Is This The Real Life? (58 page)

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 debut 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.