QUEENSRŸCHE singer Todd La Torre was intereviewed on a recent edition of the “Rockin’ Metal Revival” show. You can now listen to the chat below. A couple of excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).
On the setlist for QUEENSRŸCHE’s upcoming headlining tour:
“We’ve changed the setlist a lot that we’re working on now. There will be some staple songs that are probably always gonna remain in our set, but we will be playing some new stuff, from the new record. And I think we’re throwing in a new one from the last record that we haven’t played before. I can tell you that of… I think the proposed setlist that we’ve put together had around nineteen songs and then we were kind of choosing among those. So out of those songs, I can you that there’s about twelve or thirteen that I’ve never done with the band. So it’s gonna a revamped setlist. Some of the stuff is stuff that you haven’t heard QUEENSRŸCHE do since the very beginning and the very early ’80s. And then other stuff is stuff that I’ve not played with the band before but they were doing prior to me coming in the band. So it’s a new setlist, and we’re super excited to be playing new material off ‘Condition Hüman’ and then off the 2013 release. Anything that we probably play that’s not brand new is going to be from the first five or six records, just because… I think that the band overall just really feels that that is kind of more where their heart lies in the QUEENSRŸCHE catalogue. I mean, there are good songs and stuff on other records, but I think, collectively, when you talk to the bandmembers and you talk to the fans, the general consensus seems to be, like I say, from the EP up to ‘Promised Land’. You know, somebody might like something off ‘Tribe’ or ‘Hear In The Now Frontier’, or whatever, but we really wanna be able to play what we wanna play, but also you try to think of the majority of the fans. There’s always gonna be someone that isn’t happy that you didn’t play a particular song off a particular record, but you have to go with what is probably the biggest bang for the buck for the fans. And I think that we’ve put together a really great setlist. It’s been hard to try to get together, because it’s the holidays and we’ve been touring for so much for so long, and then we come home… I’ve been working on my house ever since I came home from tour, and so I’ve been just doing yardwork and ripping out tile and really enjoying just being a normal person, doing normal things around my house. I’m gonna go to Home Depot later and buy a bunch of landscaping rocks… I just wanna go do normal stuff, and so everyone is kind of decompressing, but we’re all doing our homework at home. And then we’ll do some rehearsals before the tour. We have another show, I think, in Reno for New Year’s Eve, and then I’ll be out in Seattle before the tour and then we’ll fly out to California and start. So I think the fans could expect a bunch of new songs that they haven’t heard the band play with me in the band, and some of the songs never have ever been played, ‘cause it’s new stuff, and then there’s other stuff that hasn’t… There’s some other stuff off the EP and ‘The Warning’ and ‘Rage For Order’. There’s a lot of really good stuff, so we’re really jazzed about the new set. I’ll feel really comfortable once we’re kind of gelling with the material and we’ll be performing it night after night and kind of lock in. It kind of takes a little bit to feel like you’re really owning it inside. I mean, the fans might think it’s great right out of the gate, but it just takes… It’s a lot of repetition. We’ve done the same setlist for quite a while now, and it’s just very natural to me and it feels super comfortable. This is a little outside of my comfort zone, because it’s not stuff that I’ve conditioned myself to sing night after night after night after night. So I’m trying to do my homework here at home. And then we’ll get some rehearsals in and hit the road.”
On touring the U.S. as the support act for SCORPIONS this past fall:
“It was amazing. I had seen the SCORPIONS when I was 14. Let’s see…. What year did they come to Tampa? Yeah, I think it was 1988. So I was 14 years old and I went with… My sister was dating a guy at the time, who was a guy that I looked up to immensely. His name was Shane and he was a great drummer. And he’s the one who turned me on to QUEENSRŸCHE, actually. But we went to the Monsters Of Rock concert [and] I saw the SCORPIONS play. And then, you know, fast forward, now I’m almost 42 and here I am singing in QUEENSRŸCHE on tour with the SCORPIONS. It was very… You know, there are those few moments when I get to feel that giddiness, that ‘fan’ feeling again, and I miss that feeling, because when you’re doing for a living and you’re meeting all these people all the time, it just becomes… I mean, I’m sure that you have friends and you’ve interviewed so many people, and they go, ‘Wow! You got to talk to them. It’s so cool.’ And I’m sure part of it is neat for you, but there’s a bit of a desensitization that happens because that’s what you do. And so you end up knowing all these people, and it just becomes… You lose a little bit of that, like I said, that giddiness, that, ‘Oh my God!’ You miss that feeling. Every once in a while, that feeling will come over me. It’s very rare, to be honest, but it does happen sometimes. And there was a moment when we were having dinner with the SCORPIONS. It was a private dinner in Seattle. And I’m sitting next to Matthias [Jabs, SCORPIONS guitarist] and we’re talking for an hour and a half about just all kinds of stuff, and Klaus [Meine, SCORPIONS singer] is a couple of seats over, and we’re all just engaging. And I’m, like, ‘Wow! This is really an amazing thing.’ When you get to hang out with them on a personal level, not working, because when we play with them, they’re kind of not around; they’re either on their bus or their dressing rooms. They’re kind of doing their pre-show… whatever they do. They wanna be quiet and not around a bunch of people. So there’s really not as much hang time on tour with them as one might expect. I mean, we did get to socialize and spend some time, but… It was a wonderful experience, and it was really great to be playing that size of venue with those numbers and attendance outside of a festival setting where you’ve got twenty bands, or however many bands, on a bill. It reminded me of what a real rock show was like growing up. When bands would come to town, it was always in an arena; they weren’t playing… I mean, when they were already big, they were playing arenas; every band was selling out arenas. It wasn’t like these huge bands now that are playing clubs. And so it really had that full-blown production, rock-concert arena sound. And QUEENSRŸCHE’s music in the arenas translates really well; it sounds great in that big space. And the attendance, even though we were the opening band… When we would go on, it would be half full, and maybe half to three quarters through our set, it would be full. So we really got to get some nice exposure. We’re very honored and thankful to the SCORPIONS for sharing their fans with us and having us be a part of their tour. They were really great to work with. Our crew really enjoyed working with their crew. And it was very seamless; it was really seamless. It was really a great experience and very memorable.”
QUEENSRŸCHE’s latest album, “Condition Hüman”, debuted at No. 27 on The Billboard 200 chart, having shifted 14,000 equivalent album units in the week ending October 8.
The Billboard 200 ranks the most popular albums of the week based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA).
“Condition Hüman” was released on October 2 via Century Media.
Source: Blabbermouth
