I am in L.A.

Where do you find some of the best crowds?

You know, I think people are just people wherever you go.

That's tough, you got to remember... 20 years of doing it. There's good and bad and all of that. So, I think when people say what crowds are the best that it's related directly to the band. It depends on how good you may be on a given night and I think that audiences are going to respond accordingly. I wouldn't say in one way or another that in any particular place that an audience is better. Or, if anything more stands out it's because of what you're giving them. They are going to respond in direct proportion to that most of the time.

You have a new album coming out. Tell us a little about that?

This thing goes back about 10 years. We've been consciously recording for the last two years. It's been quite a lengthy process. It hasn't just been let's do this. This record, in all honesty, has been in the works over the course of the last two records, so in between making those, we were really working on this one at the same time.

So, why are we here?

That's the whole purpose of the thing. You have to figure it out for yourself. In the liner notes, I clearly tell people that this record will not find that answer for you, but maybe it'll help the thought process. We are all on a journey and that's what we're here for, it's to try to figure it out. The whole premise is to keep your eyes out and be vigilant for the people who claim they have the answers.

Do you think anyone in today's society represents that type of cult leader?

Turn on your television. They're everywhere.

You've had an interesting story that spans a couple of decades. Tell us about heavy metal today.

I am fortunate to be part of something that I helped create, which is Sanctuary Music. Our feeling was that we could do a better job. I am happy to say that Sanctuary is the fastest growing record company in the world. This has been 15 years in the making; this is not something we dreamed up a couple of years ago.

What are your thoughts on file sharing and the horrible job the record labels did in responding to it?

There are no creative people there, Sanctuary is full of creative people. They come from a point of view of creativity; it's not just guys sitting in there crunching the numbers and counting the beans. The problem with the majors is that there's no creativity. In their arrogance, they think there is, but there are no music people in those places. Hopefully, Sanctuary's model will show people that it can be done.

How is this one different?

I don't know if there is anything different, but with a concept piece, like this is, what we're trying to do is get a single thought across. I was looking for what I thought was the single greatest common denominator, which we all have, which was that whole nagging thought, who am I and where am I going, does my life mean anything, will my life have any meaning after I am gone, is there an afterlife or is there a God? You know, all of that stuff, and I rolled it all together and came up with the lyrics. The very first thing you hear on the record is, Tell me my Lord, why am I here? When I came up with that thought, I thought, that encapsulates all the thoughts.

How do you feel about shows like American Idol?

Well, that show is nothing new. There have been incarnations of that for years, wrapped up in different packages. There is a need to fill that sort of thing. Let's face it; TV is a drug that keeps people doped up and the drug morphs from time to time and changes a little bit, and now it seems to be all this reality-based nonsense. There's a need for it to keep people doped up the same way that food keeps people doped up. We're nothing but a society of junkies in a lot of ways and it's really sad. When you watch fat people sitting around, you know, couch potatoes, there's no difference in that and someone lying in the street shooting junk. It's just a different sort of junk. I know it sounds like I am biased toward fat people, but I'm not. I understand about having a weight struggle, I've had it all my life, so I feel qualified to speak about it. The way those things force-feed people, and they sit in front of it and they are just glued to it. Yeah, I guess there is a need for it. It's serving some sort of purpose. It's got huge numbers from what I understand. I've never seen it.

Do you try to shy away from almost reproducing your best-selling album The Crimson Idol?

I think you have to be conscious not to do it. When I was doing this record, I knew from the beginning that the minute you put opera or concept in the titles, it was going to get compared again. It took me quite a while to get my courage up to face that beast because I knew it was the first thing that was going to happen, so I knew that making a record that was as good was probably not good enough, it was going to have to be better, and quite honestly I didn't know if I could do better. Quite honestly, I thought it was the closest thing to a perfect record that I could make. The idea of going back to do something equally as good in a different way was a challenge, to say the least. I knew from a sonic point of view that I wanted it to be different, I think, in some ways, we accomplished that. I think there's more diversity on this record than any other record that we've done. The whole idea within working in a framework of a concept piece gives you the license to do things that you normally wouldn't have done because it's part of the storyline now. It gives you the ability to stretch yourself and justify it.

You've always had trouble with the label's lack of support. What advice would you give someone who wants to enter the heavy metal or rock world today?

That's a tough question because the industry has really changed. The bands now are given a record to try to make something happen and if it doesn't happen, they're gone. Think about bands like AC / DC, who were given half a dozen records to find their audience, if that band would have done one record and would have never got out of Australia... It's really sad. Think of the music we're going to be deprived of because artists aren't given the chance to develop and find themselves. From a cyclical point of view, it's in a really bad place right now. Maybe there will be a lot of upstarts that will give new music a chance to flourish. Frank Sinatra broke away from Capitol in the mid '60s then went to Warner Brothers and they gave him this little thing, which is basically a distribution deal and it was this little label called Reprise. If you're going to have a record company, you have to have a product to keep that thing working. So they started looking at obscure artists, some of it was pop, some of it was jazz, and they signed this one artist named Jimi Hendrix. So without that obscure label, rock wouldn't have changed the way it did. It's not the majors that are going to change the face of music; it's those upstarts, it's those young guys that believe in the music. You have to remember; when the Beatles came to America, Capitol didn't want them, EMI had to force them on America it's almost like those guys can become successful in spite of themselves.

Thanks so much for your time and we wish you the best with all your musical endeavors.