|
|
Queen with Paul Rogers |
|
|
|
|
|||
|
COVER FEATURE
QUEEN + Paul Rodgers ROCK’S CHAMPIONS RETURN
by Shelly Harris
“It’s a part of life to stretch yourself really - even if you do get a little nervous!,” laughs Paul Rodgers on the line from his current home near Vancouver, BC, to talk about his current much-heralded collaboration with equally revered Brit-rockers Queen and the upcoming (third) North American leg of their live concert tour which began in Europe early last year.
Of course, when it comes to a guy like Rodgers – who indisputably stands tall amongst the crème de la crème of all-time great classic rock vocalists and songwriters – such youthful enthusiasm and candor is all the more quaint in light of a long and highly luminous career which began in the late-‘60s with the mega-influential (and truly legendary) Free, and which later saw him fronting the Bad Company powerhouse.
It’s also been a life’s work that has led to many other highly successful “superstar” collaborations with the likes of Jimmy Page in The Firm and other blues/soul/rock icons.
Though in between all that constant action, Rodgers, a consummate professional and old-school gentleman both onstage and off, has also sandwiched in a successful and active solo touring/recording career, he has happily put that all on the back burner for now to accommodate the latest Queen project.
Interestingly, that collaboration - which he describes as “totally unexpected” – now seems so logical a fit that it’s almost surprising that someone in the Queen/Rodgers camp hadn’t thought of it earlier.
After all, as Rodgers
himself notes, “They are passionate about playing live, and so am I; it
is one of the
But, in light of the formidable shadow cast by Queen’s original frontman, the one-of-a-kind and lamented Freddie Mercury, it now seems that Rodgers might likely have been one of the handful of singers/musicians in the world with the necessary pedigree and distinctive style to step into Mercury’s mighty shoes with the requisite level of credence to duly honor the partnership -- and to render it exciting.
In fact, as he speaks, there’s no question that Rodgers himself is charged up about the collaboration which is actually a continuation of a longstanding penchant for artistic reaching – and which has also expanded far beyond what any of the participants had originally imagined.
“I was quite happy doing my solo thing with my band,” he elaborates, “and then I did this TV show with Brian [May] – with Queen. I’ve played with Brian many times before over the years; we’ve done different things for charities, and for various events ... But this was the first time they’d asked me to sing with Queen, per se, you know, the ‘full ensemble.’ So, they played ‘All Right Now’ for me, and then I sang ‘We Will Rock You’ and ‘We Are the Champions’ with them. And we were so compatible, we said, ‘Okay, let’s do some more!’ – little knowing that ‘some more’ would be on such a scale as what we’ve been doing! It’s taken on wings of its own.”
“After that,” he continues, “I thought we’d get together and write some songs and maybe play a couple of shows together, but they actually came back and said, ‘We’ve been talking, and we'd like to do some shows as Queen and Paul Rodgers.’ And that put a whole different complexion on things, to make it that official. I don’t know that they were looking to tour, but I do know that they like to play live. Elton John has described Queen as being like ‘a Maserati in the garage without a driver’ – or something like that.”
But, as Rodgers notes, cutting to the heart of the matter, “The question for me was not ‘Can I replace Freddie?’ – because I have so much respect for the man – but, ‘Do I want to play these great songs, with these great musicians, and have them play my songs too?’ And I came up with a Yes!!”
However, he allows, “I did have to think about it. You know, ‘How am I going to approach this, how is this gonna work?’ But, I have to say on record, that I really have to thank the fans for being so incredibly supportive world-wide. One of the great things I find is that they don’t expect me to be Freddie, and nor do my fans expect Brian May to be Jimmy Page or Mick Ralphs, my former guitar players. So, it’s being accepted for what it is, and it’s a pretty powerful rock show!”
According to Rodgers, it was at the Hyde Park Show in London last summer (the primary site of the We Are The Champions Live CD and DVD release) that Queen & Paul Rodgers truly became “an entity unto itself.”
The Hyde Park show happened just after the subway bombings in London, and, as he details, “We almost had to cancel the show, because they couldn’t guarantee security at that point. But we really pushed for it, and we managed to get it postponed until a week later. We waited in London with all the equipment, and we weren’t sure what the turn out would be, given the security situation, but we had some 85,000 turn out, which shows a terrific spirit! And we wanted to acknowledge that some way, and, at the sound check, Brian suggested, ‘Why don't we do Lennon’s ‘Imagine’? And you could hear a teardrop fall ... and that was filmed, and some of that is part of the extra footage, too.”
“And then,” he continues, “somebody said, ‘You know, we’d like to go to Japan’ and that sounded exciting ... So, there wasn’t a world tour that was planned -- it just turned into a world tour.”
Rodgers has had to postpone or sandwich in other career events in the meantime, though he emphasizes, “It shows how great it [the tour with Queen] is.” For starters, the Omni Broadcast network is waiting on him to do a TV DVD special, “which I will do at some point, as soon as I can get my breath back” and there’s also a solo album for Universal in the early stages.
That said, Rodgers – as always – is also palpably thrilled when he talks about any project he does with the soul legends that profoundly influenced him as a boy growing up in Northern England, and which also had an untold impact on his own heavily blues/soul steeped vocal stylization.
While lamenting the passing of Lou Rawls and Wilson Pickett, he was recently in LA to do a track with Sam Moore of “Soul Man” fame and was over-the-top about being invited to appear on the Four Tops 50th Anniversary show in Detroit last summer (the DVD which is coming out soon on Omni Broadcasting).
“It was a ‘night of legends’ really, in the Opera House in Detroit, so it was incredible, really, and beautiful soul night,” he enthuses. “I have to tell you, when I’m in the presence of those masters like that, I’m a 13 year old kid again! It’s such a thrill, I can’t tell you! It was a great honor when they asked me to do that! I thought, ‘Wow! These guys have actually heard of me?!’ They were my heroes from childhood days, and I was really knocked out! And they’re really just such gentlemen! I’m still a fan really.”
And, as far as his special role and chemistry with Queen on the current tour is concerned, Rodgers reckons, “I think what I bring to the mix is a bit of blues and soul influence. Their original band with Freddie – very flamboyant, very much the showman – was almost pop-oriented a little bit. But they do – they are very capable of – some very serious rock and rolling! And we get down and dirty with that! So, there’s a lot of variety within the show.”
“We take ‘Tie Your Mother Down’ and we give it wall to wall rock ‘n’ roll treatment,” he continued. “But there also are acoustic songs and different things going on. One thing I encouraged Roger and Brian both to do, actually, was to step forward and sing, because they are consummate singers, and there perhaps wasn’t elbow room in the original lineup for them to do that.”
But then Rodgers, who is still an enviable fountain of vitality and optimism at 56, is always fond of – and philosophical about – his penchant for musical expression in all the various combinations it’s taken on in his life.
“Music is all about energy,” he concludes. “Not necessarily jumping up and down, you know what I mean? It’s about an inner energy too -- a heart energy, a soul energy. And there's a great exchange between musicians, and between the audiences too -- between the listener and the player. And that’s always brand new for me.”
QUEEN +PAUL RODGERS live at Allstate Arena on March 23
|
|||
|
Web
Design By: All Rights Reserved © Hungry Mind Design 2005 |
|||
things I truly love to do. So, I suppose that and the music is where we
have a very powerful meeting point. I think there was just some
synchronicity; it seemed to be that the timing was right.” 