According to Brazilian website Collector’s Room, a major incident happened in the Queensryche camp on 14th April in São Paulo, Brazil which involved frontman Geoff Tate threatening Scott Rockenfield with a knife.
Collector’s Room made their name by being first to the punch with stories that turned out to be true, for example the flop of Metal Open Air, anticipating the Lynyrd Skynyrd Brazilian tour two months in advance, and being the first Brazilian site to publish the Black Sabbath reunion story.
Here’s what allegedly happened on April 14th.
The band arrived before schedule at HSBC Brazil without Geoff Tate and gathered ‘secretly’. Some time later Geoff arrived without knowing they were gathered, so he didn’t say anything and decided to find out what was going on. He stood behind the door long enough to realise the band were planning to fire him. At that time, he left silently without letting the band know he was there.
During soundcheck, things started to change. All of a sudden he pushed Michael Wilton violently and he fell to the floor, then he went towards Scott Rockenfield and pointed a knife at him, threatening him. Security staff from the venue had to separate them.
After this Michael Wilton went to his dressing room and locked himself in there and said there would be no show. Local producers spent the whole afternoon trying to convince him to play. Eventually he did for ‘contractual reasons’.
This is not the first time that a major band has suffered big damage in Brazil.
In 1996 Blaze Bayley lost his job as Iron Maiden lead singer at the Rio de Janeiro gig, although the band never confirmed this.
It all happened on a very bad Blaze night, making lyrical mistakes and singing several songs out of tune. Someone in the audience threw a shoe at him, which missed the target and hit Janick Gers instead who furiously stopped playing the current song and cursed the guy in the audience for a couple of minutes.
Later that night the band never came back for the encore, the only time that has happened in their 30 year career. At the time they blamed “excessive heat at the venue”.
