QUEENSRŸCHE Vocalist TODD LA TORRE Recalls Covering 'Operation: Mindcrime' Classics As Teenage Drummer

"Lamont & Tonelli" of San Francisco radio station 107.7 The Bone recently conducted an interview with QUEENSRŸCHE vocalist Todd La Torre. You can listen to the full chat below. A couple of excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET):

On his musical influences:

Todd: "I grew up in the '70s and '80s, so STEELY DAN, FLEETWOOD MAC, HEART... The '70s singer/songwriter era was one of my favorites, Tom Petty, that kind of stuff... Then in my early teens is when I started to get into more hard rock, so I was listening to DOKKEN, RATT and TESLA... Then I got into the heavier stuff, like SLAYER and PANTERA and whatnot. But IRON MAIDEN, QUEENSRŸCHE, DIO, STRYPER, those were kind of my favorite bands. I started playing drums at 13, so once I heard that kind of operatic power metal vocal styling, I knew that that was kind of the path musically that I felt so attracted to."

On what songs he remembers covering in his first bands:

Todd: "We used to play 'Don't Talk To Strangers' from DIO. That was always a fun one. Back in the day, XYZ had a big hit on the radio, so we used to play that. Some VAN HALEN... It's hard to say what the best cover was, because there was kind of a nice variety, but during the mid-to-late '80s, we were playing just a lot of the big, popular, some of the obscure stuff... in fact, we did play 'I Don't Believe In Love' and 'Eyes Of A Stranger' from QUEENSRŸCHE when I was, like, 15 years old. I was drumming back then, so I wasn't even singing. I never sang in a band until I joined CRIMSON GLORY until 2010 or 2011."

QUEENSRŸCHE has released two albums thus far with La Torre on vocals: 2013's "Queensrÿche" and 2015's "Condition Hüman".

The band is scheduled to enter the studio in September to begin recording its next disc for an early 2018 release.