GEOFF TATE On Phone-Throwing Incident: I Took A Picture Before Tossing It Back

QUEENSRŸCHE singer Geoff Tate was interviewed on this past weekend's edition of "The Classic Metal Show", which is heard live on Saturdays from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. EST at TheClassicMetalShow.com. You can now listen to the chat in the YouTube clip below.

On the upcoming QUEENSRŸCHE court case in November:

Tate: "What we're doing in November is we're dissolving our corporation. And that's really what this whole court case is about. It has nothing to do with music, it has nothing to do with 'he said, she said,' it's just dissolving the corporations and paying off the members of the corporation, and who has the money to buy it will buy it. Whoever has the most money to buy will get it. [laughs] It's as simple as that.

"In a sense, there will be one QUEENSRŸCHE [after the court case in November], whether that's a band… we don't know. It's a brand; it's what it is. It's a name that has value, and so that brand has to be purchased by an individual, or groups of indivudals. So that's where it's at… It's rules and regulations that are established by the state and the federal government on how to dissolve corporations. It's all regulated, it's a paint-by-numbers kind of thing. And that's what's so ridiculous about all the debate about this. It doesn't have any sway; it doesn't have anything to do with the case at all. [laughs] All it did was create publicity, which QUEENSRŸCHE hasn't had in years. And I've gotta tell you, Gene Simmons [KISS] was right [when he said] 'Any publicity is good publicity.' 'Cause we've had more sellouts on this QUEENSRŸCHE run that I've done than QUEENSRŸCHE has had in ten years."

On the May 17 incident in St. Charles, Illinois where he took a cell phone from one of the audience members and threw it behind him into the crowd (see video below):

Tate: "That happens a lot. In the frenzy of a concert, there's all kind of activity that happens with the front row. It's a metal show, it's rough, it's chaotic, it's intense. And that particular situation, I grabbed the guy's phone, took a picture and tossed it back to him, but he missed it 'cause the lights were in his eyes. And he was actually in our meet-and-greet after the show. And we were laughing about it. I said, 'Oh, man. I'm sorry. Did your phone get damaged?' And he said, 'Don't worry about it. It's no big deal.' Which was really funny. But because we're in this court case, and there's a group of people that are interested in trying to create sides, they just ran with this thing and tried to make me look bad, and I don't think I look bad at all. My God. No big deal. The guy was laughing, we were happy and we had drinks backstage."

Interview (audio):

Video footage of above-mentioned phone-throwing incident: