Roger Taylor: Freddie Mercury Was Hilarious

 So, when did the idea to get yourself and Brian back together under the banner of Queen?

Roger Taylor: There was no sort of master plan. It’s been sort of progression of decisions. I think the first thing was, you know, we seem to have a bit of a chemistry with Paul, and we were great admirers of his voice, so we thought we’d try some concerts, which we did. And then that sort of turned into three tours of Japan, America and Europe. I suppose the logical step then was, let’s see if we can make some new music together. So, over the past couple of years really, on and off, we’ve been doing that. And we’ve sort of come up with this album, which I have to say we’re very pleased with. It’s nice to have new stuff.

Did you ever try to talk your original bass player, John Deacon out of retirement?

Roger Taylor: Um, no, you don’t try and talk John out of anything I think, once he’s made a decision. And I think really he, after Freddie went, he really didn’t want anything to do with the music business, he didn’t want to be in it. And he didn’t want to be around a lot of people I think. And he wrote us a very nice letter, saying he endorsed fully anything that Brian and myself should do. And would we please continue the flow of cheques. So….!

Looking back at your most famous song Bohemian Rhapsody – is it true that Freddie wrote that over a weekend?

Roger Taylor: Pretty much actually, yeah, he’d written all the harmony parts on the back of some sort of telephone book or something. And I remember them all written quite sort of graphically and perfectly neatly plotted out. Yes, he had it all in his head. And it’s true actually. We thought, god this is very odd!

Did you ever have arguments about the prominence of Freddie?

Roger Taylor: No it didn’t actually. Everybody had their own sort of job, you know, and we were all very aware, as he was, that his job was to be the sort of deliverer, the visual focus, the main visual focus. And the point of contact with the audience, which he was absolutely brilliant at. We used to sort of tremble at what he might come out in next!  And he would sort of unveil it with an enormous flourish, whatever it was, be it, you know, he might be dressed as a frog or in white or something. He was also dressed as a Mediterranean prawn in one of our videos as I remember. We just found it hilarious.