Geoff Tate

On a beautiful sunny afternoon, we meet Geoff Tate, one of the greatest voices in the history of heavy metal, together with the guitarist of his band, the Italian Dario Parente. In an unusual setting—an agriturismo in the countryside of Umbria, where the artist has chosen to settle in recent times—we found ourselves in a conversation that soon turned to the themes closest to Geoff Tate’s heart since his years with Queensrÿche, one of the most innovative and successful prog-metal bands of all time.


It seems you have a special connection with Italy now: you work with many Italian musicians, including Dario, since the Sweet Oblivion project, and now you announced just a couple of days ago a new chapter in the “Operation: Mindcrime” saga, to published on next May.
How did it all begin?

GT: Just an idea. I was listening back to “Operation: Mindcrime 2”, because I hadn't listened to it in many years, and... I got to thinking: Who is Dr. X? Who is this man? And then I went and listened to “Operation: Mindcrime 1” again. And again I said: "Who is this man?". I don't know who he is. Here he is and he's very special, he's very manipulative, he's in the shadows and you never really find out who he is or what he's all about. I started asking myself questions like: "Who is he?", "How did he get to where he is?", "How come he has so much power over Nicky and Mary?", "What makes him tick?"
So, that's where it started. That was, I think, 2020. I started thinking about that and then writing music for it. Writing songs started happening, and then I enlisted Kieran Robertson to write with me on it. Alex Hart also contributed and then Dario Parente came into the picture and started playing guitar. As we toured, we kept writing songs and developing the material. It’s been in the works for quite a few years now—six years, I guess.
It has an interesting story because we recorded it on the road, in hotel rooms and backstage at venues—wherever we had time and space. Part of it was recorded in a castle in France. I wrote things on airplanes with headphones and my laptop. The record has already traveled a lot in its journey. It’s been a work in progress for about six years.


Do you like to work this way—writing pieces in different countries?

GT: Yeah. Well, you write where you can. Some of it was recorded here, actually, at the villa [his house in Italy]. So yes, it's the life of a musician: you travel a lot, and you have to work when you can. Luckily, technology now allows us to do that.
In the past, we had to write everything in our heads, then book time in a studio, go in and record everything—or parts of it—and then wait, and wait, and do it again. Now we work on it all the time. You’re always on it, constantly developing ideas. It’s a completely different way of working, and I really like it.
I prefer it this way. I don’t like staying in one place too long… they might find me! [laughs]


In some recent interviews, you said that Mindcrime 3 is built from Dr. X’s perspective, within the same timeline as the first two albums. But exactly which period are we talking about?

GT: There were about 18 years between part one and part two, and almost 20 years between part two and now. This story actually covers both timelines, because it’s Dr. X’s perspective on what was happening during chapters one and two.


So after decades of seeing the story through Nikki’s eyes, you’ve now shifted to Dr. X. You also mentioned that, being closer now to his hypothetical age, you feel to understand his point of view better. Do you still see him as a villain? How does he sees himself, like a villain or genuinely driven by some ideals?

GT: Exactly, this is a very good point. Is he a villain or is he just following his own idea, his muse, his destiny? It’s difficult to define him. Is he evil? And what is evil? What is the definition? In his mind,  I think that he sees himself as a, you know, a businessman – someone taking care of business.


Mindcrime has always had strong political and social themes. I remember that in a old interview you said that the second chapter was inspired by George W. Bush being the USA president at the time. Has the current global situation influenced this new chapter too?

GT: I would say probably not directly. The current situation in the United States is perhaps a bit more extreme than in the early 2000s, and a bit more extreme than in the late ’80s when the first Mindcrime came out. But it’s essentially the same people in power the whole time.
What's always been interesting to me is how manipulation works. Like, just for an example, to get people to go to war. You have to give them a reason to believe that it's real and so it's considered patriotic to go to war and fight for your country. But the United States hasn’t really been under threat in decades—arguably since World War II. Most conflicts have been about resources. You know: where’s the oil? That’s where we go. The people that are in the power have manipulated the population into believing that it's patriotic to go fight for your country. But your country isn't under attack, the country is not anywhere near in danger. It's just very wealthy people wanting the rest of us to kill and destroy and be killed for what they get in return. So it's manipulation, and people believe it. They send young people off to war to die. For what? So rich people can get richer and more people can own more oil. But they've got us convinced that it's the right thing to do.


You’ve been writing about these themes for decades, and they still feel incredibly relevant today. I’m thinking of a song like “Surgical Strike”, which described how warfare was evolving over 40 years ago—it brings to mind events like the Gulf War and the war in Afghanistan, but it also feels very current.
I love Rage for Order, the album that song comes from, because it was so far ahead of its time. Many of the things we see happening today were already anticipated in those songs—just think about how warfare is becoming increasingly automated through AI and drones, or even recent tensions involving Trump and AI companies like Anthropic.
What’s your perspective on this? Were you already aware, at the time, of the direction in which the world was heading?

GT: Well, it's gotten a lot more lethal. Technology has become much better, we've created machines now to fight for us, drones to go in and drop bombs where we don't have to risk human life to do it. So, in a way that's better... I guess! [laughs sarcastically] 
As long as you have the technology. If you don’t, you’re the victim.
It's fascinating now, there's a really good film that just came out, it's called “Mountain Head”. It’s about these five billionaires who go to a mountaintop retreat. They're all college friends and they spend the week conversing and challenging each other. They manipulate the news cycles to create mass hysteria and then they invest in companies that are rising because of that. They of course make money off of it and so it's fascinating to watch because it's actually happening in real time now! You see the news and the images being manipulated, they are so realistic now that it's hard to tell what's real and what's not real. It’s even possible to look at a video image of a person speaking and saying things that he really didn't say. So, a lot of people are being convinced that things are happening which really aren't happening. That's very, very dangerous, the ground is shifting below us, we're in quicksand. The only thing we know is real is that we can touch each other, but any kind of image that you see, it's been manipulated somehow. We even do it ourselves on our websites: we make ourselves look a little better, a little thinner, a little taller. It's an amazing world now, it's very difficult to navigate. 


It’s interesting what you said, because we’re now living in a completely new kind of society compared to, say, 2010, when smartphones and social media became widespread. We’re all constantly connected and overexposed, and in many ways we willingly place ourselves in the hands—and in the eyes—of the public.
We’re now starting to see young adults who were born and raised entirely within this digital environment—the so-called “digital natives.” I was born in the 80’s, and I still have strong memories of a more “analog” past, when we didn’t even have things like the internet or mobile phones. That contrast makes me think of the sense of nostalgia I feel when listening to a song like “I Will Remember”, especially the line: “When knowledge was confined, and then we wonder how machines can steal each other’s dreams from points that are unseen.” It really resonates with me. Do you think younger generations risk losing that connection with the past—and, perhaps, with a more natural essence of life?

GT: You know, all my children are older now, around your age. The things that they're interested in, the things they do, they’re so different from where my interests lie or from my experiences. It's difficult to relate to their generation for me. I still can but it it there's a lot of, you know… they're online all the time, 24 hours a day, and they they're so affected by what other people think and say! In my generation, that mattered when we were young, but then as we grew into adults it affected us less and less because we matured and got more world oriented, I guess. I worry that younger people may never reach that independence—that ability to think freely. I worry about that because I see it happening with my kids already. My grandkids - oh my god! - they're absolutely inundated with technology and phones and screens. It's a different world and I don't know how it's going to turn out but I hope for the best, that people remain connected. I mean, there's all kinds of stories in the media about how people are not connected anymore and they're not speaking to each other. They less and less carry on conversations, they just text and text...

DP: It’s so weird. You know, I was on Instagram for instance when I stumbled upon a guy who was a lot into trying to help out people keeping mental health. His suggestion was staying away turn them off for like two or three hours a day. That’s so weird that we’ve got to this point.

GT: Oh yeah, we’re dependent on them. Weather, banking, directions - everything is right there. It’s hard to step away from it. I’ve also been reading a lot about the effects of pornography on kids. They’re not having relationships, just watching and learning from that, doing sex with themselves. In the long run what is that going to do for the population growth? 


They say that they’re all problems related to dopamine addiction.

GT: Yeah. Moreover, that’s so often the case with pornography is that there is no real emotional connection between the people, it's physical act of gratification, so the kids grow up thinking that that's normal and they're missing out a huge part of human connection. What's that going to do to the human psyche? Well, I don’t know… I won’t be here to see [laughs]


It is curious to think how still current the “Operation: Mindcrime” theme about manipulation through the use of drugs is today. In 1988 it was about heroine and the distorted use of religion. Could pornography and social media be considered among the manipulation tools of our age?

GT: Absolutely. Dopamine is the drug. You’re constantly hitting yourself with dopamine pleasure, seeking for satisfaction, pacification. The phone gives everything we need. You can proabably write a concept album on mobile phones, like: “I hate my phone, I love my phone!” [laughs]


A question about the “Empire” titletrack. It portrayed a distorted american dream and highlighted the social inequalities and class divisions. Do you think it’s still relevant today considering what’s happening in Western societies?

GT: Nothing's changed! It's America, is a fascinating study really because you have all these different people trying to live together with a set of rules and everyone is trying to change the rules all the time, to get ahead and to make themselves more rich I guess. It's a very money-oriented society. We don't have thousands of years of culture like you have in Italy, for example, where you already worked through all that stuff. Your culture already went to war, killed each other, had civil wars, had a king... from the caesars until you became a republic and did all those things already. We're just 250 years old right, so we're still like teenagers with bad complexions and strange hairstyles. 
You got a guy like Donald Trump who somehow has been voted into power. People have given to that guy access to the nuclear codes it’s an accident waiting to happen. He just says: “Oh, you know all this set of rules? Screw that! I’m gonna do what I want and you guys can chase me down and sue me later!”. It’s a wierd way of thinking about things but this guy gets away with everything. Nobody is like taking him out, nobody is taking him down. Our congress is like going “we should do something!” but nobody does anything and the guy is running amok. He is - like some comedian said - a horse loose in the hospital. All that stuff about tariffs and all that he's trying to do... he can't do that! He doesn't have the power to do that! He's just talking, talking, talking, saying things like “i'm doing this and i'm doing that” but he's not really doing it, it's all sound bites. 
And that attempted assassination, you know when he got shot in the ear? Oh my God, it's so obviously staged. People are talking about it, it's like front page news. He has been implicated in the epstein files like 250 times. Everybody's talking about it, telling “we should do something!”. Nobody's doing it! Why? Well, because it's expensive. You gotta chase the guy down and it's massively expensive to do that. I mean, the average person isn't gonna walk out and go “i'm gonna take on Donald Trump and sue him”. No, you gotta have millions and millions and millions to do that, and then who's got the energy and the time to do it, when you're trying to work on your own life? You really want to like get your hands dirty with that kind of situation? Yeah, because they're gonna get really dirty, people have been threatened by his administration.
Well, it's all very fascinating to watch… from a distance [laughs]


You know, while talking about that, it came back to me a song from the “Promised Land” album, which is “My Global Mind”. It’s lyrics shows a powerful paradox: the more information we receive about the world, the more powerless we can feel in front of global problems. 
I think that all of this is sometimes a weight too overwhelming for a single person to bear and the consequence is that people become emotionally numb, normalizing negativity.

GT: Yes, I know you what you mean. You get desensitized to chaos. That particular song was written like 30 years ago, we all see what it’s like now, it’s even more intense and more invasive. At that time the media was the TV: you only needed to click a button and, boom, you’re in Israel, Afghanistan, Italy… now it’s even in your phone.
One thing came back to my mind, while talking about AIs. You know, when Israel and the United States attacked Iran, and Iran fought back, basically, by releasing thousands of missiles and they shot them into Israel, Dubai, Qatar and all these different countries there. They were showing buildings falling down in Dubai and streets being leveled and all this. And then you see people on the internet going, "Here I am on the beach in Dubai and I'm showing you that this is not happening! It's a lie! It's not really happening!”. They're walking down the street, drinking coffee at the stand. That's crazy, right? Who's doing it? It can't be just, like, some guy in his basement living in his mom's house on his computer. But it's got to be some kind of coordinated effort by a PR team or advertising media team, which everybody, every company, has now. 

DP: I was so surprised yesterday because I did a post about Phil Campbell of Motörhead who passed away. I met him twice at festivals playing with Geoff and he was always very kind to me. I was so impressed by AI because in that post I wrote that I met him twice and both times I remember that he talked about my Italian dress style. Then, just out of curiosity, I pushed the button because AI said something like “what was the joke about Dario's style?”. AI elaborated perfectly my thought. She said that probably Dario was in the backstage area of a rock concert, people were dressed like rock shirts and whatever and Dario was dressed in a more fashionable way. This is what I meant to say. I was so impressed, I told my wife “it's the end of the world!”. 

GT: People are already using AI to write music. You can ask for a chord progression and get something catchy instantly. But then, who owns that? Can you even copyright it anymore? Is music becoming free? Everything is changing.


I saw you made an announcement for an UK tour, any chances to see you again in Italy soon?

DP: We still don’t know about Italy but for sure we’re going to play some dates here too.


I really hope to see you soon again live. I’ve listened to some of your latest shows of 2025 on YouTube. The band was great and your voice seems more in shape than ever, even improved if I may say. It’s not flattering, I really mean it. Can you tell us your secret?

GT: Well, years ago I made this deal with a guy named Satan…


So, about what some said at the time about the umlaut on the Queensrÿche name, that was true!

GT: [laughs] No, I don’t know… I work really hard at keeping it on shape. Dario and me both work out a lot. Well, we have a bad vice, we like to drink so we have to balance that with being conscientious of our diet and our workouts so that we can still drink [laughs] 
This life without drinking is not really life, expecially on the road. Life is, you know, good food, good drink, good friends, good relationships, that's what it's all about really. And a sunny day like this one in Umbria!


(March 17, 2026)