Todd La Torre says that had “a nice, complimentary exchange” with Geoff Tate when the two singers recently encountered each other at a festival in Spain.
La Torre joined QUEENSRŸCHE as the replacement for Tate, who was the band’s original lead vocalist, after the latter was fired in 2012. A two-year legal battle followed where Tate sued for the QUEENSRŸCHE name, only for his former bandmates Michael Wilton (guitar), Scott Rockenfield (drums) and Eddie Jackson (bass) to respond with a countersuit. They eventually settled the dispute, with Wilton, Rockenfield and Jackson continuing as QUEENSRŸCHE, and Tate now having the sole right to perform the albums “Operation: Mindcrime” and “Operation: Mindcrime II” in their entirety live.
[metalwani_content_ad]Last month, Tate gave an interview to the “92 Minutes Of Hair With Mel” show on the Las Vegas, Nevada radio station KOMP 92.3 where he revealed that he had “a really nice little reunion” with his former bandmates on June 30 when they all performed the Rock Fest Barcelona festival in Barcelona. “I was playing with a band called AVANTASIA. I did a guest appearance with them, and they were headlining the festival,” Tate recalled. “And I read on the roster list that QUEENSRŸCHE was opening the festival. So I went out earlier in the day and watched their set. It was the first time I’d seen the band play without me. I’d never heard their new singer, but I watched them play and they were great, and that singer is fantastic. He’s amazing! He sounds just like me. It was eerie and weird. And then I met all the guys afterwards and shook hands with them, we hugged and said hello, and it was a really nice little reunion, you know, get-together.”
During an August 7 appearance on “Trunk Nation”, Eddie Trunk‘s show on SiriusXM channel Volume (106), La Torre recounted his meeting with Tate at Rock Fest Barcelona. He said: “[Geoff] was guest-performing with AVANTASIA. And I went to the [QUEENSRŸCHE] tour bus and I came back, and I noticed… It’s a big backstage with all the drum risers there — you know how it is — they’re rolling them in and out — and I saw him talking with Eddie. And so I thought, ‘Oh, that’s interesting,’ because, you know, with everything that went down, you never know how’s that dynamic gonna be if we’re ever in close proximity together.”
[metalwani_content_ad]According to Todd, the guys in QUEENSRŸCHE “didn’t know” that Geoff was going to be at the same event until “somebody had messaged me and said, ‘Hey, did you realize that there’s a likelihood that you’re gonna run into Geoff Tate there?’ So that was when I said to the guys, ‘Hey, just an F.Y.I.: he is performing with this band, so we’re probably gonna be in the same area. Just a heads up. I’m sure it’ll be cool, hopefully.’ And everyone was, like, ‘Okay. Whatever.”
La Torre continued: “And so I saw him chatting with Eddie, and it was cool. And then we were going on, I don’t know, maybe an hour, an hour and a half from that incident. And so our show started. He was stage left, so near Michael Wilton‘s side of the stage, and he stood there, I would imagine, it seemed like probably the whole show. I knew he was standing there watching. So afterward, the show was done and he came over, I exited the stage and he came over and kind of tapped me on the shoulder or something and said, ‘Hey,’ and put his hand out and said, ‘We never really had a chance to meet, really.’ And I said, ‘Sure.’ I shook his hand and he said, ‘With everything that kind of went down…’, and I said, ‘Of course.’ And he said, ‘This is the first time I’ver heard you sing.’ And I didn’t know if he meant at all or, obviously, live. And so I said, ‘Okay.’ He said, he goes, ‘Wow! You’re amazing!’ And I said, ‘Well, thank you very much. That’s nice to hear.’ And I was complimentary of him. I said, ‘Listen, for what it’s worth, I have defended you. I know that sometimes the media and people can try to stir the pot, and for what it’s worth, as far I’m concerned, you’ve done it all. I was kind of just expressing the sentiment, like, ‘You don’t have anything to prove in my book. You’ve already done it all.’ And I said, ‘I’m doing the best job that I know how.’ I told him that the ‘Empire’ material is actually more difficult for me. I expressed to him that he’s always had a very smooth control over those vocal parts, and that’s more difficult for me. Now the older stuff is easier for me.’
[metalwani_content_ad]At some point during Todd‘s conversation with Geoff, “Michael came over and [Tate] shook his hand and said, ‘Man, the set was tight. It sounded great,'” La Torre recalled. ‘So that was… We joked around and I think at the very end, I had said, ‘It would be funny, since everybody is always trying to start shit between us,’ I said, ‘if we took a selfie together, that would be kind of hilarious, pointing at each other.’ And we did, but I never posted the photograph, ’cause I thought, ‘I don’t need to stir any waters.’ But we had a little laugh, and there was no craziness, nothing weird. So, at the end of the day, as an outsider, I thought, ‘You know, this is good that we can be in the same area, and there’s no craziness or anything.”
Via Blabbermouth.com