Always my pleasure Fred (clinking our glasses) this wine will sure help.

I knew I liked it, I liked everything about the record. It was a project, that when I started working on it, it really consumed me for nine months of writing and creating. When I came up for a breath, we had it finished, and we all felt really good and happy about it. I felt it was a strong record…you know, like every other record we gave to the world and then what the world does with the finished product, you just don't know, you never know how it will be perceived or if their gonna understand it or even how their gonna take it or relate or be moved by it. But in the case of Operation Mindcrime, it was very well received and yet, took some time to become a hit.

No, no, cause we constantly sold about 250,000 records with each initial release and that was OM did as well, but you know, I never really based success on how many records a band sells, I've always based it on starting from nothing and then creating and finishing a well-done piece, that's a success.

Besides me (laughing)?

Well, there's me, (looking at me with a shit eating grin), seriously, gosh, there's so many wonderful and talented singers that express themselves, express a song, that's the sign of an accomplished singer, be in touch with their emotions, singing a beautiful melody with feeling. There's a lot of singers that can do just that, and still do it throughout their career. Not so much into score keeping, but I can tell you people I like and enjoy. Singers that have impressed me include, wow, there's David Coverdale, a beautiful voice, I've played many shows with him, and he's just always been on, time after time, he's just good at what he does. Bruce Dickinson , what a powerful singer, amazing what he can do night after night. Oh, Mick Jagger, come on at his age, 78 years old and still performing, he kind of set the bar for all of us, if he can still do, we can still do it (laughing), umm, and so many woman singers, they really get so much more in touch with their emotions. Singing is a lot of channeling thru emotions and so many woman can do that effortlessly, men have a little harder time with that.

I grew up in the 60's and 70's while music was not put into categories so much as today. We know generally everything has a label, a box they have to fit into, in the 70's those boxes were very big, there was a lot of experimentation going on with music, lot of people trying new things that hadn't been done before, combining different styles of music together to form a hybrid of exciting stuff. Nowadays you just don't see that sticking to the "tried and true" formulas, too quick to define themselves. When I was younger in the industry, musicians would never align themselves with a product, but know they want to associate with a product, in my day, that would label you a "sell out". It's a whole different thing in my day, if you were called a rock star, that was an insult, you were a musician first and foremost.

Tons of people, but Tom Jones was probably my first big vocal influence. He had a variety show that my family watched every week, my mom, my sister. He was just fantastic, a powerhouse singer with a huge voice, and oh so charismatic too. Plus, he always dressed so well, he wore a bowtie and at some point in the show, he would take it off and woman would just go crazy, including my mom and sister. Then he would sling that bowtie into the crowd and the woman would lose their minds again, so did my mom and sister (laughing). I would watch this as a kid and say "wow, that's so cool", and that's when I decided, "hey, that's what I wanna do". I guess I didn't realize that at the time, but it felt like magic, and I knew I wanted to be a musician. My mom couldn't keep me off the piano after that.

Yes… I can (looking at me disappointed and snickering), just messing with ya, but yes I can sit down and create new songs. It's discipline it's putting yourself in that environment where you have no interruptions and can just focus on writing you can be very productive that way.

Yes I had everything I needed on my boat I lived on my boat, so I just went places and anchored and wrote, it's very inspiring.

Um, I think I would go to Ireland, southern Ireland West Cork I could easily settle down there.

Legend.

Funny.

Masterful.

(laughing) LEGEND….in all caps.

I would agree. Did you play or participate in sports growing up?

Baseball, football, and basketball I was on a swim team I also played tennis.

No, it was fun, but it was always music, but I loved playing sports I love playing more than watching I do admire today's athletes they do wonderful things like I admire scientists that develop phenomenal inventions and the musicians who create musical masterpieces
Watching athletes like Venus Williams do what she does it's like "wow" I admire the physicality, I admire Tiger Woods, I like playing golf also, can't hit like him, but music always came first.

No, I wouldn't like it to become a play because I personally don't like Broadway plays but I could see it becoming a movie because heck it's almost been a movie several times it's been the story we've told to people many times over the years, different people have tried to buy the rights and turn it into a screenplay, but it never went further than that.

Oh yeah I'm very open to all different options, we were once approached by someone who wanted to buy the rights to the story and change Dr. X's character to a woman, that didn't seem to make any sense.

Well…. this is one of them (laughing), no, not really, most of the fans are really cool, if a problem does happen, it usually involves drinking.

Oh yes working on a couple, just finished working on a couple of tracks with Avantasia, (the album "A Paranormal Evening with the Moonflower Society" was released on October 21, 2022), two albums in the works, one is almost complete and the other one halfway finished.

Well, Susan and I were on a trip with some friends of ours who asked us to take them through France we've been there so many times, so we took them on a weeklong trip, rented a van and gave them an exclusive tour of the country and then they said "you guys should do this for a living, you're really good at" so we put our heads together and came up with the concept, we love showing people around and escorting them places they might not see on a conventional tour.

*Interviewer note: my wife and I have been on three of their tours, and they are amazing, you're with Geoff and the band the entire trip, sightseeing, dining and drinking, living like a "rock star".

Well, I think we're going through a really difficult growth period with such an extreme polarization in our society, that's a dangerous point when we stop to agree or disagree, we all have different perspectives and try to compromise. America isn't about one way or the other, America has a lot of great things about it, it's a great place to make money if you want to get ahead in the world, unlike so many other places that are so limiting, unfortunately what we don't do is take care of our people, we don't give a shit about our people. You're on your own motherfucker, and now we have a big older population, and we don't have a system to assist the elderly, it's a shame.  We're looking around to other countries and seeing how they do it, Sweden, Great Britain, France and Holland all have universal healthcare, and they have mechanisms to take care of their people. We're wondering why we can't do that, we're asking questions with a lot of finger pointing, but we need solutions, it's as simple as our infrastructure, the roads are a shambles because we build them cheaply, it is disturbing.

That's a big question when I started out in 1982 it was constructive in a certain way, it had a system in place nowadays the industry employs over 20,000 people, it's changed drastically, the whole way music is made has changed, the way it's distribution has changed as well, there's hardly anything that resembles when I started out…that's the internet. When the Internet got really popular and people started file sharing, we lost 80 to 88% of our income, now we make very little on music, before the Internet we got a lot of our income from record sales, now that's gone away, the publishing end of it is still huge, you still get paid if it's in a movie or a commercial.

No, I don't believe in the Christian concept of heaven or hell, I don't have a belief in it. Nobody I know has died and come back and told me how it was, that whole concept of heaven and hell dying and going someplace is a complete manufactured sort of explanation that was created by people to try and explain something that's really complex, I just personally don't have a belief in either. I do believe in this though, we all need to live an honorable life, I mean we must treat all people with respect and dignity and honesty, do our best not to create harm or violence and don't be afraid to show your feelings and intentions. I've known quite a few people that grew up without parents, they were on their own and had to fight and work their way into some sort of successful position and they all were on the crossroads of giving in to drug use or going the wrong route but remained strong to themselves.

Well…. I think that's something we tell our kids, a way of persuasion, I think we sometimes create our own reality, and we create the world in which we want to live in.

Oh no, always tweaking, all the way, a song is never done until…oh, I don't know if it's ever done, the recording is just a version of the song,  and live you always play it different, you always change something.

Of course, you can't always think of everything, you get it to where you can, a certain point, that's why playing it "live" is a great way to revamp it, change the melody or tempo or possibly transform it.

We always had an agreement that we'd try the idea first and if it made the song better, then we'd collectively go with that version, it didn't happen too often.

No….never, definitely not interested, it's a no-win situation,  I once mentioned a political situation while playing "live" and was met with boos, my political beliefs and outlooks don't fit in a partisan environment. I'm about working together to create a solution not competing for a winning situation for my party or my supporters. Politicians should be working to fix the issues and problems, so many talking heads that mesmerize and mean fucking nothing, it seems like the last couple of generations we've lost the ability to be critical thinkers about issues, we look to the internet for our answers.

Thank you Fred, always a pleasure.