Brian May and Roger Taylor look back at 50 years of Queen: the incredible journey of four young musicians with “an insane confidence and a precocious belief in our own unique talents” who conquered the world.

Words: Dave Everley

Brian May isn’t one to live in the past. But the Queen guitarist has recently been listening to an old tape he didn’t know existed. It features a recording of one of the group’s earliest gigs, in a lecture theatre at his alma mater, Imperial College London. It’s the sound of a band who are far from the finished article, he says. But it’s exciting to go back there, to hear the nascent Queen as they were at that long-gone moment in time.

“We’re debating what to do with it,” says May, hinting that it might one day get a proper release. “A few years ago we’d have felt very protective and thought: ‘Nobody should hear this, because we’re very rough.’ But now, in the position that we are in our lives, we feel forgiving. We’re not ashamed of where we were at that time. It was us against the world.”

One of the most fascinating things about the tape for May is Freddie Mercury’s performance. The singer was still a work in progress at that point, not yet the vocal powerhouse he would become. “Freddie had all the will and charisma and passion, but he didn’t have the opportunity to harness that voice yet,” May says. “Which makes me hesitate a little bit, because I’m not sure Freddie would be that happy hearing himself at this stage.” He pauses for a second, then reconsiders. “But strangely, if he were alive and sitting here at this moment, he’d probably be the same as me: ‘Oh darling, we were kids.’”

Today, the four kids on that tape are down to two. Mercury died in 1991, bassist John Deacon retired from the band and public life in the late 90s. Only May and Taylor remain, the beating heart of the band’s current, Adam Lambert-fronted incarnation and custodians of Queen’s stellar legacy.

“I do take great joy in the fact that there’s an awful lot of love for us still,” says Taylor. “It constantly surprises me.”

2020 was due to be a big year for Queen. Not only did they have a series of massive arena shows across Europe lined up during the summer, it also marked the band’s 50th anniversary. Yet even before the pandemic put the brakes on the former, May and Taylor had absolutely no plans to mark the latter.

“Everybody else can celebrate it if they want,” May says amiably. “We’d rather just celebrate being here and being alive.”

Taylor puts it more bluntly: “We didn’t want to draw attention to how fucking ancient we are.”

Whether they like it or not, 50 years is a milestone. The two of them might not want to mark their Golden Jubilee, but for everyone else half a century of one of the most outrageously brilliant bands of them all is something worth celebrating.

CAMERA PRESS / STEVE EMBERTON

“We really did want to be hugely successful. It was a measure of our foolish vanity.”

ROGER TAYLOR

When Roger Taylor realised that covid-19 had scuppered his band’s plans for 2020, he did what any self-respecting A-list rock star would do: he spent a few weeks sailing around the Mediterranean on his boat. “This shit year?” he says of the past 12 months, not inaccurately. “But we were the lucky ones. I can’t complain.”

It’s a few days before Christmas, and Taylor is at home in Surrey. Even on the other end of a Zoom call he exudes a distinct rock-star aura. He always seemed to be the member of Queen most comfortable in their own skin, and today, white-bearded and garrulous, he’s lost none of that. “It’s been hard work, but I’ve tried to extract every ounce of fun that I could get out of any given situation,” he says of his 50-plusyear journey with the band. “You’ve only got one life that we know about, so I think you should enjoy it. And I’ve enjoyed it.”

Do you ever think: “Fifty years. How the hell did that happen”? 

Ridiculous, isn’t it? After we lost Freddie, Brian and I both thought: ‘Well, that’s that.’ And then events conspired to keep everything going. Every time we think the band is done, that’s that and it was wonderful, something else comes along. It’s not a conscious effort. Somebody told me the other day that the I Want To Break Free video just got it’s five-hundred-millionth view on YouTube. And that’s not even one of the biggest ones.

Does five hundred million views on YouTube give you the same thrill as getting a gold record did back in the day?

That was back in the day. It’s not the same now. I don’t even understand the charts. What’s Number One in the singles chart? Well, nobody really gives a shit, do they? The album charts still seems to be important. We recently had a Number One album [Live Around The World], which was the first time in a long time. That was a big thrill. That chuffed us.