Former QUEENSRŸCHE Singer GEOFF TATE: 'Metal, As A Genre, Is Incredibly Limiting'

In a brand new interview with The Rock River Times, former QUEENSRŸCHE singer Geoff Tate spoke about the songwriting process during the band's earlier years while original guitarist Chris DeGarmo was still a member of the group.

"When you have a band, that group of people comes together for a number of different reasons," Geoff said. "In our case, it was musically. Chris and I had a very strong, clear vision of what we wanted to do musically, and that vision was really about not having boundaries as to what we created. We wanted to write and present music that we imagined, rather than what other people expected or thought we should do. That gave us a real positive jumping-off point for the band and everything we did that followed.

"We never really wrote records to conform to what other people or other bands did; we wrote records that we loved and felt strongly about. That was always Chris' and my vision, and being the kind of personalities that we are, Chris and I, we just did that, and the other guys in the band fell in line with that. They were comfortable with that setup, and that's how we operated for many, many years. It wasn't like we were dictators or land barons keeping the serfs out of the fields or anything like that. [laughs] It was not like that. It was more that it worked well, we enjoyed what we did, I'm speaking of Chris and I, and it worked, so the other guys in the band were fine with that for a long, long period of time."

He continued: "It was never a democracy on the creative end of things… It was always a matter of, 'OK, who has the idea that everybody thinks is the strongest?' If you didn't have an opinion on it, well, then, you didn't have an opinion on it. And most of the time, that was the case. There just wasn't a strong opposition to anything, and, to be honest, that's still the way it was all the way up to, oh, 2012 with the split. It was always, 'Oh, OK, great idea. Let's run with that. Do you have anything to add? No? OK, well, let's go with that, then. [laughs]"

Asked if he thinks some of the fans misinterpreted his comments about not being a "metal guy," Tate replied: "Oh, yeah, I'm sure. People read whatever meaning they wanna read into whatever statements are made.

"The way I feel about 'metal' is I just don't like genres in the first place. I think genres are limiting and are kind of like wearing handcuffs for a person who's a writer or who is creative, because that means there is this box that you have to conform to.

"Like I said earlier, Chris and I were never interested in being confined by other people's vision. Our vision was the one we wanted to explore in, and I think that's a very healthy place to be.

"Metal, as a genre, is incredibly limiting — it explores a very few emotions, angst and violence being predominant. Once you've written from that point of view, there's only so many other ways that you can fashion and write music in order to express yourself. That's what I've always been interested in, is exploring all those different facets and all those different emotions of humanity through music. We just didn't feel it was necessary to only spend time creatively exploring anger and violence. [laughs]"