In a new interview with Talk Louder, Accept frontman Mark Tornillo shared his thoughts on turning 70, and explained how he learned to sing when he first joined the band.
“When I first joined Accept, I had sang hard on a consistent basis for a long time. I was in a few cover bands in the ’90s and the 2000s. But we wouldn’t play all the time. So I said, ‘Well, if I’m gonna do this night after night after night, I’d better go get some help, maybe, just see what I can find out.'”
The singer mentioned his vocal coach and praised him. “I went to a guy who was recommended to me. His name is Mark Baxter in New York. He’s worked with Steven Tyler… Well, that says it all right there. That’s the only thing you need to know. And he says, ‘Look, I can’t teach you how to sing. You know how to sing. I can hear it. I listened to your records. I can hear you sing.’ I said, ‘Yeah, all right. What do you got’?”
The rocker continued by explaining what the vocal coach taught him. “And it’s just a series of — it’s scales, but it’s all different positions of your tongue and your jaw and the vowels. Because vowels mean everything. If you change to go from an ‘E’ to a ‘U’ or something like that, it feels like you’re in a different throat… And nobody knows why.”
The frontman also explained how he keeps his voice sharp while he is not on tour during another interview. “When we’re not working, I don’t do that, but I actually go out and sing with some friends of mine locally every once in and awhile. It’s nice for my voice to have a rest, to be perfectly honest with you.”
He added: “This is a little long; the last time I was on stage and actually sang was in October. I did a gig with some buddies of mine. I do a thing with Paul Crook, who used to be in Anthrax and was also Meatloaf’s guitar player for years; I do an industrial thing with him and Scott Metaxas from Prophet. It’s a cover thing, where we do a lot of mash-ups and stuff. It’s a lot of fun.”
Tornillo joined Accept in 2009, replacing the band’s original singer, Udo Dirkschneider. Tornillo has been featured on Accept’s last six studio albums: ‘Blood Of The Nations,’ ‘Stalingrad,’ ‘Blind Rage,’ ‘The Rise Of Chaos,’ ‘Too Mean To Die,’ and ‘Humanoid.’
Accept will celebrate 50 years in 2025-2026. The band will go on a special anniversary tour at the end of 2025 and release an album in early 2026.
