyone in the band is happy and excited to be there. That translates to the audience. They pick up on that energy too, you know?
The nominations for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Class of 2014 are in, and the list includes Nirvana, KISS, the Replacements and Hall and Oates. The rest of this year’s hopefuls include the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Chic, Deep Purple, Peter Gabriel, LL Cool J, N.W.A, Link Wray, the Meters, Linda Ronstadt, Cat Stevens, Yes and the Zombies. The top vote-getters will be inducted in April at a ceremony in New York City.
For the second consecutive year, the public gets to vote alongside the artists, historians and music industry insiders of the Rock Hall voting body. From now until December 10th, fans can vote on RollingStone.com for the nominees they’d like to see inducted. The top five acts will comprise a “fan’s ballot” that will count as one of the more than 600 ballots that determine the Class of 2014.
In order to be eligible for this year’s ballot, artists or bands need to have released their first single or album in 1988 or earlier. Many of the nominees have appeared on previous ballots, but this is the first appearance for Nirvana, Peter Gabriel, Hall and Oates, the Replacements, Linda Ronstadt, Link Wray, Cat Stevens, Yes and the Zombies. (Gabriel was inducted as a member of Genesis in 2009.)
Nirvana is the only act this year to land on the ballot in its first year of eligibility. Their cover of Love Buzz by Shocking Blue was their first single, hitting stores in late 1988.
If Yes are inducted, it might lead to their first performance with original singer Jon Anderson since 2004. “I don’t have any anger about our exclusion,” Yes bassist Chris Squire told Rolling Stone in 2011. “But it would be a magnificent thing if they would include every member of Yes – I think there’s about 19 or 20 of us.”
For all of you John Sykes fans, such as myself, this appears to be good news.
According to his official website the new album is musically finished. It is currently in the stage of mixing and final editing. Album artwork is also currently being planned.
John’s last release was 2004’s Bad Boy Live!. Watch a clip of Sykes performing Bad Boys below.
Greg Prato for Songfacts spoke with Raven frontman and bassist John Gallagher. Portions of the interview below.
Songfacts: Let’s discuss the new documentary, Rock Until You Drop. How did it come about?
John Gallagher: The genesis came a few years ago when there was a company in New York that wanted to put out a “Best Of” Raven, and it kind of fell apart – they flaked out on us. I put all this stuff together and we said, “You know, let’s just do a box set with all the stuff everyone’s never heard before,” and we put out an album called Raw Tracks, which was all the demos that never came out. The idea was kicked around back then, and I said, “Wow, it would be great if we could do a DVD along the lines of this.”
We’d done a DVD back in the early ’90s called Electro Shock Therapy, which only came out in Europe. It was basically filmed when we were on tour – it was live stuff and us clowning around. It was very entertaining. It was a lot of fun. We just figured it would be good to “long form” this at some time, because my brother had been collecting and archiving for a few years. Then we were talking to our record company, and they were like, “Let’s do it.”
So my poor brother (guitarist Mark Gallagher) locked himself in a room for the best part of a year, turned his eyes into road maps, and put this together. It’s pretty much the history of the band from when we started all the way through. It’s not really, “Oh, let’s just sit down and watch this,” because it came in too long. It’s three hours, plus the actual so-called documentary part, so it’s really for the diehard fan. We didn’t want to compromise this into a fluffy little one hour thing. Very little is left on the cutting room floor. It’s all in.
Songfacts: People like Lars Ulrich from Metallica and Chuck Billy from Testament have some nice things to say about Raven in the documentary. How did that make you feel hearing your peers saying such things?
John: It’s very gratifying. Lars is very cool, and was excited about doing it. He talked for a long time; he was very complimentary and had a lot of good stuff to say. I think he comes off really well in this, because there are other ones I’ve seen him in where he’s playing “Mr. Rock Star.” But he’s very down to earth, very honest, and very cool. Chuck did some great stuff. Dee Snider came out of the woodwork and did a great little thing for us, totally unprompted. It was wonderful. I’ve run into Chris Jericho, who I’ve done an interview with. He’s a rock guy, actually, for years. He’s playing with his band, Fozzy, and he just said, “Hey, come to the show.” He was playing a festival and we went there. Really good guy. He’s been a fan since day one, so his little part was really cool, too.
Somehow I got hold of Steven Thompson [the co-producer of Rock Until You Drop] at the start of this record, and he did a wonderful piece about the thing with the first record. Really fun. The guy was so funny. Hilarious. And of course, we got Michael Wagner. Me and the wife went down in Nashville for a couple of days and hung out. We connected with Michael; we did a record 10, 12 years ago with him down there. And that was awesome, too. Got a lot of good stuff.
Songfacts: Do you agree that Raven helped create thrash metal?
John: Well, we’re definitely to blame [laughing] partially, if nothing else. I mean, it’s one of these things where it’s transitional music: one band will maybe push it in one direction and then somebody else – like a relay – takes it and moves it further forward. We were one of the first bands to play it pretty fast and do a lot of that stuff.
And where did we get the baton from? We got it from Montrose, Deep Purple and Judas Priest, who either to a different or lesser extent were doing something similar. We used elements and refined them in a slightly different direction, put a bit more energy into it. Then the bands that came after us removed some of the melodic content, put a little bit more discord into it, and put their own energy into it.
I hear a lot of people saying it’s cool to hear that you’ve influenced bands. We played this one show in Germany in ’83, and basically everyone in there had just started a band. We’d hear about Kreator, Rage, Coroner, Doro Pesch – a whole bunch of bands. This one little show, it was really amazing to hear afterwards, “You guys are the reason we’re in this.
Songfacts: When did you first hear Metallica and what were your first impressions of them?
John: That’s a good one, as well. We’d already done a couple of shows, and in Halloween ’82, Jonny Z [head of Megaforce Records] flew us to America and said, “I want you to come back and do a tour in ’83. We’ve got this band for you. They’re the biggest band in San Francisco, and they’re going to open for you.”
“Y&T? For us?”
“No, not Y&T. Metallica.”
“Who? Never heard of them.”
So we got the tape of No Life ’til Leather [Metallica’s demo]. Put it on and it sounded like Motörhead at the wrong speed, like at 78. My hair blows back off my head like a hairdryer. I’m like, “Oh, these guys are impressive. This’ll be great. Yeah, fine, bring them on.” That was their first tour for us. Real young, real crazy. I mean, apart from Cliff [Burton]. Cliff was like an old soul on young shoulders. He was definitely their musical heart, and kept them somewhat grounded. But that’s how that all came about.
It was insane. Played all the way across America. With the bands and crew, it was like 17 people in a 6 person Winnebago in the middle of one of the hottest summers ever. We’re straight out of the frozen north of England and just boiling alive.
The shows were great, and we played this music that people normally would never have heard.
Songfacts: And then there’s that classic show at Roseland. I think it was in the summer of ’84, when Raven headlined over both Anthrax and Metallica.
John: That’s right. That was the show of three bands: Anthrax opened, Metallica played in the middle.
Songfacts: Anything stick out about that specific show?
John: Yeah. I remember it was really weird because I was married at the time, my brother was married, and our drummer had a very serious relationship. And all three of the women came over and we were all breaking up at the same time. So it was a lot of tension backstage with that right off the top. “Hey, honey, I’m divorcing you” – this kind of thing.
We were all set to go on and I remember Scott [Ian] from Anthrax was backstage with us, and we just got the word that some guy snuck onstage and picked up Mark’s prized Fender Telecaster and ran off with it. I lost my nut, the famous straw. I grabbed the door and I pulled the door off its hinges. I just remember Scott looking at me with absolute horror: “Oh, shit, I’ve never seen anybody do that before.” I was really mad, really pissed off.
Got the guitar back and we went on stage and tore it up like our lives depended on it. Which they probably did. [Laughs] There are photos of that on the Live at the Inferno album. I think the back cover is the end of that show.
Songfacts: You mentioned Cliff Burton before, does anything stick out as far as memories of hanging out with him on the road or anything like that?
John: Cliff was very cool. It’s funny, I hear people trying to imitate his bass solo [(Anesthesia) Pulling Teeth] and it’s playing beyond belief. He had a good knowledge of theory, he was a really good player and good guy. We’d sit backstage and trade riffs, showing each other different finger techniques. There’s this Allan Holdsworth song that had this weird chord and I figured it out on bass, and then he was trying to figure out what the name of the chord would be.
He had an interesting customized Rickenbacker bass that he played in the early days. I don’t know if you remember, Rickenbacker has this weird-looking bridge. Well, he tapped some parts out and snuck in a humbucking guitar pick-up right in the bridge, which was his little secret weapon.
And like me, he played with a lot of effects. A wall of distortion and what have you. I remember we played in Texas, and the opening band had a good bass player there, too. The poor audience had to suffer through three bass solos that night! Not the normal kind of bass solos, that’s for sure. [Laughing]
Aussie rockers Airbourne have released a new video for the song, Back In The Game, from their latest album Black Dog Barking, which was released through Roadrunner Records on May 21st. Watch it below.
Inspired by the likes of Judas Priest, Thin Lizzy, AC/DC and Motorhead, Airbourne has been winning fans since 2003 with their high-energy, whiplash-inducing, workingman’s rock ‘n’ roll. Their first album Runnin’ Wild was named 2007′s “Album of the Year” by SleazeRoxx.com, Best Debut Album at the 2008 Metal Hammer Golden Gods awards, and Spin said “Runnin’ Wild, Airbourne’s debut, is a smorgasbord of sledgehammer riffs, crass sex puns, and boozy sing-alongs.”
Hailing from Warrnambool, a small drinking town on the southwestern coast of Victoria, Australia, Airbourne — vocalist/lead guitarist Joel O’Keeffe, drummer Ryan O’Keeffe, guitarist David Roads, and bassist Justin Street — has gained an immense following with their explosive live shows and main stage festival appearances including a headliner spot at Wacken 2011, Rock Am Ring/Park (Germany) and Download (UK).
Airbourne is:
Joel O’Keeffe (vocals/lead guitar)
Ryan O’Keeffe (drums)
David Roads (guitar)
Justin Street (bass)
According to blabbermouth.net, Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward recently suffered a perforated diverticulitis (a very serious gastrointestinal condition in which the walls of the intestine have become perforated) and underwent surgery in California. The procedure was successful, and Ward is expected to make a full recovery over the next several weeks. As a result, the artist reception with Ward on October 26th at the Annapolis Collection Gallery in Maryland — where he was scheduled to discuss his fine art debut collection, Absence Of Corners is being postponed.
“I am truly sorry that I have to postpone the Absence Of Corners gallery reception,” said Ward. “The feedback I have received from everyone about this project has been astounding, and I was so looking forward to this event. I want to thank the Annapolis Collection Gallery for everything they are doing. I am honored that they are exhibiting my art, and I hope to get there to celebrate this collection with you all very soon.”
The gallery and Bill Ward have agreed to find another date in the future which will allow him time for a complete recovery.
In other Ward news, he recently told Sick Drummer Magazine that he is working on a new album called Accountable Beats.
