GEOFF TATE Does Not Regret His Decisions Or Musical Adventures

Tom Murphy of the Denver Westword recently conducted an interview with QUEENSRŸCHE singer Geoff Tate. An excerpt from the chat follows below.

Denver Westword: You've done at least one acoustic tour in the past. What do you enjoy most about that format of a performance?

Tate: It's different and playing with the band without the big noise. I like that. From a vocalist standpoint it's incredible because one, you can really hear yourself well. You're not fighting with drums for space. It's a bit more naked not being propped up or hiding behind a wall of noise. You realize very quickly that the audience can hear every little nuance. They can hear you breathe. I like that edge of being almost like a vocal nudist.

Denver Westword: What do you like about being that exposed?

Tate: Maybe I'm a closet nudist, I don't know. No, I don't know. I just like it. I also like doing different renditions of songs and take them in a different direction. Sometimes you wish you could re-do a song. Maybe you felt like you didn't quite nail it, or it took on a different direction than you thought it was going to be. When you play acoustically, you can strip the song back to its basic form. It's either going to stand on its or fall on its face. It's very exposed, and I just enjoy that. Our last tour really started in my living room. My wife and I entertain quite a bit. A lot of our friends are musicians. It's kind of customary around our house after dinner that everyone gathers in the living room, and there's all kinds of instruments laying around, and we pick up stuff and play songs and entertain each other. That tour was fun.

Denver Westword: As an artist over fifty, what do you that you've been able to shed from your psyche that perhaps held you back or otherwise interfered with the full expression of your creativity at an earlier age?

Tate: I'll tell you, fifty is a very strange age. It's different, I think, for women than men. It's different based upon what culture you live in. At fifty, you've already done a lot of things in life. Hopefully you've done them well and achieved some success at what you've done. But you're also at a point where you realize that half your life is over. Probably more than half. So how are you going to spend that? Are you going to keep doing what you're doing until the day you die or are you going to change some stuff up and really hit that bucket list heavy. So you're at kind of a crossroads, and I think anybody at age fifty is probably at that point looking at their life. You know, "I can see where I'm going, and I know where I'm going, so how am I going to go there? Am I going to go there of my own volition of my own physicality? Or am I going to propped up on medication and that kind of thing to get me through there." All of these kinds of things are going on in your head. The kids are growing up and moving out of the house. It's a time of transition. An exciting time, and I think that all comes through the music in some way. I finished my solo album last fall and people that are curious about that can see what a fifty-year-old is thinking about. I have a hard time with the judgment aspect of [assessing a previous age] because I think everything you experience makes you who you are. It's all important to your development. Perhaps wearing tights probably wasn't a good idea. I maybe regret that a little bit. But I could rock the tights, so why not? They were in style at the time. You work with what you have and what you find interesting. People ask me all the time if I regret my decisions or musical adventures, and I never do. It's all part of who I am and how I got to be where I'm at and it's a part of my history. So there's nothing to regret. I did the best I could.

Read the entire interview at Denver Westword.

Photo credit: Stephanie Cabral