Will There Be A QUEENSRŸCHE Live DVD Covering TODD LA TORRE Era Of Band? He Responds
May 5, 2023In a new interview with Greece's Keysmash magazine, QUEENSRŸCHE singer Todd La Torre was asked if there are plans for him and his bandmates to release a live DVD or album capturing his era with the pioneering Seattle progressive metal group. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I don't know that there's a demand for live DVDs anymore. I don't even know who has a DVD player. [Laughs] But it would be fun to do. I know that recording-wise, gosh, we have recorded, I think, every live show we've pretty much done since FATES WARNING went out with us. What was that? 2019? I can't remember. Before the pandemic. We have just hundreds and hundreds of stuff recorded. And it's all on a hard drive. You'd just have to mix it. You'd have to say, 'Okay, we played 'Condition Hüman' 60 times. Let's pick the best one from that show.' Do you do the classics? Do you do just my stuff with the band? What do you do? And I know that Michael [Wilton, guitar] and Eddie [Jackson, bass] have all that stuff on hard drives. And Michael actually brought a hard drive over, but I never put it in my computer yet, because that was when we were recording the [latest QUEENSRŸCHE] album. So I was, like, 'That's a whole another thing I've gotta get my headspace into, and we'll do that later.' So there's talk about that. We have GoPro footage here and there, but not a camera crew really properly shooting from all these different angles to do a proper live DVD visual. From a recording aspect, we have enough material there. And, of course, with this tour coming up, we're gonna play a lot of stuff that hasn't been played. So there's even more material there, if we wanted to do… And I can think of a perfect album of the last four. If we did one record that was all the best songs from the last four, that would be kind of a masterpiece record. But the trick is writing all of those in one record. It's hard to catch lightning in a bottle."
Last fall, Wilton was asked by Rockin' Metal Revival about the possibility of QUEENSRŸCHE releasing a band biography. He responded: "We've had offers of people writing a book for us. And it just takes a lot of time — to organize and to get everything done. And we're working all the time; we're on the road, we're doing [press]. But it's something, at some point, maybe we'll release something. Whether it's just concert photos or something like that, or someone does a book for us. Who knows? You've gotta realize those things take a lot of time."
In October 2021, NW Metalworx Music released an unauthorized QUEENSRŸCHE biography called "Building An Empire: The Story Of Queensrÿche". That book was written by James R. Beach, with Brian L. Naron and Brian J. Heaton. Paul Suter, the acclaimed writer from Kerrang! who broke the story on QUEENSRŸCHE in early 1983, penned the book's foreword.
In April 2014, founding QUEENSRŸCHE singer Geoff Tate and the rest of the band's original lineup announced that a settlement had been reached after a nearly two-year legal battle where the singer sued over the rights to the QUEENSRŸCHE name after being fired in 2012. Wilton, drummer Scott Rockenfield and bassist Eddie Jackson responded with a countersuit. The settlement included an agreement that Wilton, Rockenfield and Jackson would continue as QUEENSRŸCHE, while Tate would have the sole right to perform the "Operation: Mindcrime" and "Operation: Mindcrime II" albums in their entirety live.
Tate's replacement, La Torre, has released four albums thus far with QUEENSRŸCHE: 2013's "Queensrÿche", 2015's "Condition Hüman", 2019's "The Verdict" and 2022's "Digital Noise Alliance".
"Digital Noise Alliance" came out in October via Century Media. The record was once again helmed by Chris "Zeuss" Harris, who previously worked with QUEENSRŸCHE on 2015's "Condition Hüman" and 2019's "The Verdict" LPs.
Guitarist Mike Stone, who rejoined QUEENSRŸCHE in 2021, contributed guitar solos to the band's new studio album.
Since late May 2021, Stone has been handling second-guitar duties in QUEENSRŸCHE, which announced in July 2021 that longtime guitarist Parker Lundgren was exiting the group to focus on "other business ventures."
Stone originally joined QUEENSRŸCHE for the 2003 album "Tribe" and stayed with the band for six years before leaving the group.
For the past six years, drummer Casey Grillo has been filling in for Rockenfield, who stepped away from the band's touring activities in early 2017 to spend time with his young son.
In October 2021, Rockenfield filed a lawsuit against Wilton and Jackson, alleging, among other things, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and wrongful discharge. A few months later, Wilton and Jackson filed a countersuit against Rockenfield, accusing him of abandoning his position as a member of the band and misappropriating the group's assets to his own personal benefit.
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