Pt II: Speak: Geoff Tate Recounts The Power Of TV, And Public Opinion, In Mindcrime’s Breakthrough
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This is a continuation of Christa's chat with 'Ryche frontman Geoff Tate. To read the first part of the interview, click here.
Blistering.com: What do you think you would have done if that album hadn’t been a hit?
Tate: Oh, I think another album. We just probably would have continued on. I guess just keep making records as long as we possibly could. Nothing’s really changed. [laughs]
Blistering.com: What song from that album is still exciting for you to sing?
Tate: Oh, all of it, really. I love doin’ the show. The whole Mindcrime show is really a treat to be able to perform that and I’m looking forward to . . . taking it to Europe this summer. Really lookin’ forward to it, ’cuz it’s been a while since we’ve played it, over a year. Will be kind of an interesting return, you know? Now, I might be eating my words after the first week when I’m completely exhausted and unable to get out of bed. [laughs again]
Blistering.com: That’s amazing, that even after all this time, as much as you guys have been playing it, you still get that much of a kick out of singing it.
Tate: Live, especially, because you have a different audience every night and they’re seeing it for the first time. There’s this really strange, kind of mystical exchange that happens between the audience and performer when you play live. I always sort of associate it to like a high jumper, where you have this bar that’s set and you get pretty good makin’ that mark every night with repetition and you play well, a standard that you set. But you have the audiences that just push you sometimes, and they give you so much that all of a sudden you’re jumpin’ higher than you even imagine you could and you’re doin’ things that normally you wouldn’t be able to do, ’cause you just have so much energy and support from them that it just pushes you over the edge, and I love that feeling.
Blistering.com: What did you think when you first heard the album from start to finish when you were done with it?
Tate: Ahhhh. I don’t really remember what I thought. At the time, when you’re mixing, you’re listening to everything with a very critical ear, and you’re going over the fine, minute details that people don’t usually pick up on unless they’re really studying it intensely, and sometimes you can get kinda overwhelmed with those little details and it tends to, I don’t know, kind of sidetrack you. Sometimes it’s good to sort of take a step back and try to look at it a little bit more objectively.
Like when we’re mixing I’ll go into different part of the room and listen to it, I’ll listen to it from outside the studio and through the door, listen to it on different kinds of music systems to see what it sounds like. And it sounds different everywhere you hear it, which is probably the most frustrating thing about recording, is you can work for months and months and months to make it sound a certain way, and then you take it outside the studio and you put it on your tape deck or your CD player at home, and, “Oh my God, I can hear, why is that high hat so loud? Oh, no!” [laughs] “How can that be?”
Blistering.com: You don’t recall anything like relief that it was finished or being excited about it?
Tate: Oh, I was definitely pleased with it and happy that it sounded so good. The whole process for making that record was really a wonderful experience, from the band’s involvement to Peter and Jimbo and Paul Northfield’s involvement with it. Just the locations that [we recorded in] added to the whole picture of what Mindcrime was for me.
Blistering.com: If you could do anything differently to that record, what do you think it would be?
Tate: Ahhhm. I probably would have made the lyrics a little bit easier to read [chuckles] . . . They’re all kind of strung together with no punctuation, and that’s sort of become a pet peeve of mine over the years. I like punctuation. I like to know what the author’s intending. I want to see emphasis, I want to see the flow of it, I wanna feel that, their perspective.
Blistering.com: You’re referring to the way the libretto is written out?
Tate: No, I’m referring to on the actual album. The lyrics, the way they were printed, was sort of like a stream of consciousness. Very small, tiny print, too. You almost had to use a magnifying glass to see.
Blistering.com: What do you think of the performance of the band as a whole at that time, considering your age and where you were in your career?
Tate: I thought it was a stepping stone to what we were going to become and what we were doing. It was another learning experience, and with every record you learn more, you gain more knowledge by the actual event and by working with a different team of people, production people. You learn different techniques and different ways of doing things. And each record we’ve done has been like that. It’s a learning experience, which I enjoy that quite a bit.
Blistering.com: Was there any performance by a member on a particular part that you thought came out especially well or that you particularly admire?
Tate: Oh, yeah, quite a bit of it. A lot of the guitar work that Michael [Wilton] and Chris did on it I thought was very inspired. The whole “Waiting For 22” section, those passages were completely inspired at the moment . . . we’re discussing like where the album was going and where the story was going and we felt like we needed a musical interlude, and the more we talked about it and talked about it, I can see the light startin’ to twinkle in Chris’ eyes and him getting an idea and him going, “What do you think about this chord? This chord?” And then Michael jumped in: “Oh, yeah! But do this to it,” you know, and then the improvising taking place and just walking right out in the control room and laying it down. Those kind of moments are just priceless. And those are the moments where in the studio, you hope that always happens where there’s gaps and pauses and places where you need something and there’s nothing planned, and somebody’ll step up to the plate and knock it out of the park with a wonderful idea and an execution that makes you believe it.
Blistering.com: If there was anything you could tell yourself then that you know now, about anything at all, be it about life or yourself or the music industry, what do you think you would tell yourself?
Tate: [laughs] I’d probably wished I could have talked to the EMI president at the time and revealed to him about the MP3 downloading. [laughs again] Say, “Look, you really need to figure out how to stop this. In fact, [instead of] releasing CDs, put a damper on it right now. Change the technology.”
Blistering.com: Now conversely, if you were back in the time you were recording Mindcrime and you were able to see 20 years ahead, what do you think you would have thought?
Tate: Um . . . gosh, I don’t know. I think we’re in a pretty good place. I like where we’re at. It’s very comfortable. We can tour, we can write what we want and make the records we wanna make and we have an audience in so many countries and a good life. And I would feel greedy to ask for more.
