About a month ago a personal dream came true: I got to see my favourite band live.
Friends and followers of this blog should know that Queen has been my favourite band for over thirty years, even before it became cool to admit to being a fan. In fact, their popularity simply surged after Freddie Mercury’s death in 1991, despite the lack of fresh material by the original quartet (not counting 1995’s “Made in Heaven”).
“There is no point carrying on. It’s impossible to replace Freddie,” said bassist John Deacon and retired to wife and brood of kids thereafter.
Despite being reduced to the two active founding members, the band and their music have never quite left the limelight. Excellent live concert videos from the glory days are being output at a rate similar to their original studio album run. There’s a musical, the usual fare of sanctioned remixes and the odd few collaborations: the last Queen + suffix was no less than Paul Rodgers, a testosterone-laden partnership that resulted in a mediocre album in 2008 and a tour which I missed again!
Enter one Adam Lambert, runner-up in the American Idol circus and an established young vocalist in his own right.
