Recommendations of the Editorial team
My father was a car mechanic and worked on many scrap boxes who had no cassette player yet. But they had 8 tracks! And once a customer left a copy of Queen’s “Greatest Hits” in the car. “Bohemian Rhapsody” simply has to be the biggest song that has ever been written. When he was released, he hit the whole world in his spell. If you play in a band and come across something that turns all the rules upside down, it is like a creative silver strip on the horizon. And Queen always tried to create something new – none of your songs is knitted according to the same pattern.
I loved Freddie as a performer. Perhaps he had these incredible poses in front of the mirror, but he never gave the impression of slipping into another skin. It was his way to tell the world: “I am what I am.”
It just makes you great fun to sing your songs
I still remember the time when the remaining queen members were looking for a new singer and I thought: “I would like to do that for my life.” It just makes you great fun to sing your songs – and he sang them with this incredible dedication. I would only have to stop smoking if I was seriously trying to do it.
Queen were considered cool – and then suddenly it was no longer. Maybe because they had backbones and believed in their music. Rock music often lives from empty phrases and hollow poses – and Queen just didn’t want to take part. They were obviously convinced of what they did.
And they ensured controversy reactions. I once heard the anecdote – and I don’t know whether it was the truth – that Queen played at a festival and were booed by the stage. Freddie swore that they would return, as the biggest band of this planet. And they did it. When we played the festivals in Reading and Leeds, we had to go on stage after Slayer – and bottles filled with piss flew towards us. I thought back then: “When we ever come back here, then only as a headliner.” I always tried to dream the same dreams that Freddie also dreamed.