[Queensryche's 1990 album "Empire" was their most commercially successful. EMI is the record label the band was under contract with at the time. The yellow lettering is my own, and is being used to highlight the fact that EMI is curiously embedded into the album's artwork.]
Although Queensryche has come to be known as a rather volatile entity over time, this was not always the case. They appeared to be one of the more solid units out there for many years, up until the departure of Chris DeGarmo. He was often the band's articulate spokesman publicly, and seemed to be the main songwriter, having written "Queen of the Ryche," from which the band got its' name. In fact their biggest (only?) major hit "Silent Lucidity" was written, we are told, soley by him. So his rather low key departure in 1997, which was not officially announced publicly until the following year, left fans just as confused as they were dissapointed.
THE DARK EMPIRE
[Malcolm Dome (R.I.P. 2021) was probably the most influential journalist in Heavy Metal during the 80s, and probably played more than a small role in elavating QR from obscurity to international recognition]
“I’m not sure what I feel about the band right now. Whenever we finish a record, I think it’s time to leave. Or we should split up. I am drained, and fed up. I don’t have the energy to deal with the other guys. I get annoyed with them all, because I feel they’ve let me down. But then, I also think I’ve let them down. Is that the way all musicians think? It’s that love/hate thing we have, isn’t it? Empire is maybe the worst album we’ve ever made, or the best. I can’t judge it.” - Chris DeGarmo
The above DeGarmo quote was taken from an interview Malcolm Dome allegedly conducted in July of 1990 "off the record," then put "on the record" in 2014 on his loudersound.com webpage. If DeGarmo really said this in 1990, it certainly gives perspective on his decidedly low profile exit 7 years later.
It's strange to think that the album which brought QR mainstream success would be one he might consider to be their worst. As a fan who purchased the album when it came out with great anticipation, I thought it was just ok, but certainly the weakest they had done up to that point. Admittedly, there is a certain satisfaction in discovering that DeGarmo may have been honest enough to know it wasn't their best artistically. I'm sure EMI was holding a proverbial gun to their backs insisting they "lay some golden eggs or else!"
"I was questioning the long term stability of the group by that point. The level of internal and external dysfunction was unacceptable to me. Apparently, no one else was paying attention, or bothered to compare the successful elements and priorities of our past to our current trajectory." - wiki
The above was also taken from a Malcolm Dome interview, and is the one shown on Wikipedia as of the day I typed this out. As far as I know, these are the only detailed quotes allegedly given by DeGarmo to the press concerning his exit from QR - which has always be shrouded in a bit of mystery.
[British magazine Kerrang! had a huge influence upon the 80s Heavy Metal world, and took a strong interest in QR from very early on]
The UK's Kerrang! magazine [with Malcolm Dome at the helm] was largely responsible for QR's sudden arrival upon the international scene. Dome was also there during the peak of the band's financial success, and managed to capture what I believe is the most raw, candid interview of DeGarmo. He's also there at the end of DeGarmo's journey with QR to get what seems to be the most detailed, and possibly only direct explanation from DeGarmo himself regarding his exit.
Part of me thinks Kerrang/Dome was just THAT powerful and important that DeGarmo would choose to confide in them exclusively among all the other press options. Another part of me wonders if this is all far more contrived than most fans would ever guess. Especially given the strange manner in which Dome claims he held onto the candid 1990 interview with DeGarmo only to release it 15 years later. The timing just seems a bit...too calculated.
One very basic and tangeable fact is that the band's longtime record label EMI decided to file for bankruptcy on behalf of their American subsidiary [EMI is a British record label]. We are told this left the band high and dry during their 1997 "Hear in the Now Frontier" tour, which is coincidentally the one during which DeGarmo decided to quit. Financial support became unstable, band members weren't getting any younger, and behind closed doors DeGarmo wasn't such a happy camper after all - so maybe it was just a good time for smart people to jump ship and find another career. But was leaving a sinking ship so easy?
REAP J LAM
Don't get me wrong, I hold no ill will or negative feelings towards any member of QR. And I certainly do not wish an early death upon any of them! But it has come to my attention fairly recently that just about every band that enjoys mainstream popularity for a period of time, ends up with a dead member or 2. And I don't mean by age or "natural causes." I'm talking about the long list of dead musicians with suspicious circumstances surrounding their untimely demises. Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Kieth Moon, Jim Morrison, Lynyrd Skynyrd band members, John Lennon, Randy Rhoads, Curt Cobain, Chris Cornell, etc...I once read that a member of the Rolling Stones stated "the only way outta this band is in a coffin!" So the question I'm going to ask here is, was QR's 15 minutes of success cut short because a suitable sacrifice was never made? Could it be that the band was simply "past due" on their "payment," and this is why everything went wacky?
“The way I feel right now, I don’t know if I have a future, and I am not talking about just as a musician. I am not suicidal. But I have doubts. Real doubts. I don’t even know why I am talking like this. It won’t make me feel any better. Probably by tomorrow, I will be upbeat and shiny again. But I always question whether I want to carry on as I am. Maybe I will pack my bags, walk out of this hotel, out of this life and start all over again. But I’ve not done that so far, so why would I do it now?” - DeGarmo, according to Malcolm Dome
Note, the above quote was supposedly from 1990, the dawn of QR's most financially successful era. Now I don't want to exagerrate and try to blow it up into something it isn't, but where have we heard "I am not suicidal" before? Isaac Kappy and John McAfee are two fairly recent examples I can think of. High profile individuals who were obviously taken out shortly after publicly stating "I am not suicidal." Was this DeGarmo subtly confessing to something the public wasn't supposed to know? Was there a genuine fear within the group that someone was gonna need to get taken out soon? Even if DeGarmo never said these things, why would the highly respected and influential Malcolm Dome print it in 2015 and tell us Degarmo said it in 1990?
RIKKI RACHTMAN:...and it seems like now the Seattle music scene is basically dominated rock and roll...I mean is there any reason that you think all these bands now are coming from Seattle? DEGARMO:...Boeing has been conducting chemical experiments on the Northwest region - I'm totally serious - for quite some time. And we...were fortunate enough to be asked to participate in this experiment as were some of our friends and everyone..."
The above quote was taken from a youtube compilation of QR interviews. This particular segment was conducted by Rikki Rachtman on MTV. He was, of course, referring to the then Seattle Grunge movement, which was blowing up at that time. It's a relavant question, because Queensryche was this anomoly of a band from Seattle, an area that wasn't really on the map musically at the time they formed. Yet here they were, international prog/metal/pop veterans of the Seattle music scene, confronted with the prospect of being made obsolete by this new Seattle "grunge" sound.
Being that DeGarmo was allegedly studying to be an airplane pilot around the time he did the above interview, it is interesting to consider why he would jest about a conspiracy involving Boeing, of all companies. Boeing is, of course, one of the oldest and largest manufacturers of Airplanes in the country, among other things. Seattle's King County Airport also sits on Boeing field, a place I am sure DeGarmo is thoroughly familiar with.
A quick search on "Boeing Chemical Experiments" will yield quite a few results detailing various court filings ranging from Boeing employees/relatives to regular civilians - all claiming to have suffered as a result of chemical exposure originating from Boeing locations. While Boeing does have an undeniable history of catastrophic hazardous chemical waste management [search: "santa susana field lab boeing toxic spill"], I have not found much to specifically back up DeGarmo's possibly made-up comment. But it's an odd, almost non-sequitur kind of thing to joke about on MTV, where hundreds of thousands of people are watching. If you view the video, it's actually kind of hard to tell if he's being serious or not, even though he states "I'm totally serious." And I'm not the first person to observe this behavior in DeGarmo...
"I am still unsure whether DeGarmo was playing a game, or genuinely baffled by what life at the time had given him. The feeling I had was that, in purely musical terms, he felt Queensrÿche were dead to him. It was to take seven more years, before he quit. But the underlying context was that he had no more to gain from being in this band, and they had nothing more to achieve with him. So, is Empire the band’s finest album? Or the start of a decline. Your call." - Malcolm Dome
“Oh, I do that every so often. Maybe this is all bullshit, and I am acting out a role, and you just happen to be the chosen audience. Can you tell whether what I’ve said is real or imagination? Perhaps I’m challenging you to find the truth from the fiction in Chris DeGarmo. Maybe I want you to tell me. Because I don’t know. You can print anything I’ve said just now. I may thank you, or hate you for it. Or both.” - Chris DeGarmo, as quoted by Malcolm Dome
Again, Dome published the above quote from a candid interview conducted right about the same time as the MTV interview with Rikki Rachtman. It's a little tough to imagine DeGarmo's voice uttering the above words, as they evoke a decidedly sinister tone I don't think I've ever gotten from any of his other interviews. Did he really say these things, or did Dome simply publish these words years later in order to control some sort of unwanted narrative surrounding the band? I suppose both can be true.
To say that Geoff Tate seems to have lost his mind around the year 2012 is fair, but it is also fair to say the band's music and live performances had lost something well before that. Call it bad management, an identity crisis, lack of funding, a loss of the ability to work together productively, or just a very dry well of creativity - the QR ship seems to start slowly and painfully sinking around the time of DeGarmo's exit and the EMI bankruptcy. This eventually culminates into the disastrous 2012 incident in Brazil, where Tate allegedly punched and spit on band members while on stage.
[Q: You have actually toured with Kiss…played with Maiden, Dio…but before that you were really on the local circuit, weren’t you? Geoff Tate: Actually no. We’d never played live before. I think the first show we played was 4000 people or something…]
Let's step back and remember QR's "humble" beginnings. First gig: opening for Dio, playing to something like 4000 people. No paying dues in the club circuit, just straight to the top and off like a rocket. The rest of the 80s was constant tours opening for just about every popular hard rock and metal band in the US, Europe, and Japan. No real hits, countless awkward band photos and "fashion statements," curious shifts in sound with each new release, but always accompanied by impressive music which did not seem to know where it was going exactly. Yet EMI kept pushing the group, until they squeezed a big hit out, a good 8 years or so later. Doesn't sound like a recipe for profit, and the eventual bankruptcy of EMI America doesn't exactly take away from that observation.
The stresses of success and the toll it takes on a band to get there, even if only for 15 minutes, is a topic covered in many music documentaries - as are urban legends regarding deals with the devil in order to obtain fame and fortune. While the former is pretty much an agreed upon cliche, I think most people would also agree there is a grain of truth in the latter, if only conceptually. But what if this is more literal than fans would ever suspect? Would it better explain the seeming dedication to chaos we saw erupt within QR during the weeks and years leading up to the Brazil incident, and after? Was the seeming attempt by Geoff Tate to take the band over really just his way of gaining control of something that was destined to consume him? Was all the legal mayhem and scrambling for control of the name and revolving door of musicians based upon the same fear shared by all original members of the TriRyche [3rd Reich] corporation? Was DeGarmo's exit related to this, and is that why there seems to be so much intentional vagueness behind his decision to leave QR?
I wish nothing bad upon the members of Queensryche, or anyone else - and I can even appreciate some of the material they have all put out since the split. But it seems clear to me that the QR ship has been mortally wounded, perhaps deliberately from the inside, seemingly with a desperate hope that the Dark Lord will just turn his head away in disgust and think, "fine, but you will never play with the big boys again, losers!"
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