Paging Samsara. Samsara to the front please. There is a customer who needs your assistance. Thank you.
Not sure what I can add to the discussion. At the end of the day, both sides in the Queensryche debacle are at fault, almost on an equal level for the band's fracture.
On one hand, when Chris left (and he looks smarter and smarter for doing that with each passing year), Tate and his wife ultimately assumed the business and creative roles Chris vacated, at least in terms of direction and leadership. That's commendable, and expected. Over the years, the Tates did some...questionable and in some cases vile things, and in some cases, obviously took advantage of their power and influence within the band to steer things to their advantage (all the nepotism, etc.). And as everyone knows, that all came to a head, particularly after Tate tried to sell the rights to Mindcrime out from under the rest of the group, and the direction(s) Tate was interested in weren't something the rest of the band was behind, nor was the majority of the fan base.
On the other hand, the rest of the band (Wilton, Jackson, Rockenfield), let it all happen. They were content with their wallets getting bigger through increased touring opportunities, and didn't want to rock the boat until the band's reputation had fiinallly crashed and burned, and they ultimately learned about the attempted Mindcrime rights sale. That was the key event that pushed them to make the moves they did, in my opinion. It came down to...money. On top of that, they got progressively complacent after Empire's success. They let Chris drive the ship, which makes sense given the success, but they tended to leave everything for him to handle at that point (at least from everything I've ever heard/read). That and other tensions really got to Chris and Chris left. I blogged about this last year and did my best to cover the Chris departure(s) from a speculative point of view --
http://anybodylistening.net/whychrisdegarmoleft.html. That may give some of you that aren't really familiar with the history some insight to what may have happened. Then once Q2k flopped (which was a band effort steered by Tate and Kelly Gray) and Tribe fizzled because the Chris reunion didn't work (allegedly because the Tates' power play angered Chris and he left), the band got complacent again, leaving everything to Tate to do (see the pattern?). You can argue Tate shut them out during the Mindcrime II-Dedicated to Chaos years, but you can also argue he felt he needed to just push forward, because that the band wasn't interested in working creatively with him. Both are probably true to a degree. There's equal fault all over the place.
I don't condone any of Tate's actions (the physical altercations, the spitting, the taking advantage of things, etc.). All of that is disturbing and wrong. But I can, retrospectively, having some personal experience with Wilton, Jackson, and Rockenfield, see why Tate was so frustrated with those guys. And conversely, I also see their frustration with him. Tate's right about one thing though. He said in a recent article that the main problem since 2011, when the fracture really started to widen, and then the split ultimately in 2012, is that none of them will just sit down and talk together and start the healing process. And I get it, I get why. But at the end of the day, you had a relationship for 30+ years, with some enormous highs and low-lows. It may not have been a great one, but given the opportunity, even if the endgame isn't reuniting, but just forgiveness and healing, isn't that worth taking the olive branch?
Topic: Official Queensryche thread: Kickstart the next album (Read 707111 times)
