ROCKLINE
INTERVIEW - BRIAN, ROGER, PAUL RODGERS WITH PAUL COBURN
Wed 01 March 2006 - Live from Miami, Florida.
PART
ONE
BOB
COBURN: Rockline - North America's number one rock
radio programme. Rockline is brought to you by 24 on
Fox. I am Bob Coburn and tonight, from Miami, Florida,
we welcome Queen Plus Paul Rodgers. To speak with Roger
Taylor, Paul Rodgers and Brian May call the toll free
Rockline number at 1-800-344-ROCK. That's 1-800-344-7625.
One number toll free from anywhere in the US. And now
let's welcome our guests. Your chance to witness rock
and roll history first hand is about to begin as Queen
Plus Paul Rodgers embark on a 23 city, North American
tour beginning this Friday in Miami. A list of the
dates is available at queenpluspaulrodgers.com and
joining us in Miami, Brian May. Brian, how've you been?
BRIAN
MAY: Very good, Bob. Thank you. Nice to be back.
BC:
Good to have you back again. Paul Rodgers is there
as well. Good evening, Paul.
PAUL
RODGERS: Good evening, Bob.
BC:
Roger Taylor - how are you? I'd say "Good evening",
but to you it may be morning or afternoon, or I'm not
sure what. How are you?
(laughing)
ROGER
TAYLOR: We're not sure what either. Hi Bob - good
to here.
BC: Are you jet-lagged, Roger? Did you
come back from the UK recently?
RT: We gotta be honest,
yeah. We arrived in Miami last night and we're pretty
jet-lagged, but we're up for it.
BC: Last night. Well we'll get the adrenaline
going - we'll get you happening in here so. Paul, were
you rehearsing in London?
PR: Yes, we were. We were rehearsing in
a place called Bisley, which is a shooting range. It's
an Army shooting range and, as it happened, and it was
great. We tried some new things out that we're really
looking forward to getting on stage with.
BC: Brian - were you able to work on your
marksmanship a little bit at the shooting range?
BM: (chuckling) Oh I shoot straight.
(laughing in studio)
BM: Not usually
with a gun.
BC: I thought Rodgers was the straight-shooter.
(More laughing)
BC: Well we'll lay claim to that.
BM: That's when he was with Bad Company.
He's with worse company now.
BC: From bad to worse. (laughs)
I love that. I wanna talk a lot about the tour that's
coming up. It's exciting that this is now going to be
across the Continent here in North America, but I really
want to put a rumour to rest at the very beginning here.
There are a lot of rumours flying around that a) Van
Halen is going to be on the new Rock Star, or that b)
Queen is going to be on the new Rock Star. You guys aren't
doing that, are you?
BM: No.
BC: That's I just wanna
hear that from you. The TV programme that ....
BM: Good God, no. No, no,
no.
BC: There are rumours everywhere.
People have been checking the tour dates, the schedule,
to find out . . .
BM: No, no.
BC: . . . if you could
possibly be involved, and we just want to start off by
saying that is NOT happening.
BM: Oh, no, no - why would
we?
BC: (laughs) That becomes
the next obvious question. For Godsakes, why would you?
On the previous one though and the last time you guys
were on several months ago, we talked about this off-air.
We did not discuss it on the air. There were two participants
- Ty Taylor and MiG Ayesa - and they were in different
productions of We Will Rock You. So . . .
BM: That's right.
BC: . . . inadvertently
you had a little bit of something to do with the first
one in that these guys kind of worked for you. Did you
give them release to appear in that?
BM: Yeah, we did, yeah .
. .
RT: That's right, that's
right.
BM: I mean, we felt it was
good for their careers to give them some license. Yeah
- absolutely - both of them. We released them from the
contracts, which was in some ways hard because they were
great. They were a couple of our big stars, but, you
know, it's - we're artists too and we know what it's
like to need your freedom and they're may come back and
do some stuff for us at some point. Obviously we stay
in touch. I talk to MiG quite regularly.
BC: He is such a nice man.
We had the final three contestants on Rockline. What
a gentleman and what a great performer too?
BM: A good song writer too.
BC: He seems very talented.
RT: He's very, very talented.
I'm not sure about some of those outfits though.
BC: (laughs) You didn't
like the little a la Sgt Pepper jacket that he had on?
RT: Mmm.... well...
BM: I liked an aspect of
it.
(laughing)
RT: A bit of a fashion
disaster going on there.
BM: He was great
in London, you know. He did his, you know, our Galileo
in We will Rock You in England for a lot of months and
fantastic, you know - just a real trouper.
RT: He was great but he
was drerssed for radio.
BC: Dressed for radio. [laughs]
Just like you guys must be tonight, and you
must be really ready to rock and begin this North American
tour.
BM: Yeah we
. . .
PR: Absolutely.
RT: But we're in our pyjamas
actually.
[laughing]
BC: TMI. TMI. Too
much information.
[more laughing]
BM: Out of
them would be worse.
[more laughing]
BC: There's so many
songs to pick from. I would imagine since Return
of the Champions CD and DVD the setlist has evolved a
bit, huh?
BM: Yeah - we've evolved
it a little bit. We even have a new song, which
we're very excited about.
BC: You have a new
song! Really!
BM: You didn't
know that, did you?
BC: No I did't know
that.
BM: A new, new song. A
new, new song . . .
BC: A new, new song.
BM: Paul has written,
yeah, which is great, and we're gonna do it for the
first time down here. we may get good at it soon.
[laughing]
PR: Oh it sounds really
good. Yeah, yeah.
[more laughing]
PR: You guys are kicking
it.
BC: I bet it sounds
better too, as the tour goes on. So, alright, well
we've learned a couple of things. You're NOT involved
with the oncoming Rockstar, which is good to hear, because
I don't think that's just right for Queen at all, and
also a new song for this tour that's about to kick off
this Friday in Miami.
BM: A couple
of - there's a couple of new old things too, which
will be interesting. We
won't give, will we. Will we give it away?
RT: Oh I don't think
so.
BM: No.
RT: Also I think we'll
be changing a little every night 'cos it's nice to -
it's an organc set and you know we put things in, take
stuff out, you know. See how it works.
BM: It's feeling
very fresh.
PR: Definitely.
BC: Queen, Queen and
Paul Rodgers - there are about 50 albums and over 200
million albums sold worldwide, which is just staggering,
and we'll begin the evening musically with one we all
know and love. From Queen Plus Paul Rodgers.
<FAT BOTTOMED GIRLS plays
- from Return of the Champions>
BC: Now that's rock
and roll - Return of the Champions, the CD, Queen
Plus Paul Rodgers, Fat
Bottomed Girls for you. A rare opportunity for
you to speak with Paul, Roger and Brian tonight toll
free 1-800-344-ROCK.
The lines jammed as you might imagine, but your turn
is coming next to speak with the gentlemen on
Rockline.
<WISHING WELL plays - from
Return of the Champions>
<BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY plays
- Queen>
BC: From the original
CD A Night At The Opera, which has been remastered and
really spiffed up nicely. It's Queen Plus Paul
Rodgers tonight on Rockline. I'm Bob Coburn. Michael
is in Birmingham, Alabama. Michael you're first
tonight.
MICHAEL: Good evening, gentlemen.
ALL: Hello Michael.
MICHAEL: My question
is for Brian. I'm a huge, huge fan of yours and
on this tour, how much do your use the original Red Special
and how often do you have to switch guitars and which
of the copies do you use?
BM: Oh! Well I use
it most of the time. You know, it's like an extension
of me so if I can use it, I do - every night, every time,
you know, every place in the world. I change when
I need a different tuning so for Fat Bottomed Girls I
have a tuned down D, so I need someething different for
that, plus the acoustic stuff, but apart from that I
normally use the old "The Old Lady" as I call
as I call it sometimes - her.
[chuckling]
RT: The Old Fireplace.
BM: Yeeeah
- The Red Special. But I mean, I have some
GREAT copies now. Greg Fryer made a couple of
great ones, which are called John, Paul and George,
and I use them and I have a nice new one from Andrew
Guyton, whose an English guitar builder and they're
immaculately close copies - so I'm pretty well taken
care of. I
also have some - a couple of our own ones - the ones
which we sell these days and those are pretty good
too. They're just, they were Burns' and now they're
just Brian May Guitars.
BC: Well, the Beatle
reference is obvious, but Roger, The Old Fireplace?
RT: Well that's what
Freddie and I used to call it. The story goes,
and Brian will confirm this, believe that it was made
from a piece of wood that came out of an old fireplace. Is
that right?
BM: Yeah. The
neck was a piece of a hundred year fireplace, which
was a hundred years old THEN, so it's about three hundred
years old now.
[laughing]
BC: It was smoking
before it was even turned into a gutiar.
ALL: Ahhh !!! [raucous
laughter]
BC: It was red hot. It's
Paul Rodgers plus Queen. John is in Queens. Welcome
to Rockline.
JOHN: Hi Brian, Roger and
Paul. Thank you very much for touring this country.
PR:? Pleasure.
JOHN: I have a two-part
question for you Brian and Roger. Ah, yes - what
inspired Queen to title their fourth and fifth album
'A Night At The Opera' and 'A Day At The Races' after
two Marx Brothers movies and what was Groucho Marx's
take on the whole thing when you met him in the seventies?
RT: Okay. We
were sitting down, making 'A Night At The Opera' and
I think we all sat down one Saturday night and and we
had a new-fangled machine called a 'video' VCR machine,
and we watched a copy of 'A Night At The Opera' on that
and I think we just turned round - 'cos we'd been doing
Bohemian Rhapsody, which has that sort of mock cod-opera
part in the middle, and we we thought, you know, we were
big fans of the Marx Brothers. It's a nice title. 'A
Night At The Opera' just seemed to work, and then as
we viewed the album after that - I think we viewed it
as a sort of a sequel - and so we called that 'A Day
At The Races'. It was that simple. And Groucho
Marx was another story. When we meet him it was...
BM: He was
great.
RT: Yeah, he was great.
BM: He really
was. He
was pretty old by that time and they kind of wheeled
him out, but he was ALL there, and he sang a little
song for us and recited a poem and then he said [in
Groucho voice] "Okay you guys are singers? Sing.
[laughing in studio] And
we went 'Oh no we couldn't possibly. We need
a guitar.' He went [Groucho
voice] 'We got a guitar." So
then we were on the spot and we sang ''39'
to him, didn't we?
RT: Yeah, yeah.
BM: In perfect
harmony.
RT: He sang 'Lydia
The Tattooed Lady' for us.
BM: He did.
BC: A great classic
song. Oh Lydia, oh Lydia. [laughs]
RT: En-cyclo-pidea.
BC: Yeah, well, if
he's going to entertain you, you may as well entertain
him a little bit too.
BM: He was very entertaining.
RT: He was very .
. .
BM:
A great guy.
RT: He was great.
BM: We had a little sort
of affinity with the Marx Brothers, as time went on.
It's interesting, because they were a team, like we were
a team and they were evolving and they had various pressures
and, you know, pulling in different directions. So we
kind of identified white a bit with the Marx Brothers,
the more we looked at them.
BC: Those old movies are
so funny and I forget which film it is, but Groucho's
just trashing some kind of guy and he says "I didn't
come here to be insulted", and Groucho says "Oh yeah.
Where do you usually go?"
(All laugh)
BC: So good, you know.
RT: Great one-liners.
BM: Excellent.
BC: Yeah. John, thank you.
Michael, South Penn(?), Indiana, it's your turn.
MICHAEL: Yeah. Hi guys.
BM: Hi Michael.
MICHAEL: Yeah. I'll set
a real quick question for ya. Here in America we got
"Return Of The Champions'" DVD, and granted, it looks
and sounds fantastic, but there wasn't much, we didn't
get. bonus features. There's a new DVD come out in
Japan and it seems that, you know, got all the bells
and whistles on it, and I was kind of curious as to why
Japan's getting such aelaborate edtion and b) can we
expect something along those lines in America.
RT: Yeah.
BM: What was it? What was
the end of your question?
BC: Why did Japan get more
and can we expect more in the US?
RT: I guess just because
we had more stuff by then. That's the only answer I can
think of. We don't really put together the bonuses -
the bonus stuff.
BM: Usually we let other
people sort of tie up those ends. I suppose, maybe we're
old fashioned, I don't know, but I think we mainly care
about the music, you know. The other stuff we
don't really get deeply into unless there's a lot of
time, and of course we were out touring. And, yeah, the
Japan thing was just put together at the last minute.
That was never intended to be a DVD. It just happened
to be TV show, of very good quality, and we suddenly
though, "Uh oh", this would be a a monstrous bootleg,
so we may as well put it out. That's the origin of that.
BC: Good move on your part
there. Queen Plus Paul Rodgers begin their American tour
this Friday in Miami, March 5th will be in Jacksonville,
Florida, the 7th in Duluth, Georgia; Washington DV the
9th of March, the 10th outside Boston, Uniondale, New
York and Nassau Coliseum on Long Island on the 12th;
the 14th in Philly, the 16th in Toronto. Right now a
song from Queen Plus Paul Rodgers' Return Of The Champions
- "Another One Bites The Dust".
<PLAYS "ANOTHER ONE BITES
THE DUST" - QUEEN + PAUL RODGERS
CONTINUED PART TWO >>>
