Prog Me: Geoff Tate

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Five things that rock our prog stars’ worlds…

OK, COMPUTER I’m pretty much a Mac person; I use ProTools and I have quite a lot of independent music software, like Native Instruments, especially for sampling and keyboard work.

MASTERMIND

Music is probably my greatest passion but one of the topics I’m very interested in is social evolution: how we got to where we are. You can find elements of that in my songwriting.

RELICS

I have a religious relic. There was a Catholic priest called Padre Pio who had the stigmata and I have a small piece of his ankle bone that I carry with me at most times. He was a very powerful healer.

SOUND & VISION

I like a lot of the stuff David Sylvian has done and I think Miles Davis was brilliant as a composer. The experiments he’s done in music were just monumental. Movies? I’m looking forward to seeing Spectre. I’m a fan of what they’ve been doing with Daniel Craig in the James Bond films.

SUPPER’S READY

One of the things I love about travelling is being able to go to restaurants in every country and I love every kind of food: Asian, Thai, Japanese… If I’m going to drink alcohol, I like wine and I have my own wine brand called Insania. NRS

Natasha Scharf
Natasha Scharf
Deputy Editor, Prog

Contributing to Prog since the very first issue, writer and broadcaster Natasha Scharf was the magazine’s News Editor before she took up her current role of Deputy Editor, and has interviewed some of the best-known acts in the progressive music world from ELP, Yes and Marillion to Nightwish, Dream Theater and TesseracT. Starting young, she set up her first music fanzine in the late 80s and became a regular contributor to local newspapers and magazines over the next decade. The 00s would see her running the dark music magazine, Meltdown, as well as contributing to Metal Hammer, Classic Rock, Terrorizer and Artrocker. Author of music subculture books The Art Of Gothic and Worldwide Gothic, she’s since written album sleeve notes for Cherry Red, and also co-wrote Tarja Turunen’s memoirs, Singing In My Blood. Beyond the written word, Natasha has spent several decades as a club DJ, spinning tunes at aftershow parties for Metallica, Motörhead and Nine Inch Nails. She’s currently the only member of the Prog team to have appeared on the magazine’s cover.