Well said, Adam… Great answers – maybe not what was expected.
LA TIMES
12 June 2015 by Mikael Wood
EXTRACT
Q: … Your fans are very vocal about what kind of artistic decisions you should be making.
ADAM: They all have an opinion. And that’s great — it means they’re invested. At the same time, it’s important for me to say, “I’m going to do what I want to do, and I hope you like it.” You’re not ordering your dinner for the night. There’s no menu.
Q: To me that was the problem (?) with the most recent Queen tour. It felt like you were fulfilling someone else’s vision.
ADAM: In what way was I not being me, though? Their catalog goes so many different places. One minute I’m getting to be super-campy and over the top and flamboyant and effeminate, and then the next minute I’m tough and macho. Then there’s a sensitive acoustic moment, then something huge. And I got to wear all the weird stuff I’d ever want to wear. That was all me, by the way. They let me run with that. It might be interesting for you to find out how much input I had.
Q: You didn’t feel as though you’d been drafted to fill a prescribed role?
ADAM: No. And I wasn’t directed either. It was a collaboration.
Q: How much room did you have to —
ADAM: Interpret the songs? That was tricky. But I wasn’t getting a lot of pressure from them. I wanted to make sure I had my moments of putting my own stamp on things. But straying too far from the original would feel self-indulgent and sort of sacrilegious.
Q: See, I don’t share that view.
ADAM: But you’re probably not a die-hard Queen fan. I knew that in this audience there would be a lot of people that were there because they love Queen. And winning them over in the first place, not being Freddie, was going to be hard as it was. If I went too far, it would’ve killed them.
Q: In terms of a creative experience, though, that restriction is kind of a bummer.
ADAM: I understand what you mean. But at the same time, that’s why it was successful. If I hadn’t found that balance, I don’t think it would’ve gone over the way it did with everybody. I mean, I think you’re in the minority of people who didn’t like it.
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