![]() ![]() ![]() But his drive and determination to write original stuff was great. He had musical aspirations, but we were quite good players and we weren’t really sure if he could sing. He was on the periphery, just a mate, really. He was a mate of Tim from Ealing college. There are some great photos on your Instagram of you and Freddie at the stall you both ran in Kensington Market, on New Year’s Eve 1969. But when you’re young you’d better be arrogant and have big dreams, because it’s not going to happen by accident. It was a measure of our foolish vanity in those days. But we really did want to be hugely successful. Were you plotting world domination from the start, or was it more about having the chance to play gigs and meet girls? You met Brian May in the jazz room at Imperial College in London 1968. We recently had a Number One album, which was the first time in a long time. What’s Number One in the singles chart? Well, nobody really gives a shit, do they? The album charts still seems to be important. ![]() And that’s not even one of the biggest ones.ĭoes five hundred million views on YouTube give you the same thrill as getting a gold record did back in the day? Somebody told me the other day that the I Want To Break Free video just got it’s five-hundred-millionth view on YouTube. ![]() Every time we think the band is done, that’s that and it was wonderful, something else comes along. Ridiculous, isn’t it? After we lost Freddie, Brian and I both thought: ‘Well, that’s that.’ And then events conspired to keep everything going. And I’ve enjoyed it.”ĭo you ever think: “Fifty years. “You’ve only got one life that we know about, so I think you should enjoy it. “It’s been hard work, but I’ve tried to extract every ounce of fun that I could get out of any given situation,” he says of his 50-plus year journey with the band. He always seemed to be the member of Queen most comfortable in their own skin, and today, white-bearded and garrulous, he’s lost none of that. Even on the other end of a Zoom call he exudes a distinct rock-star aura. It’s a few days before Christmas, and Taylor is at home in Surrey. “This shit year?” he says of the past 12 months, not inaccurately. When Roger Taylor realised that COVID-19 had scuppered his band’s plans for 2020, he did what any self-respecting A-list rock star would do: he spent a few weeks sailing around the Mediterranean on his boat. The two of them might not want to mark their Golden Jubilee, but for everyone else half a century of one of the most outrageously brilliant bands of them all is something worth celebrating. Whether they like it or not, 50 years is a milestone. Taylor puts it more bluntly: “We didn’t want to draw attention to how fucking ancient we are.” “We’d rather just celebrate being here and being alive.” “Everybody else can celebrate it if they want,” May says amiably. Yet even before the pandemic put the brakes on the former, May and Taylor had absolutely no plans to mark the latter. Not only did they have a series of massive arena shows across Europe lined up during the summer, it also marked the band’s 50th anniversary. “It constantly surprises me.”Ģ020 was due to be a big year for Queen. “I do take great joy in the fact that there’s an awful lot of love for us still,” says Taylor. Only May and Taylor remain, the beating heart of the band’s current, Adam Lambert-fronted incarnation and custodians of Queen’s stellar legacy. Mercury died in 1991, bassist John Deacon retired from the band and public life in the late 90s. Today, the four kids on that tape are down to two. “But strangely, if he were alive and sitting here at this moment, he’d probably be the same as me: ‘Oh darling, we were kids.’” ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |