File this in the ‘huh!?’ category. METAL SHOP listeners may strongly disagree.
RockshowCritique.com: “Queen Of The Reich” has been one of your most popular tunes yet over the past several years, you rarely played it live. Was that by choice or is it just a harder song to sing?
GT: “Actually its not very popular at all. It’s funny actually a lot of people don’t know about that song. A lot of people don’t care about that song. Its an early song that was written and it shows. It’s funny the reaction you get because it’s a lot of blank stares. In fact its the same stare you get when you play a new song that nobody’s heard before. People just aren’t that familiar with it. Given there are a few hardcore fans that might know that song or like that song and know what it is but the majority of the people there don’t. So its not really a song that I enjoy singing strictly because lyrically its pretty adolescent. It was the first song written thirty some odd years ago and obviously I cannot relate to it anymore. I think for performance its always best for the performer to really believe in the material their singing or playing. If you don’t believe in it its really difficult to get behind a song, do it well and do it at a level that comes across with any kind of believability. For me I honestly can’t relate to the whole dungeons and dragons lyrical content of that song its really cartoonish and juvenile to me.”
In other recent interviews, Tate seems to be really trying to distance himself from his Queensrÿche past.
PureGrainAudio.com: In your vocation it becomes difficult because when you go out and play live, you have to play what you wrote twenty years ago. How do you approach a song that’s twenty years old and make it fresh from today’s perspective?
Geoff: There’s a huge amount of pressure to be a nostalgia act… Just play “Empire” songs. No! I don’t just want to keep playing “Empire” songs. I want to write new music. I want to keep stretching and growing as a musician and an artist. I’m going to do that no matter how much people tell me I can’t.
PureGrainAudio.com: But you still have to deliver it with conviction when you step on that stage…
Geoff: “And I want to and that’s why I don’t do some songs from the past because I can’t deliver them with any kind of conviction. I can’t get behind those lyrics. I gave up dungeons and dragons when I was thirty, you know what I’m saying?”
PureGrainAudio.com: What songs in particular?
Geoff: The first two albums. That stuff. I can’t… I understand and appreciate that some people really like it, but I liked it at the time I wrote it. But I’m in my fifties now and I don’t look at it the same way now. I don’t want to do a song that I can’t throw down with complete conviction because it’ll come across as fake.