Former QUEENSRŸCHE Singer GEOFF TATE: 'I'll Always Perform The Music I Wrote'

Jon Ballard of Fresno, California's 105.1 The Blaze radio station recently conducted an interview with former QUEENSRŸCHE singer Geoff Tate. You can now listen to the chat using the SoundCloud widget below. A couple of excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On whether it's a bittersweet experience performing QUEENSRŸCHEsongs after he has agreed to give up the rights to the group's name to his former bandmates and continue under the name OPERATION: MINDCRIME:

Tate: "No, not really. I mean, I'll always perform the music I wrote and the songs I performed on throughout my career; I'll continue to do that. The only thing that's different is I'll be performing under a different name. It's very similar to what Ronnie James Dio went through with HEAVEN & HELL and the BLACK SABBATH situation. They couldn't use the name BLACK SABBATH, so they had to come up with a different name, and they chose the name of one of their better-known records. And it was a very successful combination that pleased everyone. So this situation is really no different than that."

On his "Rock And Vaudeville" show:

Tate: "Well, it's a show that I wrote with my writing partner, Jason Ames, and we came up with this musical. And what it is is a history of rock. So we perform songs and kind of perform a show that exhibits the progression and the evolution of rock music, starting in the 1950s all the way up to the present. So we cover a lot of ground, as you can imagine — all the wonderful songs from 40 or 50 years of rock music, and we show it's changed and progressed and who pushed the buttons to make those changes happen musically. And the whole show is done with a little drama, comedy… It's a very fun show. We wrote the show and performed five shows and filmed it in order to kind of archive it and also to kind of explain it to people, 'cause we're planning on taking it on the road and taking it to different places around the world."

Named after QUEENSRŸCHE's epic concept album from 1988, "Operation: Mindcrime", Tate's new band will include Rudy Sarzo (OZZY OSBOURNE, WHITESNAKE),Simon Wright (AC/DC, DIO),Randy Gane (MYTH) and Kelly Gray (QUEENSRYCHE 1998 - 2001, 2012 - present).

OPERATION: MINDCRIME will enter the studio in September to begin recording a trilogy project that Geoff's been working on for the past two years.