The Breakup and Revival of Queensryche

In an earlier blog entry, I looked at how Dennis DeYoung repeatedly tried to make his rock band Styx all about himself and his musical vision, eventually resulting in him being fired from the band permanently in 1999.

Regretting the Past: A critical look at the Styx album Kilroy Was Here.

Obviously, a BAND should be a more or less equal partnership among the members. If you don’t want that, then you should be only a SOLO artist.

The progressive metal band called Queensryche faced a similar situation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queensr%C3%BFche#Rising_West,confrontation,_split_and_lawsuit_with_Geoff_Tate(2012%E2%80%932014)

In a band meeting on April 12, 2012,^[61] which [lead singer Geoff] Tate did not attend, the band fired both Tate’s stepdaughter, Miranda, from running the fan club, and his wife Susan, their band manager since 2005.^[21] According to Wilton, the reasons were that “the last 3 years, basically it just came to a point that we didn’t have a voice in the band anymore. It was all run by the singer and his manager, the wife.”^[62] On April 14, 2012, before the soundcheck for a show in São Paulo, Brazil, Tate had an argument with the other members about the firing of his family.^[16]^[21] This confrontation became heated, leading to Tate retaliating by knocking down the drum kit,^[63] throwing several punches and physically assaulting^[64] and spitting on Rockenfield and Wilton.^[60] Over the course of the band’s next three shows, Wilton, Rockenfield, and Jackson felt that Tate continued to misbehave and they came “to the conclusion that they can no longer work or perform with Mr. Tate.”^[21]^[65] They called a band meeting on June 5^[65] (some sources say June 6^[21]). Tate withdrew from this conference call, after which the other band members voted to “consider Geoff Tate expelled from the band” and “continue to use the Queensrÿche name with a new lead singer”, prompting Tate to take legal action.^[66]

So why did it all come to this? Well, it happened because Tate, who was indeed a co-founder of the band, was also one of rock music’s greatest singers and so he must have thought he could never be replaced.

Here is one of Queensryche’s early songs, featuring Tate on lead vocals:

No one can deny his incredible power…….but that does not excuse his trying to constantly dominate the rest of the band, ever!

Geoff Tate tried to form his own version of Queensryche and this band even released an album:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_Unknown

And the album cover, well……see for yourself:

Queensryche_with_Geoff_Tate_-_Frequency_Unknown

A fist aimed at the camera with the letters F U on it? Real classy, Tate!

Legal action later caused Tate to be deprived of any rights to the Queensryche name. Meanwhile…..

When the band flew [new lead singer Todd] La Torre in from Florida to Seattle nine days before the show to rehearse at Rockenfield’s house, they hadn’t played a note together, nor did they know whether it would work.^[44] Although La Torre was a big fan of Queensrÿche’s older albums,^[62] he was not very familiar with the songs on Promised Land and they had only limited time to prepare for the shows, the band focused on the material from the Queensrÿche EP to the band’s fourth studio album, Empire,^[62] which are generally considered the band’s heaviest releases^{[by whom?]}, and according to La Torre: “are the songs and the time period that most represented the core sound of what Queensryche material was about”.^[73] Their first rehearsal together went very smoothly, according to Wilton: “we blasted through 18 to 20 songs and everybody was amazed from the professionality, the musicianship and tone of Todd’s voice.”^[62] Rockenfield was immediately reassured: “the second we played “Queen of the Reich”, it was all over.”^[44]