REVOLVER:IMAGINE performing Bohemian Rhapsodyin front of Queen or belting out We Are the Championsfor a packed-out venue. It could just happen. This is the real life, not just fantasy. The names Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon are synonymous with rock'n'roll. And now you too could add your name to that list.
Anyway, that's the promo blurb behind the latest musical wheeze by the remaining members of Queen. Go to queenextravaganza.com and be in for a chance to leave behind your boring 9-to-5, spray on some latex trousers and be singing Bo Rapin enormodomes all over the globe.
In a surreal twist, Queen are putting in place their own official tribute band. Now that the load-ins and all of that annoying touring are getting a bit difficult (they’re not as young as they look, you know), they want to put together a group of “great looking guys” to go out and tour as Queen Extravaganza.
Actual Queen members will play as part of the band (when they feel like it), and the show will be a mix of live music from these new blokes, some film inserts and highlights from Queen’s major live shows when Freddie was still on the go.
Not content with wrecking our heads with the execrable We Will Rock You, Queen are now trying to rewrite the rules by having their own sanctioned group embark on a "never ending" Queen tribute tour. And if that last sentence doesn't chill you to your bones, you're not of human DNA.
“Let’s face it, we’re getting a little long in the tooth” says drummer Roger Taylor. “There are an awful of [Queen] tribute bands out there – some of them good, some of them not good. I’m quite convinced there are tens of thousands of kids, of really talented people in bedrooms around the world playing drums, guitar and singing – and I want to find some of those people.”
The idea here, I take it, is to enlist a bunch of “great looking guys” to be in the band, then, as get they get to their touring sell-by date, replace them with a newer batch from the lab. It’s all quite Orwellian: a never-ending, never-ageing parade of Queen impersonators roaming the world and jumping out of the touring bushes when you least expect them.
This new Über-Queen will be rolled out early next year. The draw for promoters is that if there is a Glastonbury or other prestigious slot on the schedule, one of the original members will be wheeled out to give it a sense of the “real thing”. And if Queen Extravaganza make their UK debut at the London Olympics opening ceremony, remember where you read it first.
The truly unfortunate thing here is that it will only encourage the others: I seem to remember Kiss’s Gene Simmons talking along these “official tribute band” lines a while back. With the biggest grossing touring acts in the world these days mostly now in their 50s and 60s, the idea of a rejuvenating “makeover” is attractive. If your tribute band is officially endorsed and there’s always a chance that an original member or two will make an appearance for the bigger shows, it narrows the gap between the real thing and the impersonator considerably.
It makes financial sense: there’s still a shadow of your band out there keeping the royalties flowing and helping with profile and, of course, the merch, while you’re back on the trout farm waiting for your Jacuzzi water to warm up.
But isn’t this the very antithesis of everything good and true about rock’n’roll? And I’m not going to let the fact that I’ve already applied for the job of the bass player in Queen Extravaganza to deter me from condemning this: Stop This Official Tribute Band Madness Now.
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