PRESS RELEASE: WEST END SHOW “WE WILL ROCK YOU” TO CLOSE MAY 31ST
23 May 2014
Following 4500 performances and 6.6 million tickets sold across 12 years, what will the musicians do now?
As the famous Queen Song declares, The Show Must Go On… and that is exactly what some of the musicians from the hit West End show We Will Rock You have decided to do! Space Elevator is the brand new band formed by WWRY members and the brilliantly bonkers, mysterious and catsuit wearing lead singer ‘The Duchess’. Playing a similar type of rock music, unlike the iPlanet, no musical instruments are banned.
Collectively, members of Space Elevator have performed in over 4000 WWRY shows and have been involved with the show on and off since the very beginning, either as musical director, full time band members or as guitar and keys deputies. They have also worked on other productions including Rock of Ages, Rocky Horror, Wicked, Footloose, The Sound of Music, Flashdance and Quadrophenia but now the focus is on the new music.
Pit musicians are usually the unseen heroes and the repetition is gruelling, playing six nights a week plus two matinees, and for musicians on these shows the fear of losing one’s edge is ever-present.
When asked why Queen and Ben Elton’s show was such a success, they believe it is simply the music. It “is universally known and loved. The music is loud and the audience gets swept away every night and at the end it’s like being at a rock concert, with the chance to stand up, stomp and clap and go nuts. Queen wrote songs that speak to all classes, all generations. They write songs to be sung on football terraces and also on the West End stage. Such a vast catalogue of instantly catchy accessible music! The lyrics are witty and poignant and uplifting. Also it shows great respect to Freddie’s memory. He was the greatest front man ever and this is acknowledged in the story”.
The most memorable shows included a tribute to what would have been Freddie Mercury’s 60th birthday. Brian May and Roger Taylor joined in for an extended encore. They joined in with The Show Must Go On, Brian performed Love of My Life and Roger performed Say It’s Not True.
The show has been attended by many famous people including Beyonce, Britney Spears, Victoria Beckham, Wayne Rooney, Liza Minnelli etc or well-known people joining the cast on stage on special occasions, such as McFly, but the most memorable performance for many of the full time members of the band was at the Queen’s Jubilee Concert at Buckingham Palace in 2002.
In terms of whether it was the show that gave them the Space Elevator idea, the Duchess commented that “the music of Queen massively influenced Space Elevator’s sound, Freddie’s voice and Brian’s guitar especially, plus the bombastic theatrical sound of Queen. The song ‘We Are The Losers’ is a complete homage to the sound of Queen with an obvious nod to We Are The Champions!
To see more from Space Elevator, check their out their promo video for new album.
Space Elevator Band
– https://youtu.be/DQzdcPxJKr8
Space Elevator:
The Duchess – Lead Singer
David Young – Guitarist (We Will Rock You/Curved Air)
Elliot Ware – Keys (The Who/Rock of Ages/We Will Rock You/Sunny Afternoon)
Neil Murray – Bass (Whitesnake/Black Sabbath/Gary Moore/The Brian May Band/We Will Rock You)
Brian Greene – Drums (George Benson/Curved Air)
Links:
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM7fPhlIEVXHJccJQ7P1gsQ/feed https://www.facebook.com/spaceelevatoronline