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About TKW
Favorite Quote
"I can't believe the lethargy. People will camp outside for an iPhone, but they don't care about being enslaved by their government."
Ministry's Al Jourgensen Decibel, November 2007
Time Crunch Fuels Michael Wilton’s Creative Fire On ‘Take Cover’
By: Christa Titus
(Music that is referenced in this review is hyperlinked to Amazon.com for your purchasing convenience. If a product is not hyperlinked, Amazon.com did not offer it at the time of publication.)
Twenty years ago, if someone had told us Queensrÿche was doing an album of covers and hosting a promotion that gave you a chance to sing onstage with them, we would have said that the crack you were smoking was definitely giving you your money’s worth.
But back then, metal was the music industry’s golden child, and anarchy would have ensured if an arena act hosted such a competition. As the Internet repeatedly teaches us, different eras call for new methods of promotion. In 1988 the idea of the nation texting its pick for the next “American Idol” was as remote a concept as rehab being the place you went to salvage your reputation instead of tarnishing it. Queensrÿche put its twist on “AI” by offering a shot at replacing Geoff Tate for a few precious minutes and singing a tune from its Take Cover album during the U.S. leg of its Hits and Rarities tour. Then QR sweetened the pot by rewarding the grand-prize winner a performance slot on the band’s next album. Vincent Solano of Florham Park, N.J., now gets to forever brag that he recorded with Queensrÿche. To show our pride in a fellow Garden Stater making good, we are bitterly sobbing into our hands for quitting music lessons back in college.
During a break from the road before its summer European tour, Queensrÿche is working on the aforementioned album that will have Solano as a guest. In the meantime, its version of Welcome to the Machine has been getting airtime on rock radio. When The Killing Words chatted with guitarist Michael “Whip” Wilton about the covers project, he admitted that QR handled the Pink Floyd classic with care. In this Q&A, Wilton divulges how massive amounts of coffee fueled the on-the-fly sessions for Take Cover, as well as how it feels to be finished the marathon live dates of Operation: Mindcrime and what’s cooking on the next Queensrÿche record.
The Killing Words: Your tours have pretty much been an evening with Queensrÿche for a while. [For the first time in years, the band brought a supporting act, Don Dokken, with it as a guest.]
Michael Wilton: Right. Well, as you know, we’ve been hammering out both Mindcrime one and two, and there was basically no need for an opening act, and in the past, we’ve done that. In Europe we do it, let the promoter put an opening band, his favorite band, that kind of thing, do favors. And so [on the 2007 Alice Cooper/Heaven and Hell tour we didn’t] do a three-hour show. [laughs]
TKW: Is that a relief?
Wilton: Kind of, yeah. I think doing that tour, I think it aged me a bit. [laughs again]
TKW: It’s a lot of work.
Wilton: It was. It’s a lot of brain power, and playing ’specially Mindcrime one, it’s so guitar-intensive-orchestrated, you gotta have your ‘A’ game every night, and it just goes, “Bam bam bam, song song song”; there’s not too much room for breaks in that thing.
From left, Eddie Jackson, Michael Wilton and Mike Stone.
Feb. 8, 2008, at Nokia Theater in New York, N.Y. Photo © 2008/Christa Titus.
TKW: And I guess after playing it for almost 20 years, you’re like, “Yeah, here were are again.”
Wilton: Yeah. It was very interesting, because you get used to just playing a three-hour set with a little break in between the middle, and [on] the Heaven and Hell/Alice Cooper/Queensrÿche tour [we played] 40 minutes. We haven’t done that since the early ’80s.
TKW: Did it feel like a break to still go out and play but not have to do that whole night?
Wilton: Yeah. For me, it was so much fun. We’re hittin’ ’em with the hard, heavy hits, and seeing all the fans for those other two bands, and they recognize our tunes; it was a great experience. Kids dressed up in the front row like Alice Cooper and rockin’ to Queensrÿche, that’s a great opportunity. We got that every night. “Oh, you guys were so great—but your set was too short.”
TKW: Did you do Neon Knights at all while you were on the road with Heaven and Hell?
Wilton: We’d sound-check on it, mess with it, but I don’t think that would go over with Tony [Iommi] and Ronnie [James Dio] if they heard that, so we were very professional on that, didn’t want to step on any toes in that aspect.
TKW: Who came up with the idea of doing this record? I was chatting with someone who pointed out that Poison also did a covers album, and Def Leppard put out a covers record. We were wondering if there was a trend in the rock world to put these out again.
Wilton: Well, there might be in the rock world, but basically our main fella at Rhino came to our sound check, and we’re always messin’ with other people’s songs because we get bored playing our own, and he goes, “Oh, you guys should put out a record like that.” “What, covers?” So that’s how the seed was planted: Someone at the record company heard us playing other people’s songs just jokin’ around . . . And then, lo and behold, there’s an offer on the table. “Let’s put this out in the interim before we put out the next Queensrÿche opus.”
TKW: Was it easier than doing an original album since you’ve already got a framework, or in a sense was it harder because you’re trying to figure out a way to redo the songs?
Wilton: Well, the main issue that was difficult was a time-based issue. We went to Japan when we got the idea, and when we got back, we had basically a month to learn the songs and try to rewrite ’em and get ’em ready, and it didn’t take a month, it took a couple, but the whole issue, I think time was the crusher. So some of the tunes are our own rendition, kind of a staying close and respectful to the original but maybe shifting the arrangement a little bit to make it a little more ours. And then some of ’em, for instance, you mentioned Neon Knights. I mean, that’s such a classic; what are ya gonna do different about that? It just rocks. You have songs that are completely our interpretation, then you have songs that are just super-charged Queensrÿche versions of the original.
TKW: In listening to the guitars, it sounds like you and [guitarist Mike] Stone were just really having fun with it.
Wilton: This was recorded at Watershed Studios, which was my personal studio here in Seattle, and Stone was staying at my house, and literally we had two weeks to get all the guitars done. I think we ingested so much coffee, it was 15-hour days of just goin’ through and getting everything ready; we were totally under the gun.
As you say, we had a lotta fun doin’ it. A lot of the guitar framework is first-take, this is what you get, kind of in a dream world and one guitar player goes, “Hey, that was OK.” “Well, I was just playin’ along.” There’s nothin’ wrong with that, you know. Those are those happy, special moments. Like on Red Rain, there’s a middle part where I was listening to the original and I’m going, “What am I doing?” So I was just noodling subliminally right there. Stone was out havin’ a cigarette, he comes in and goes, “God, that was great.” I go, “What? I was just noodling in there.” “Did you record it?” I go, “Yeah.” And we went and listened back to it and, “Oh, wow. Happy surprise.” Things like that.
Definitely for a guitar player, yeah, it was a lot of fun, but it was a lot of work getting the time line that we had to learn so many songs . . . When we finally saw the list of what was picked, what was available publishing-wise, cleared with the record labels, like, “Whoa. This is an eclectic bunch a tunes.” [laughs]
TKW: I understand you brought in Innuendo by Queen.
Wilton: Yeah, Innuendo and Neon Knights, and [drummer] Scott [Rockenfield], he’s got a heavy, early influence of Stuart Copeland, so we’ve got Synchronicity II and Red Rain. I picked Innuendo just because I loved listening to the song and I thought, “Gosh, kind of an homage to Freddy Mercury.” I understand that that was one of his last songs that he wrote, and it’s an epiphany of where his state of mind was at that point. It wasn’t the traditional Bohemian Rhapsody, although the song has kind of a crazy middle part that is very muso, and I’m kind of a muso guy myself, personally, so that’s why I dig that tune.
Michael Wilton, foreground, and Eddie Jackson.
Feb. 8, 2008, at Nokia Theater in New York, N.Y. Photo © 2008/Christa Titus.
TKW: What made you decide to take an opera song [Odissea] and go rock with it?
Wilton: That was 100% Geoff’s pick. [laughs] Geoff obviously is heavily influenced by operatic music. His style of singing and delivery is that of more of a classically operatic, the way he sings. He’s not a screamo guy, he’s melodic and pulls influences from opera. I’ve heard him listening to certain works of opera on the road, he likes to listen to that on his free time to ease his mind and stuff.
Oh my gosh, when I heard that song, I go, “What the heck is this?,” cuz there was no guitars in it. It was all strings and tons of vocal lines and the song just jumps everywhere, it goes through every single key—I’m being muso here—but it goes through every single key, and it’s like when you’re not familiar with a tune like that, it’s so alien. You can’t remember what the last part was. You don’t even know what the last part was. And then, until I heard him sing it, then I go, “Oh, OK. But does this mean you’re gonna sing it in Italian when we’re in Milan?”
TKW: They say when people are learning how to sing in Spanish, they have people teach them how to speak it and where to put the emphasis on the words so people who speak the language, it’s making sense to them.
Wilton: Yeah. And the truth will be told when our Italian fans get a hold of that and they’ll say, “Brilliant!” or they’ll say, you know how we say “broken English”? It’s broken Italian.
TKW: Were there any songs that you guys thought, “No way are we gonna touch that one”?
Wilton: We did this really fast, and looking back, it’s like, “God, why didn’t I think of this song? Damn! Why didn’t I think of that song?” I think the main idea, because we knew that certain bands had done cover albums, [we thought], “Let’s make ours a little more interesting and unusual, and let’s not make it a copy of all metal tunes. Let’s just make this unpredictable.” That was the main focal point.
TKW: When you did Welcome to the Machine, considering how long you’ve been in the music business, was the lyrical content appealing?
Wilton: You know, everything about that song is appealing to me. It’s one of my all-time classic songs that I love to listen to.
That being said, that’s a touchy song, because there are so many diehard Pink Floyd fans that would just crucify us if we just copied the version and copied Dave [Gilmour’s] guitars or copied his voice. No, that one, arrangement-wise we had to kind of do some special things to make it a little more like our own. When we start the song, we wanted to, other than hearing some sound effects, we wanted people to go, “Well, what song is this?” And we had that same effect live, because they wouldn’t even know what the song was until they heard the chord and Geoff sings, “Welcome, my son,” and then they all go, “Ahhh!” [laughs]
Something like that, it’s such a do-or-die thing, you know, to cover a song like that. ’Cuz I talk to people on the road who said, “Hey, that Floyd song, you guys pulled it off. It was enough Queensrÿche that it wasn’t a direct rip-off of Floyd.” So with that song, that song we had to have a little TLC with that one.
TKW: How is it going with the new Queensrÿche album?
Wilton: We’ve been doing so much touring that we’ve been a little bit fragmented in our writing. There’s been songs written on the road, songs written, certain breaks. Basically, we’ve got about 40 ideas that we’re just tryin’ to trim down and just trying to get the arrangements right now. So I guess we’re in a giant preproduction right now, between these tours. And so it’s a lotta work. And talking to Geoff, he’s heading in a thematic, conceptual way, which is always exciting, because that’s his forte, in my opinion, and we’ve got the vibe, you know, the feel of what we’re going [for] and it’s just a matter, it’s like you’re kind of halfway there, but you can’t say, “We’re doin’ this!” or “We’re doin’ that!” It’s kind of gettin’ it together. A lot of stuff, you know. It’s like an artist. We got a lotta colors on our thing and we’re just throwin’ ’em at the wall and waitin’ to see when the art happens.
The whole thing with this one is we just wanna make sure that everybody has very passionate performances . . . good to be under a time line, but, you know—hey, this is art. This is about music and having fun. It’s not about selling widgets. So I think releasing this Take Cover album, it’s kind of like the old days to write a record. A really, really absorb it, sit back, listen to it a week later and go, “Was that as cool as it was when I wrote it?” You know, that kind of a thing? When you have time to just look at it from different perspectives, and if it’s still grabbin’ ya and makin’ ya go, “Oh, yeah.” That’s what we’re lookin’ for.
To read sister feature After Waiting A Lifetime, Mike Stone Gets To Rock ‘Heaven,’ click here.
To read Fantasy A&R: If Queensrÿche Wants To Do Covers, We’ve Got Suggestions, click here.
To read The Killing Words’ review of Take Cover, click here.
To read Christa Titus’ review of Welcome to the Machine for Billboard, click here.
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