Queen Reunite for Spring
Queen is mounting their first tour since the death of frontman Freddie Mercury from AIDS in 1991 — with former Bad Company and Free singer Paul Rodgers at the helm. The veteran hard rockers will be playing several European dates next spring, and the shows will feature both Queen and Rodgers material.
The inspiration came this September at the Fender fiftieth anniversary bash, where Queen guitarist Brian May and Rodgers — who joined the Firm with Jimmy Page in the mid-Eighties and reunited with Bad Company in the late Nineties — performed the classic Free song “All Right Now.” “We were both so amazed at the chemistry that was going on,” May writes on his Web site, “that suddenly it seems blindingly obvious that there was ‘something happening here.'”
Queen and Rodgers also played together last month when Queen was inducted into the U.K. Music Hall of Fame. According to May, the positive reaction from that performance led to more specific tour plans.
Queen’s last shows with Mercury were in 1986; afterwards, the band stopped touring due to Mercury’s illness. Since his death, the surviving band members have reunited for a handful of special occasions — such as the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in 1992, their induction into Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, and most recently at the 46664 AIDS benefit concert in Cape Town, South Africa. May and Queen drummer Roger Taylor have also been busy as the musical directors of We Will Rock You, a musical featuring twenty-five Queen songs which has been a success in London and is currently playing at the Las Vegas theater, Paris Las Vegas.
About the idea of touring again after such a long hiatus, May writes, “It’s very exciting . . . suddenly the Queen Phoenix is rising again from the ashes.”
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