VICIOUS RUMORS guitarist Geoff Thorpe called into The Classic Metal Show (heard Saturdays from 9p-3a EST at www.cmsradionetwork.com) Saturday, December 8th to rebut comments made by vocalist James Rivera (Vicious Rumors/SEVEN WITCHES/HELSTAR) about an alleged assault of Rivera that left him hospitalized and convinced him to quit Vicious Rumors. Although staying somewhat vague on most points, Thorpe did address issues of him assaulting Rivera on the road with a beer bottle, as well as the allegation that he treated bands poorly on the tour. Below is an excerpt from the interview. To download the entire interview, go here or subscribe via Itunes at this location.

The Classic Metal Show: Why don’t we start with giving you the floor to give the Vicious Rumors side of the story (regarding the incident previously reported by James Rivera)?

Thorpe: "Basically, what happens on the road…there’s a lot of things with a band where it’s just like a business. In that relationship, it should remain private. I didn’t come on the air tonight to slag James Rivera or to put anybody down that’s ever been in Vicious Rumors. I’m proud of every line-up we’ve ever had. What happened on the road…you know…there were a lot of horrible things that happened. There was too much alcohol. There was too many people. There was 18 people on a bus for a month. What we’re talking about here is a really bad case of cabin fever. Like I said my friends, I came in here to spread some metal, and to let everyone know that Vicious Rumors is alive and well. We’re doing a little bit of rebuilding right now. We’ve got some amazing new material for our next CD, and we’re planning on coming out strong in 2008."

The Classic Metal Show: A lot of times when a band member leaves a band and there’s a lot of trash talking, it doesn’t help the person or the band they are leaving. Do you think that James leaving the way he did hurt Vicious Rumors?

Thorpe: "I don’t think it hurt Vicious Rumors. I think it hurt James Rivera a little bit. I was surprised that a guy that has been a professional singer in the business for that long would…it’s not the way I would have handled things. We really appreciate the work that James put into the band, and the work that we did together. But if you look at the length of Vicious Rumors’ career and the amount of time James spent in the band, it was really a very small part of our history. For him to go out publicly and say that now that he’s gone, the band’s over and we’re done with, it’s just a little outrageous. When you talk that much trash and you play the victim, I think people can see through it."

The Classic Metal Show: You were described as the Gene Simmons or Paul Stanley. Which one are you?

Thorpe: "That was the best thing I’ve ever been called in my life. Huge KISS fan, so that was great of James to say that to me. I know that one of the things that he was complaining about was the way I was treating people and the other bands. If you go to our website, there’s pictures of me wearing the other bands’ T-shirts on tour. Sometimes our crowd was waiting out in the lobby for us to go on, and I would go out and get them and say, “come on in and check out the show. You’ve got to support all these bands.” There were nights that our T-Shirt guy had to go to dinner, and I sold merchandise for the other bands. I didn’t charge them for it. I just like to keep things professional, and the most important thing on the road is that hour and a half that we’re on stage. I don’t really care about the other 23 hours of the day. That hour and a half is what’s important to me, and if things aren’t going right or if things are going late, or it’s a weeknight and the headliner has to go on late, that’s just wrong. I treated the bands fairly. I have a very good reputation in the industry. I have a lot of friends in the industry and all over the world. It’s too bad that it had to go down like this between James and I and James and the band, because the metal world is quite small and we all know a lot of the same people. We would never come out and say that now that James has left Vicious Rumors, his career is over, or try to turn people against him. This is just one of those things that happened, and it happens in any relationship. The best thing to do is to move on and do the best you can and move forward, and that’s what Vicious Rumors is doing."

The Classic Metal Show: Well Geoff, I’m just going to ask you point blank here. James’ biggest thing was that he claims that you smacked him in the head with a bottle. Is that true or untrue?

Thorpe: "It’s like I said, my friend, there’s lots of crazy things that happened on that last night. It was cabin fever that came to a pitch. A lot of mistakes were made across the board by everybody, including myself. Things happen, man. Stuff got crazy. All I know is we’re moving on. I apologized to James if he got hurt. He didn’t want to accept my apology, and that’s OK. We all made mistakes. It’s time to move on, and that’s all I can say about it."