by Mark Blake
A single version of ‘We Will Rock You’ by 5ive and Queen became a number 1 hit that summer, again raising the question of whether Queen would consider working with another singer. Less than a year later, 5ive had gone to boy-band heaven, and Queen turned their attention to Robbie Williams, the refugee singer from Take That, and then riding high with his own solo career.
Williams had been asked to record ‘We Are the Champions’ for the soundtrack to a romantic action movie, A Knight’s Tale. ‘Robbie said it would be nice to do it with Queen,’ explained May. ‘So, at two days’ notice, we went into the studio and did it – live! We did four takes. Rob sang live and he came up with the goods. It’s a controversial thing to do … because a lot of Queen fans were like, “Why are they consorting with that person from Take That?” Shock, horror!’
The collaboration was in keeping with the long Queen tradition of doing the unexpected, and upsetting people along the way, including, it seemed, John Deacon. In April 2001, Deacon informed the Sun: ‘I didn’t want to be involved with it, and I’m glad. I’ve heard what they did and it’s rubbish. It’s one of the greatest songs ever written, but I think they’ve ruined it. I don’t want to be nasty but let’s just say Robbie Williams is no Freddie Mercury. Freddie can never be replaced – and certainly not by him.’ Tellingly, Deacon had also been absent a month earlier when Queen were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in New York.
Yet despite stories that Williams had been offered the job of singing with Queen, the trail suddenly went cold. Interviewed in 2005, May said: ‘We sat around and downed a fair amount of wine and talked about it, and thought, “Yeah, perhaps we can do this.” But it never came to fruition, and I don’t know why.’ ‘We talked about maybe touring America with Robbie,’ elaborated Taylor. ‘And we were quite serious about it, but circumstances didn’t come together. He is very young, much younger than us anyway … In retrospect, though, it wouldn’t have been a good idea.’ It was impossible not to wonder whether John Deacon’s public condemnation had contributed to a change of heart.
While Queen wouldn’t yet tour with a new singer, they had already found another way to ensure their music’s longevity. In March 2001, Brian May had told London’s Capital Gold radio station, ‘We’re doing a musical, and Ben Elton has written us a fantastic script.’ The idea for the musical, We Will Rock You, dated back to 1996, when May and Taylor had met Hollywood actor Robert De Niro at the Venice Film Festival. De Niro had his own production company, Tribeca, and was intrigued by the idea of a Queen musical. As May explained, it had taken so long for the idea to come to fruition as ‘there were so many storylines along the way’. After much deliberation, the initial plan for an autobiographical story was rejected (May: ‘too embarrassing’). By which time Ben Elton had been brought on board.
A former comedian, turned novelist and director and one of the writers behind the period comedy Blackadder, Elton pitched an original story – ‘The Matrix meets Arthurian legend’ – that would ‘capture the spirit of Queen’s music’. Elton’s tale was set 300 years in the future, where Earth is now Planet Mall, and ruled by the Globalsoft Corporation, who have banned musical instruments and suppress any individuality, freedom of expression and – of course – rock music. In a nutshell: the ensuing struggle between the musical freedom fighters and ‘the man’ was sufficient, just, for a trawl through the Queen back catalogue.
We Will Rock You opened at London’s Dominion Theatre on 14 May 2002. It was an immediate, unprecedented success, but received a critical savaging on a par with, if not greater, than any meted out to Queen in over thirty years. Much of the critics’ ire was directed at what the Daily Mirror called ‘Ben Elton’s risible story’. But audiences thought otherwise. In August 2003, the show had opened in Melbourne before touring the rest of Australia; in November it opened in Madrid … By the end of 2005, We Will Rock You was playing in Las Vegas, Moscow and Cologne, and had become the longest-running musical in the history of the Dominion Theatre. In 2010 it was still box-office gold, with a sequel planned for the near future.
May and Taylor had suspended whatever their misgivings had been about musical theatre to promote the show, often joining the cast onstage for ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. Gung-ho in the face of criticism (‘They’re just bitter old journalists’), the pair also insisted that ‘Freddie would have loved it.’ Ben Elton’s story may have been, as the Daily Mail put it, ‘totally vacuous’, but it was hard to imagine Mercury not wanting his music performed in London’s West End night after night in front of a new audience, many of whom had never seen Queen play live. For many who had witnessed Queen in their prime, We Will Rock You would always be a far tougher sell.
From their involvement with the musical to their solo albums to the duo’s collaborations with young pop stars, the evidence suggested that neither May nor Taylor were prepared to go quietly. In June 2002, the duo performed with guests at the Queen’s Jubilee Concert at Buckingham Palace. The show began with May playing the National Anthem on the roof of the royal household. ‘It was a symbol – for my generation,’ he said, ‘because when I started off it would have been unthinkable for somebody playing that loud thing, on top of the Queen’s Palace.’ It was also a sign that May and Taylor were musicians in need of a regular gig.
In early 1969, Fred Bulsara had joined his fellow students at Ealing art college’s annual rag ball. Held in the local town hall, a gothic building on Ealing Broadway, the musical entertainment was being provided by Free, a blues-rock quartet, fronted by gravel-voiced singer Paul Rodgers. After the gig, Bulsara, hankering after a musical career of his own, hung around, plying the band with questions. Thirty-five years later, Paul Rodgers would succeed the late Fred Bulsara to become Queen’s new lead singer. The announcement was made in December 2004. Said Brian May: ‘The Queen phoenix is rising from the ashes.’
Three months earlier, Rodgers had joined May onstage in London for the Fender Stratocaster’s 50th Anniversary Gig. ‘I made the first move,’ said the guitarist. ‘We talked after the show, and Paul’s lady, Cynthia [Kereluk, also his manager] was there and she just stood between us and her eyes went back and forth and she said, “There’s something happening here, isn’t there?” And we both looked at each other and said, “Well, yes.”’ When Kereluk suggested that all they now needed was a drummer, May fired back unhesitangly, ‘Well, I do know a drummer …’ Within days, May had sent Roger Taylor a video of the gig. Two months later, Rodgers sang with May and Taylor at London’s Hackney Empire for a television performance celebrating Queen’s induction in to the UK Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame. ‘We did “All Right Now” and Brian asked me to play “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions”,’ recalled Rodgers. ‘We knew we were on to something when we rehearsed those three songs and the TV crew gave us a standing ovation.’
According to Rodgers, what began as ‘three dates in London’ turned into a European tour. Carefully billed as Queen + Paul Rodgers (and given the acronym Q+PR), the trio were joined by old hand Spike Edney, The Brian May Band’s guitarist Jamie Moses and bassist Danny Miranda, an American who’d spent the past nine years with heavy rockers Blue Öyster Cult.
Edney was one of the few veterans from past Queen campaigns. The ‘Drum’, ‘Bass’ and ‘Guitar Departments’ that ate, slept and drank side by side with their employers in the 1970s and 1980s had all quit for civilian life: Gerry Stickells had retired, Roger Taylor’s Man Friday, Chris ‘Crystal’ Taylor was now a landscape gardener, Peter ‘Ratty’ Hince a photographer … ‘I thought it was interesting that none of the old guard were on the Paul Rodgers tour,’ says Hince. ‘Queen were a good band to work for in that you were always doing something exciting, they did things that other bands could only dream of, and they were fun to be with. But were they a generous band to work for? No. Were they appreciative? Most of the time, no. Though to give Brian his credit, I think he appreciated us. Brian always had a conscience.’
Queen + Paul Rodgers made their de
but on 19 March 2005 in Capetown, at the second concert for Nelson Mandela’s 4664 AIDS awareness charity. They opened with ‘Tie Your Mother Down’, followed by ‘Can’t Get Enough’ from Rodgers’ post-Free group Bad Company, before flitting between Queen, Free and Bad Company numbers, closing with the hits, Free’s ‘All Right Now’, ‘We Will Rock You’ and ‘We Are the Champions’. There were the inevitable first-night nerves and fluffed lyrics, but it boded well for the first date in Europe. Just over a week later, Q+PR rolled into London’s Brixton Academy, bravely playing in front of an audience largely made up of Queen fan club members.
May and Taylor were a natural fit for the Free and Bad Company songs. Free’s ‘Tons of Sobs’ had been a regular on the turntable at Taylor’s flat in Sinclair Gardens. Bad Company’s first album had also soundtracked Queen’s debut US tour (‘Freddie loved Paul Rodgers’ voice,’ said Brian May, ‘but he used to have a go at me in the studio when I tried to have him sing bluesy stuff. He’d say, “Brian, you’re trying to make me fucking sound like Paul Rodgers, and I can’t do it!”’). The real challenge, though, lay with Rodgers.
The son of a Middlesbrough docker, and steeped in soul and blues, Paul’s fervent vocal style had been an inspiration to a generation of rock singers. At fifty-six, he was the right age, with a background and ego that would allow him to go head to head with his new bandmates. ‘We couldn’t have hired a young unknown, however good, and expected this to work,’ said May. ‘With Paul, we can find some newness and some way of reinterpreting the past.’ But Paul Rodgers wasn’t Freddie Mercury. As Taylor pointed out, ‘You’re a mug not to use your brand name,’ but for all its commercial weight, the Queen brand name also came with some heavy emotional baggage.
Taylor had hired a personal trainer to get fit for the tour. Rodgers was already one step ahead. A martial arts black belt, he had long swapped the excesses of his youth for yoga and the gym, and had also acquired a mysteriously youthful hairline compared to a few years before. Paul could twirl a mic stand with the best of them, but as he forewarned Q magazine: ‘You’ll see dynamism and movement up onstage, but not flamboyance. There’ll be no cape – and probably a lack of tights.’ Vocally, he made light work of ‘Tie Your Mother Down’. But it was peculiar hearing ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ and ‘I Want to Break Free’ without Mercury’s camp nuances. Onstage, Queen’s late singer would materialise on a video screen performing the intro to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, with Rodgers only taking over the lead vocal during the song’s second half. The ghost of Freddie Mercury was everywhere.
After Brixton, the tour moved to the Continent, taking in France, Spain, Germany, Belgium … In Italy, Pope John Paul II suffered a heart attack on the day of the first show, throwing it into jeopardy. (It was the second time the Pope had jinxed a Queen tour.) Three days later in Firenze, Rodgers had to sit out most of the gig with a throat infection.
In every interview, May and Taylor would pledge their love of Free and Bad Company, and insist that Freddie would have been happy with his replacement. Fans, critics and old friends were divided. ‘Brian loves playing and loves an audience, Roger likes being a pop star and Paul Rodgers was a sensational singer in Free and Bad Company,’ offers Peter Hince. ‘It was very polished and well orchestrated, but it was a bit Las Vegas.’ ‘A lot of people will be very angry but I think they may be missing the point,’ said Brian. ‘Freddie himself would rather enjoy ticking people off – he’d probably say, “Go for it.”’ However, May revealed he had written to Mercury’s mother, asking for her blessing, which she’d given. Taylor explained that John Deacon had been invited to participate, but had declined. ‘He has decided to hide away – and I respect that,’ he said. ‘I think he was a little more fragile and not as well equipped to deal with the rough and tumble of everyday existence. He prefers not to undergo the stress of it all.’
For Rodgers, though, not an interview went by without some question about his predecessor. ‘There is no question in my mind of replacing Freddie Mercury,’ he said, pointing out that he didn’t expect ‘Brian May to be [Free’s] Paul Kossoff.’ But then Rodgers had faced a similar problem in the 1980s, when he’d joined former Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page’s band, The Firm, and been asked what it was like to be ‘the new Robert Plant’. Talking about Queen, Rodgers said he remembered passing the band on the stairs of his management offices; Bad Company’s manager Peter Grant had been interested in managing Queen. Elsewhere, he applauded Mercury’s decision to stop taking his medication (‘That takes some guts’) and praised Queen’s music (‘They’re almost up there with The Beatles’). But Rodgers was also quick to point out that he had a solo career to go back to.
Stepping away from the machine would take time. The Q+PR European tour was followed by eight UK arena dates. In July, a show at London’s Hyde Park, where the group were to be joined by flamboyant UK rockers and Queen fans The Darkness, was postponed by a week after fears of a terrorist attack. Brian May revealed that John Deacon had been due to attend the gig, though only as an observer. ‘John gave us his eternal blessing,’ said Taylor. ‘But you could say John kept his mystery … Though I don’t know where he’s keeping it right now.’ Taylor’s waggish aside could have referred to Deacon’s recent run-in with the press. In January, the Mail on Sunday revealed the bassist’s affair with a 25-year-old dancer he’d met in a London strip club. ‘He suffered from depression after Freddie died,’ suggested one old friend, ‘and I’m not sure he ever got over it.’ Naturally, Deacon refused to comment.
If Paul Rodgers had intended to return to his solo career, then he was forced to shelve any plans for the remainder of 2005. In October, Q+PR played three sold-out US dates, including the Hollywood Bowl. It was their first American tour under the Queen brand name since 1982. Billy Squier, their friend and support act on that last tour, was in the audience. ‘Paul Rodgers is one of the all time great rock ’n’ roll singers, and he brought it all to the stage … but ultimately they fell short of the mark. It was kind of a no-win situation, because no one can replace Freddie, and Freddie was just too big a part of Queen to be replaced.’
Meanwhile, EMI’s old MD Bob Mercer was struck by how little had changed, despite Mercury’s absence. Mercer had squired some of Queen around New Orleans during a night of Hallowe’en madness in 1978. But Queen always minded their manners. ‘They used to call me “Mr Mercer” for God knows what reason,’ he laughs. ‘Years and years after I’d worked with them, I went to see them at the Hollywood Bowl with Paul Rodgers, and I bumped into Brian May in the elevator in the Chateau Marmont hotel … and what’s the first thing he says? “Oh, hello, Mr Mercer.”’
Encouraged by the sold-out shows, Q+PR returned to America for a further twenty-three dates the following spring. But not every date sold well, especially in some southern states where Queen’s popularity had never been high. A Q+PR live album and DVD, Return of the Champions, put them in UK Top 20 but would do little in the US. Yet, despite these setbacks, there still seemed to be a genuine rapport between the players. The tour ended on a high. ‘The last show we did was in Vancouver,’ said Rodgers. ‘Normally by the end, everybody is ready to go home, but we weren’t. We’d just played what we all felt was the best gig on the tour. We were gobsmackingly together. We all turned around and said, “We have got to do something else.” The next logical step was to go into the studio.’
‘We couldn’t become our own tribute band,’ insists Roger Taylor. ‘I don’t want us to be thought of as a golden oldies act.’ It is summer 2008 and Queen’s drummer has taken a trip back to Queen’s good old bad old days: wincing at a mention of his first solo album, Fun in Space, praising The Game and chuckling about high times in New Orleans and Munich. Now, though, he is ready to talk about Queen’s future. ‘If we were going to keep doing this,’ he adds. ‘We had to have some brand-new stuff to play.’ On 5 September 2008, Queen + Paul Rodgers released the ‘new stuff’. The Cosmos Rocks was the first album of new studio material to appear under the Queen n
ame since Innuendo. In the great tradition of Queen albums, it had not come together easily.
No sooner had Rodgers stepped off the road with Queen than he had gone back out to play his own shows. Meanwhile, Brian May completed Bang! The Complete History of the Universe, a book written with astro-physicist Chris Lintott and astronomer Sir Patrick Moore (‘Wow! A rock star who knows something about real stars,’ gushed one review). At Moore’s encouragement, May then went back to Imperial College, spending nine months conducting extra research to complete the PhD thesis he had abandoned thirty-three years earlier.
‘I kept all my notes,’ he told The Times, ‘and was able to find them in my loft and start working on them again.’ May would receive his PhD the following summer, firmly cementing his reputation as the world’s most highly educated rock star. ‘I am utterly amazed that Brian was able to do go back and do that,’ says his old schoolfriend Dave Dilloway. ‘To survive with your brain unscrambled after all those years in the rock industry is remarkable. He did try and explain radio velocities and cosmic dust to me over dinner, but I said, “I’m sorry, Brian, I have no idea what you’re talking about …”’
By summer of 2007, though, May, Taylor and Rodgers cleared their schedules to start work at Taylor’s home studio. The most obvious difference between The Cosmos Rocks and every other Queen album was the absence of John Deacon. Had he been asked? ‘If you call him, you don’t always get an answer,’ said Taylor. ‘He’s turned into a recluse.’ ‘Deakey doesn’t speak to anyone, except Queen’s accountant,’ elaborated one unnamed source. ‘He just wants to spend time with his family and play golf.’ Instead, it fell to May and Rodgers to play bass.
