Photo Neil Preston
ROLLING STONE
How Queen + Adam Lambert Are Keeping Freddie Mercury’s Legacy Alive
1 February 2017 by Steve Appleford
EXTRACT:
The singer is in a Los Angeles hotel suite to discuss the tour, sitting between the two classic rock elder statesmen: Taylor in a white beard and pinstripes, May smiling with gray curls to his shoulders. “We have a great foil in Adam,” says May.
“I’ve always been honored and understanding of the weight and legacy of the band,” Lambert says. “In the beginning, I was pretty intimidated by that. I tried not to let it show. Can I handle all this? Am I going to be able to do it justice? Is the audience going to accept me? Is the band going to accept me? Am I going to be a pain in the ass?” He smiles. “I’ve learned to finesse it a little bit more.”
Song choices on the tour will lean heavily on the band’s many hits, but also leave room for deeper cuts known to hardcore fans. May notes that the tour lands during the 40th anniversary of 1977’s multi-platinum News of the World album, which included the two-part anthem “We Will Rock You”/”We Are the Champions.”
“The real fans of course know our stuff,” says May. “The general public knows the hits, so you’ve got to cater for that. But we can chuck in a few things that people really don’t expect. We’ll do quite a bit more of that this time around.”
Taylor adds, “Just to keep our own interest up, we’ll be doing stuff we either haven’t done before or haven’t done for a long time. … We started as an albums band – that’s what we were. The fact that we had hits was just ‘by the way.’ It was a byproduct.”
Click HERE to read the full interview.
Tickets go on general sale on February 3rd.