Queen celebrates live legacy with new weekly YouTube series
Few bands have a live legacy quite like Queen. By the same token, few bands are as protective of their legacy as Queens are. Since the death of Freddie Mercury, Brian May and Roger Taylor have done just about everything in their power to keep Queen a beloved million-dollar juggernaut, including continued live shows with Adam Lambert and sanitized biopics like Bohemian Rhapsody.
Queen are also surprisingly great at giving fans documentaries, behind-the-scenes footage, and extra material that gives them an insight into the legendary British rockers. Take, for instance, the YouTube series Queen: The Greatest, which premiered in 2019 and gave a comprehensive history of the band from their earliest days in the 1970s to their embrace of MTV to their current tours with Lambert.
Now, we’re getting a continuation of that series with Queen: The Greatest Live. Across planned weekly instalments that will appear on the band’s YouTube page, the current members of Queen will discuss everything that goes into their massive live shows. For the premiere, May and Taylor discuss how everything starts with rehearsal between the two of them.
“Rehearsing with Roger is always a bit of a surprise because you don’t know how much you’re going to remember and you don’t know if it’s still going to feel the same,” said May. “But it’s surprising how stuff does flow back into you, into your veins once you start kicking stuff around.”
“Normally we play a song through and see if it works, if we think it’s going to work live, and they don’t always work live,” added Taylor. “Some of them just, they’re not suited really for an exciting or involving, engaging performance, a live performance. So there’s quite a few songs we’ve never played live that have been on albums and probably for good reason.”
Check out the first episode in the series down below.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Music Newsletter
All the latest music news from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.