How grunge and the marketing men killed Queensrÿche

Queensrÿche could have been the biggest band in the world but then along came Nirvana. Ed Power talks to former frontman Geoff Tate.

IF it wasn’t for Kurt Cobain, Queensrÿche could have been the biggest band in the world. In the late eighties these tall-haired rockers were regarded as the future of heavy metal, evidence that the scene was ready to grow up after the cartoon buffoonery of Mötley Crüe and their poodle-perm peers.

Then along came grunge and everything changed. Irony and self-loathing were in, grandiosity and soaring ambition out. Queensrÿche’s stock plummeted faster than the pound the day after the Brexit referendum.