Geoff, thanks for taking time out for this! The new CD/DVD Live at the Moore sets are out today. Would you say this release is the most ambitious of your career?

Yeah. I would definitely classify it as that! It’s been a really long, long project. The album itself started back around 1990 and we never finished it. It was always on the back burner. We just weren’t ready for it. We finally got the album done and putting it out was a real milestone for us. Deciding to film the whole thing was a really great idea at the time, but I remember somewhere along the six month of planning it that I was questioning my sanity! Getting everybody in line – we went through about three or four editors and a couple of directors. It was really quite an ordeal. What we got at the end of the day was a really good filming of the show. It’s something very special for the fans.

Planning it and pulling it off sounds like a huge task, but you’re only halfway there. Editing is a huge process, too. How involved were you in going through the footage and the final edits?

I was very involved. I’ve done these video projects before and you can learn as you go. The first impulse is to film everything. If you really film everything you’ll just have so much stuff to look through. It’s weeks and weeks of looking at footage and marking sections. You sit in this dark room staring at a computer screen for weeks and weeks and it drives you crazy! This time we decided to do it a little differently. We filmed it all over two nights. We had a set amount of cameras so we only had so much footage to go through. We just made sure we had it right. The band was very well rehearsed. We’d been on tour for a while and we were very comfortable with it. It’s all about the planning – what cameras to use, what angles to shoot from. Pre-planning definitely helps when you’re looking at all the footage. You’ll end up with five good shots to pick from instead of 16 bad ones!

Since there was so much pre-planning involved, did that hinder you during the set? Did you ever think about double-checking a camera or light to make sure it’s in the right place or was it almost a relief to know that everything was taken care of?

The Mindcrime show is such an involved presentation that I get lost in it. I lose myself in the character. I’m really unaware about where a camera is or where the audience is. Planning it out ahead of time was good because I didn’t even think about it. I just did my show and got into the part.

Is this how you envisioned the Mindcrime story playing out when the first part was released in 1988?

No, not really. It’s been one of those projects that you build as you go along. It started out with the story and the outline and getting the band on the same page. When that was finished it gives you a launching pad to go to the next step. That’s what happened. When looking at it critically we said we could do this or that – it just gave us somewhere to go. It’s really changed over the years. We’ve never performed it before like it is on this DVD. I like the way it turned out. The addition of some new music and some of the parts being changed around tells the story a little better. We added Mary’s death scene. That seems to have been a bone of contention with a lot of fans over the years. They weren’t quite sure who killed Mary or if she really died. I think the DVD really spells that out nicely.

Music fans are eating up the fact that Dio’s performance of “The Chase” is on the DVD. How did you snag him for that show?

It was just a phone call and trying to coordinate schedules. We finally got him in the same city and we did a soundcheck rehearsal. It went really quick. When he came out on stage for the show it was like 100,000 volts shot into the audience! He’s quite a performer and a legend. When he makes an appearance people go crazy. It’s a short song. I wish it could’ve kept going. We had a great time together.

Would you say that Operation:Mindcrime is the defining record for Queensryche? Is that a good thing or not?

It’s definitely a milestone for the band. Up until the time we did the first Mindcrime we’d been playing around with themes on our albums and writing about certain concepts. We’d never done a full story. That was our first conceptual piece that told a story. That was a big creative step for us. It was eventually so well received and so many people related to that story and those songs. Through performing it a few hundred times it really helped cement it into the minds of the audience. We like to experiment with our music and take each record in a different step from the last. We try to keep progressing as writers. Some people say we ask a lot from our audience. We’re not just a brand name that keeps pumping out the same thing each time. Some people have a bit of a hard time accepting that. In a way I think it’s been great for our career. We have a lot of longevity here – 28 years as a band. I think it’s because we experiment and keep it fresh for our audience.

When it comes to working on a new record, do the successes of Operation:Mindcrime and Empire ever mentally work against you or does it reinforce the idea to do something new?

Well, I don’t think it’s something we think about too much. We got into this because we love music. We felt that we had a special chemistry together as a band. Our motto from day one was to not put limits on the band. We were going to create music that was dependent upon how we felt. We weren’t going to get pigeonholed into some sort of image or style. That was our goal. We’ve kept up with that. We’ve kept pushing and changing and luckily it works for us. Everyone in the band comes from musical backgrounds that are very widespread. If you look at everybody’s record collections there’s probably every record ever made! We love music. You can take any style of music and apply it to what you do. It could be a jazz record with all that free-form ad-libbing, which is really exciting for a musician, but somewhat tedious for an audience to listen to. You can learn from that. Every style of music lends itself for inspiration. We pull from a lot of styles when we’re working on a record. We’re constantly referencing other bands when we’re in a writing session. That’s a real heathly kinda way to make music – find inspiration in what other people do and then apply it to what you do. So many people get locked into their idea of what hard rock is, it has a boundary. They can’t see past that. “Metal” is what we decide it’s going to be. It’s a style of music that has no boundaries. Anything can be a metal song, really. It’s all how you apply your musicality to it.

It’s great that you’re on the Heaven & Hell tour this September. How long will you set be?

It varies. Sometimes is 45 minutes. Sometimes it’s an hour.

How will you make up the setlist?

We’re going to pull from all of our records and play a bunch of songs we haven’t played before, some rarities, and kinda mix it up a little bit. We’ll play something different every night.

There’s a new hits collection coming out next month. How involved did you get to be on this one?

That’s a real cool one. It’s a two-record set. It’s got songs that were hits, some live versions, some studio versions that didn’t get used. There’s also a disc of rarities. Chris DeGarmo and I recently wrote a song that’s going to be included on that called “Justified”. There’s also some really weird stuff. Before I was in Queensryche I was in a band called Myth. We wrote a lot of original songs and then the band broke up. I took those songs and brought them to Queensryche and we made different songs out of them. We retained a lot of lyrics and melodies. We’ve include those songs. Fans can see how inspiration for some of those songs came about. It’s fun to hear that. There was a song that Queensryche originally wrote called “Waiting for the Kill” that didn’t make the Warning album. Our producer at the time thought we needed to go back to the drawing board with that song. Chris, Michael and I re-wrote the song and turned it into “N M 156″ which ended up on the album. You’ll get to hear it in it’s original form and you can hear how we took it apart and turned it into something new.

You mentioned working with Chris DeGarmo again. How did that come together and are there future plans to work together?

We’ve talked about working together again. We had a really good time working on this new song. It was fun hanging out again. We talked about doing other projects together – outside of Queensryche. It’s definitely a possibility.

You’ve got dates scheduled through December. Is there a break anytime soon?

Well, we really weren’t going to tour much this year. We were going to lay low and work on another studio album. We’re doing that now. Some of these dates came up that we just couldn’t say no to. We’re going to work around the recording schedule. We have a couple of dates this month. The Heaven & Hell tour starts in September for about five weeks. Then we go to Europe with Thin Lizzy and then we’re home for Christmas. We’re going out on a US tour in January that’s about five weeks. We’re going to try to finish the record then.

How’s the new record progressing?

It’s going really well. It’s very adventurous for us. It’s a theme record. I wouldn’t say it a story, but all the songs are related to one topic.

What is the topic? How much can you give away?

That’s all I can say!

July 4th is tomorrow. Do you have any special plans to celebrate?

Yeah! I’ve got some family coming in and every year on the Fourth of July in the Seattle area they have a huge fireworks display. We’re going to go out on our boat, watch some fireworks, eat too much, and drink too much!

Have a safe holiday, Geoff. Is there something you’d like to say to the fans?

Thanks for listening! We appreciate it and we’ll keep making records and touring for as long as we possibly can!