Geoff Tate has some generous words for the man who took his place in Queensrÿche — and an unexpectedly warm story to go with them. Appearing on the 03/17 episode of SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk, the former Queensrÿche frontman opened up about watching his old band perform live for the first time — without him — and the surprising front-row moment that came with it.
Tate revealed he caught the band’s set in Gothenburg, Sweden, in early 2025, when both acts happened to be in the same city on the same night. He and several of his own bandmates had the evening off and decided to go check them out.
“We just showed up,” he said (via Blabbermouth). “We happened to be in the same city. And we had the night off, and so a bunch of us in the band went to see ’em play and check ’em out.”
He made his way to the front row — and didn’t go unnoticed: “Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. I spent the entire time getting photos and signing autographs.”
But the real moment came from the stage itself. Current Queensrÿche singer Todd La Torre spotted Tate at the barricade and didn’t hesitate.
“I know there’s a lot of weird press about myself and Todd La Torre, but I have to say mass respect for the guy for stepping into my shoes, for one. And when I went to Copenhagen, I was standing on the barricade there. And the first thing he did when he came out was straddle the barricade and fistbump me, acknowledging that I was there. And he said, ‘Hey, good to see you, man. Stick around. I’m gonna blow you away.’ [Laughs] And he did. He was great. He was wonderful being on the stage that night. It was just really a treat seeing him play.”
Tate was candid about just how strange the whole experience felt — hearing his own music performed by someone else, and performed well.
“It’s so weird. Yeah. It’s so weird. For one, it’s my music [laughs], and so [Todd is] singing me. So, yeah, it’s strange. And he’s a really wonderful singer, he’s really good, very technically adept, so he does a really good job of being me. But he’s also, over the years, he’s kind of, I guess, worked on his own personality. And they have music that they’ve written together, and they have their own thing as well. But when the band and he play my music, it’s just — I don’t know. I can’t even describe it. It’s just like an otherworldly experience [laughs], ’cause he sounds a lot like me. So I’m hearing me, kind of, through him playing my stuff, and it’s just — I don’t know. It’s weird. I can’t quite put my finger on how to describe it.”
It wasn’t the first time the two men had been in the same room. Back in June 2017, both Queensrÿche and Tate — performing separately — appeared at Rock Fest Barcelona, where Tate was a special guest of Avantasia. La Torre recounted that encounter in detail during his own appearance on Trunk Nation in August of that year.
When La Torre came offstage, Tate approached him, extended his hand, and told him it was the first time he’d actually heard him sing.
“And he said, ‘Wow! You’re amazing!’” La Torre recalled. “And I said, ‘Well, thank you very much. That’s nice to hear.’ And I was complimentary of him. I said, ‘Listen, for what it’s worth, I have defended you. I know that sometimes the media and people can try to stir the pot, and for what it’s worth, as far as I’m concerned, you’ve done it all. I was kind of just expressing the sentiment, like, ‘You don’t have anything to prove in my book. You’ve already done it all.’ And I said, ‘I’m doing the best job that I know how.’ I told him that the Empire material is actually more difficult for me. I expressed to him that he’s always had a very smooth control over those vocal parts, and that’s more difficult for me. Now the older stuff is easier for me.”
La Torre later reflected on what it meant to receive that validation from the man he was essentially filling in for.
“Of course, there are some people who are divided still, the purist type of mentality, and I’ve heard it all: I suck, and I don’t sound anything like that, blah blah blah. And so I thought, what better testimony that the band is on the right track, the vocals sound worthy, than to hear that from the original singer… I don’t like to use the word ‘endorsement,’ but certainly acknowledging that the vocals sound great, the band sounds tight. I just thought, ‘Wow, that’s kind of an interesting perspective,’ if you look at it from what I’m mentioning, where some people say, ‘Oh, it doesn’t sound right,’ or this or that. And you say, ‘Well, the original singer seems to think that it sounds excellent,’ and what better testimony do you need?”
La Torre also shared that he’d been a Queensrÿche devotee long before any of this became his reality. In 2019, he posted a decades-old photo of himself with Tate — taken at an in-store signing — along with a caption that read: “As a huge fan of Queensrÿche, I waited in line for an hour + to meet the band at an in-store signing. Here is a pic of Geoff Tate and me, I have kept private for decades. Little did I know that 20+ years later, I would become the singer for Queensrÿche. Crazy.”
The post GEOFF TATE Praises TODD LA TORRE After Watching Him Playing With QUEENSRŸCHE: “Mad Respect For Him. He’s A Wonderful Singer, Very Technically Adept” appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.
