Roger Taylor Archives - Vintage Rock Times

You Took the Colors Out When You Died”: Roger Taylor’s Heartfelt Tribute to Freddie Mercury

“You Took the Colors Out When You Died”: Roger Taylor’s Heartfelt Tribute to Freddie Mercury In the years since Freddie Mercury’s passing in 1991, Queen drummer Roger Taylor has often reflected on the life, legacy, and loss of his closest friend and bandmate. Among the many moving things Taylor has said, one quote stands out […]

What was the last song Freddie Mercury ever wrote?

There seemed to be something strangely prophetic about the title of Queen‘s final album. No matter what you believe in, Made in Heaven has certain connotations to it, not just with how it marked Freddie Mercury’s final moments but how it also signalled something different for Queen, something newly sentimental, like holding on to something […]

Which one the most desperate attempts by Queen band album to sell out

Hot Space – Queen Throughout their history, Queen were nothing if not great businessmen when it came to their music. They were always willing to experiment with different sounds and work with new ideas, but if something made a lot of money, it wasn’t hard for it to find its way onto one of their […]

A Labour of Love: the controversial Queen song that took Freddie Mercury “ages” to write

It’s difficult to imagine whether the members of Queen ever experienced any creative hardships. Each brought their own unique flair, but the unity of Brian May, Freddie Mercury, Roger Taylor, and John Deacon formed an entity where the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. Still, as with any legendary outfit, some projects […]

The Queen song Brian May wrote about Freddy Mercury’s “incredible strength”

When Bryan Singer and Dexter Fletcher’s awe-inspiring biopic Bohemian Rhapsody arrived in 2018, Queen gained a new generation of fans entranced by the band’s unequalled showmanship. The Academy Award-winning film also consolidated Freddie Mercury’s immortal legacy almost three decades after his tragic demise. It seems that the music Queen created in just a couple of […]

What was The Queen classic song Freddie Mercury wrote in “five or ten minutes”

Who knows where inspiration comes from? It’s a mystery that people have been trying to figure out since the dawn of time. The act of ideas hitting from nowhere is an amazing phenomenon. Within a split second, a lightning strike of genius hits an artist, and the rest is history. Freddie Mercury knew that feeling […]

The song that caused a rift in Queen: “Like you had just walked into a gay club”

Freddie Mercury passed away over three decades ago. As the charismatic frontman of Queen, his remarkable vocal range won the hearts and minds of fans around the world throughout the 1970s and ’80s, yet his presence seems just as potent today. For this, we have an enduring fanbase, Brian May and Roger Taylor’s tenacity and […]

The Final Bow of Freddie Mercury: A Legacy of Brilliance, the Brit Awards Goodbye, and the Truth He Could Only Share at the End

It was his last public appearance. And maybe I knew it. Freddie Mercury was holding in his hands the award he had just received by Queen at the Brit Awards, on February 18, 1990, for his contribution to British music. He didn’t step to the front of the band – joined by Brian May on […]

“Saviour of the Universe”: how the nerdiness of Queen defined the band

I can imagine that, for some, the Queen jukebox musical ‘We Will Rock You’ was an unforgivable sellout move. The moment when the band became the brand, peddling shlocky sci-fi, panto-level jokes and characters called things like Scaramouche, Galileo Figaro and the Killer Queen. I think it’s fair to say that the people scandalised by […]

The lyric that defined Freddie Mercury: “Was it all worth it?”

In 1988, things were tough for Queen. The year before, in 1997, the band had learnt about Freddie Mercury’s HIV diagnosis, a thing that, back then, still felt like a death sentence. It was made worse by the absolute media frenzy that had revolved around the singer as the AIDS crisis was picking up, with […]