Operation: Mindcrime (1988)Lead vocals/keyboards: Geoff Tate
Guitars/vocals: Chris DeGarmo
Guitars/vocals: Michael Wilton
Bass/vocals: Eddie Jackson
Drums/percussion: Scott Rockenfield
OverviewIf you're reading this, you're no doubt already familiar with
Operation: Mindcrime. Lauded by both fans and critics, the album broke Queensr˙che through to the mainstream, and is put on a pedestal as one of the best rock/metal concept albums of all-time.
In fact, Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden told Maiden leader Steve Harris that
Operation: Mindcrime was better than Iron Maiden's concept record
Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (Harris disagreed, obviously). See
https://teamrock.com/feature/2015-09-04/iron-maiden-album-by-album-in-their-own-words.
Drawing influence from Pink Floyd's
The Wall and The Who's
Tommy,
Operation: Mindcrime is approximately an hour long, and showcases Queensryche's maturity as songwriters. Released in May 1988, the record expertly combines elements of prog, hard rock, metal to support the varying emotions found in a tale about revolution, manipulation, addiction and relationships. The idea behind the concept was Geoff Tate's. The singer spent time after the
Rage for Order tour cycle in Montreal, overhearing various tidbits about revolutionary plots from seedier characters at bars. According to Tate, he was walking home one night, and found himself drawn to enter a church, and the basis for the story that would become
Operation: Mindcrime came to him in a flood of imagery and ideas.
After sketching out a rough outline, including the creation of the character “Sister Mary” (who is based on a woman who was dressed as a nun at a club Tate and DeGarmo visited while on tour in Europe for
Rage for Order), Tate brought the idea to the band, who were dead set against doing it. Tate eventually won over DeGarmo, however, who immersed himself into the concept, and then convinced the band to give it a shot. The idea finally clicked with all of them, and Queensr˙che started work on the project in earnest.
The ConceptNote: I'm not going to go track-by-track here. This is more or less just a loose summary of what happens in the story. By now, I would think most reading this know the characters and how the story unfolds.
Operation: Mindcrime is the tale of three central characters – Nikki, Sister Mary, and Dr. X. Nikki, a bit of drifter, hears rumblings on the street about a revolution and gets roped into becoming a hit man for Dr. X, the leader of the revolutionary movement. As the story unfolds, Nikki gets involved with Mary, a prostitute that has “reformed” and become a nun. Mary isn't nearly as “reformed,” however, as she “services” the priest over her, before becoming involved with Nikki.
To test Nikki's loyalty, and growing addiction to drugs that Dr. X provides, X tasks Nikki with killing Mary, along with the priest. Nikki meets Mary, but finds himself unable to kill her. The priest is shot, and Nikki ends up finding Mary dead afterward. Nikki then finds himself on the run from the police, who have targeted Nikki as the killer of both, even though the whole operation was orchestrated by Dr. X.
As the story concludes, Nikki finds himself depressed, heartbroken over Mary, and firmly painted as a murderer, all while Dr. X continues with his life. The record ends with Nikki trying to come to grips with who he is. At the end, the listener notes that Nikki is still in a mental hospital. This leads to the inevitable questions of whether the story really happened, or was it just a drug-induced dream from an insane person?
Note: The record is also circular (much as how
The Warning was supposed to be) in that the end fades into the introduction of the first track.
Music & VocalsMusically,
Operation: Mindcrime is firmly rooted in the twin heavy metal guitar attack of Chris DeGarmo and Michael Wilton. The band is arguably at the height of its technical prowess here, as DeGarmo and Wilton play off one another not only in trade-off and harmonized leads, but to create huge chords as well.
“One area where DeGarmo and Wilton particularly distinguish themselves is in the orchestration of their rhythm parts,” said John Walker of Dinosaur Rock Guitar. “Their approach is closest to Tipton and Downing's: two players using dissimilar tones and different chord inversions to separate themselves in the mix. But DeGarmo and Wilton take this approach further by combining two different chords to create one complex chord. When they do this, DeGarmo normally takes the lower part, and Wilton stacks a higher part over the top of it. This is hard to do without creating sonic mud. But by separating their sounds spatially and using different timbres, they achieve definition.”
See
https://www.dinosaurrockguitar.com/node/17.
To help further that definition between the two players, the guitars of DeGarmo and Wilton are at times separated in the mix, with DeGarmo appearing in one channel, and Wilton the other (specifically on trade-off solos). Each play to their collective and individual strengths on
Operation: Mindcrime, with Wilton handling some of the more aggressive leads (“Speak,” “Revolution Calling,” “The Needle Lies,” etc.), while DeGarmo's solos enhance the more emotive songs (“The Mission,” “Suite Sister Mary”). The two harmonize or trade-off on most of the others.
Don't forget the contributions of Eddie Jackson (bass) and Scott Rockenfield (drums) on
Operation: Mindcrime, however. Both are playing arguably the most aggressive rhythms of their careers on the album, providing a steady, yet complex backdrop for the story to be told. Guitarists are often noted for helping drive the emotion of a song, but on
Operation: Mindcrime, the rhythm section holds significant responsibility in this regard.
Geoff Tate gives arguably the most storied performance of his professional life on
Operation: Mindcrime, both as a singer and a lyricist. Tate showcases all areas of his operatic range and a penchant for taking on character roles and delivering them with conviction. Pamela Moore lends her sultry vocals on “Suite Sister Mary,” breathing life into a character that fans would praise for decades to come. Tate and Moore unite on the track, providing a captivating climax to the
Operation: Mindcrime story.
Moore at the time was working in a local music store and doing commercials for radio and TV. DeGarmo heard her voice on a commercial, and sought her out specifically for the role of Sister Mary. Moore didn't actually sing with Geoff in the studio, however. DeGarmo and Tate explained the story to her, and handed her a tape upon arrival in Montreal. She tracked her vocals the next day. See
https://anybodylistening.net/4.html for more on that.
RecordingOriginally, Neil Kernon was going to produce Queensr˙che again, after the band was so happy with his work on
Rage for Order. He got tied up with Dokken, however, and the band turned to Peter Collins, and a team of Paul Northfield and James “Jimbo” Barton to handle the production, engineering, and mixing, respectively, on
Operation: Mindcrime. Michael Kamen, who did orchestration on The Warning, handled orchestration on
Operation: Mindcrime as well. The record was recorded in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, and in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
The choir vocals were handled by the “Moronic Monks of Morin Heights,” who doubled, in their spare time, as the staff of Le Studio in Montreal. ;-) Anthony Valentine played Dr. X, Debbie Wheeler was the hospital nurse, Mike Snyder's voice was used as the TV anchorman, and the late Scott Mateer played Father William.
Album FactoidsThe ending of “Eyes of a Stranger” on the album differs from how the band used to end it live. During live shows, Queensryche came up with a way (after they were done recording the album) to reprise “Anarchy-X” to close “Eyes of a Stranger” before the sonic montage and of “REVOLUTION” and "I REMEMBER NOW" lines concluded the story. Fans dubbed this added section “Anarchy-xtra.” The reprise was consistently played from 1988-1997, and heightened the dramatic ending of
Operation: Mindcrime, and usually, the main set of the band's shows. It was changed somewhat once DeGarmo left the group in 1997, and the current version of Queensr˙che typically does not play it.
Credit-wise, some may not know it was actually Michael Wilton that came up with the chorus to “Speak" -- "Speak the word. The word is all of us.”
The album was remastered and re-released with some live bonus tracks in 2003, and then released as a 25th Anniversary box set in 2013 (see below for the image).
Singles Reception and TouringDespite its popularity in heavy metal now,
Operation: Mindcrime had a rough start on the charts when it was released. It went over peoples' heads at first. After completing a tour cycle opening for Def Leppard and Metallica, EMI was about to pull the plug on things and send Queensr˙che back to the studio. After the band kept pushing to stay out on the road and work the record, EMI took a chance and and released a video for “Eyes of a Stranger” to MTV. The video exploded up the charts, giving
Operation: Mindcrime, and Queensryche, a needed shot in the arm.
Thanks in large part to the MTV exposure, in a few short months, Queensryche went from opening for Metallica, to headlining their own run of shows in Europe, Japan and the west coast of the United States. The headline gigs showcased Queensr˙che at its heaviest. The band would perform most of
Operation: Mindcrime, a good chunk of
Rage for Order, and a smattering of songs from
The Warning and the
EP in a two-hour metal fest. See
www.anybodylistening.net/tourdates.html (scroll down) for an example of a typical 1989 headline gig.
However, despite
Operation: Mindcrime being a concept record, the band never performed it in its entirety on the support tour for the record, leaving out “Suite Sister Mary” and a few of the segue pieces, such as “My Empty Room” and “Electric Requiem.” But by May 1989, Queensryche had certainly arrived, and would make the record the centerpiece for its next world tour (1990-1992 for
Empire), and its first as genuine headliners.
In the interim, Queensryche released
Video: Mindcrime on Sept. 26, 1989. The VHS contained a series of inter-linked videos shot for
Operation: Mindcrime, including, after the credits, how Sister Mary ultimately met her demise. (It blinks on the screen during an alternate video take for “I Don't Believe in Love.”)
After the success of the “Eyes of a Stranger” video (which was a standalone done before the other videos), the band was told by EMI it could either release one more video and have a promotional campaign for it, or shoot a series of videos connecting the
Operation: Mindcrime story and release it. The band chose the latter. It was released on VHS, and also on Laser disc in Japan.
Video: Mindcrime was finally put on DVD in 2013, as a part of the deluxe box set edition of
Operation: Mindcrime.
Post-2005 statements on Operation: MindcrimeFor the record, there were no plans for a sequel to the original
Operation: Mindcrime, despite what you may have read/heard from 2005-present. It was a self-contained story and has a beginning and end. If you read/watch/listen to interviews done by the band from 1988-2004 where they are asked about a sequel, the band continually states the story is complete and no sequel is needed/planned.
In order to make it more dramatic and push sales up, their public statements regarding
Operation: Mindcrime changed when the band decided to do the sequel in 2005. As to why they changed their minds and Tate put forth some revisionist history (alternative facts, anyone?), there is a fairly simple reason. We'll get to it when we cover
Operation: Mindcrime II later.
Samsara's top-three from
Operation: Mindcrime: Eyes of a Stranger, The Mission, Revolution Calling. (This is ridiculously unfair. The whole record should be listened to from front-to-back. Ha ha ha).
Next up: EMPIRE...