QUEENSRCHE Singer Says 'Dedicated To Chaos' Is 'Definitely A Record That Is Very Creative'

Ted Hansen of the Mesa Classic Rock Music Examiner recently conducted an interview with vocalist Geoff Tate of Seattle progressive rockers QUEENSRCHE. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Mesa Classic Rock Music Examiner: It's probably very fitting that your latest album is titled "Dedicated To Chaos".

Tate: It's a title that can be taken a number of different ways. For me chaos is that place where creativity exists, you make something out of nothing. This record is definitely a record that is very creative. There are lots of different musical experimentation on it and lots of different types of songs on it. Everyone in the band really threw themselves into it to kind of push our envelope musically to see where we could take our chemistry again.

Mesa Classic Rock Music Examiner: How are the fans reacting on your current tour to your new songs?

Tate: Actually, real good. New songs never go over as well as older songs, of course, because people need more time to digest the stuff. Usually, the new songs that you are doing do better the next time you come through town because the people know them a lot better and they react to them better. It depends on the performer. It's kind of your job to sell the new song to people and set it up so they understand what it's about if you're hitting them with something they never heard. A back story really helps. I like to set the mood, set the tone and explain what you are thinking about when you are writing it.

Mesa Classic Rock Music Examiner: So it helps explain the "what the heck were you thinking?" questions they may be having?

Tate: Yeah. It's a difficult job to communicate. Not just speaking of songs, but in general. Communication is something that people take things you say in so many different ways. Body language has a lot to do with communication and you miss that on a record. You're depending totally on the music to get the lyrics across. We have to set the mood. Things can really be interpreted a number of different ways so it's helpful sometimes to give them a line to follow. We all listen to music differently. We hear it differently. We run it through our own personal filters. Certain songs become very important to people because it's a song they gravitated to at a certain point in their life. Perhaps it became the theme music for their life at some point so it means something very special to them. So you have to take that into consideration when you are picking out a set list. Trying to pick things that you like to do as an artist and also things that the audience is going to relate to as well.

Mesa Classic Rock Music Examiner: Your stage shows have always been very creative.

Tate: We try to make it interesting for the fans that come out and see us. We recognized early on that the way we were going to make a living was to be able to play live, so we really pushed that as far as presenting a live show. Because we would come to a town every year we thought that people after a while are going to say, well I've seen them, why would I want to see them again? So we just decided, let's try to make it different each time and see what we could do. We just started putting our heads together and coming up with ideas for different presentations.

Read the entire interview from Mesa Classic Rock Music Examiner.

Photo by Andy Batt