In the penultimate stage of our current retro-bands “tour”, Julie and I went to see Queen with Paul Rodgers in Dublin on Saturday. Of course, Queen are really just Brian May and Roger Taylor these days, with Danny Miranda (of Blue Oyster Cult and Pyramid fame) taking the disassociated John Deacon’s place on bass, and Spike Edney (SAS Band, and a million-and-one big-name session, production and musical director credits) on keyboards. The unenviable task of trying not to impersonate Freddie Mercury fell to Paul Rodgers (Free, Bad Company) on this tour, one which he pulled off with varying degrees of success… he was certainly more comfortable performing the songs that originated in his own back catalogue, though.
While I’ve never been a great Brian May fan– he’s certainly not in the league of guitar gods who should be trying to pull off ten-minute guitar solos in the middle of a show, but try he did– his guitar-playing is certainly the most defining feature of the Queen sound in the absence of Freddie’s voice, and if you shut your eyes, you did occasionally get a flash of what it must have been like to see them live in their heyday. Queen it probably wasn’t, but a good old-fashioned rock gig it certainly was.
Next week: Mark Knopfler…