QUEEN

The history of Queen: a short summary

Queen was one of the most iconic rock bands of the seventies,
eighties, and nineties. During their career, they incorporated musical
styles such as rock, pop, disco, glam and progressive. Queen’s
members were: Freddie Mercury (vocals and piano), Brian May
(guitar), John Deacon (bass), and Roger Taylor (drums).
Queen’s musical career beginnings
Before the band Queen started, the previous project was called Smile and did not
include lead vocalist Freddie Mercury. With the incorporation of Mercury, the band
adopted the name Queen and by 1973 they obtained a record contract. After releasing
their first two albums, Queen (1973) and Queen II (1974) to not much success, they
gained some media attention with the release of their third record, Sheer Heart Attack,
in 1974.
Mainstream success in the mid-70s
1975 was the year that Queen rose to stardom: A Night at the Opera was released and
they reached the peak of their popularity. This album is notable for including the classic
Queen hit track, Bohemian Rhapsody. The next year, in 1976, the band released a
sequel to this album called A day at the Races, which contains classics such as
Somebody to Love and Tie Your Mother Down. Nevertheless, it was not as successful
as its predecessor.
News of the World was released in 1977. It was an album that kept Queen on the top of
the music charts, with songs like We are the Champions and We Will Rock You. Then
the band recorded the album Jazz in 1978, which included the hit single Don´t Stop Me
Now.
Queen and their 80s hits
By 1980, another relevant album, The Game, revalidated Queen’s credentials as one of
the most important music bands of the century. In this record hit songs such as Another
One Bites the Dust and Crazy Little Thing Called Loves are featured.
Queen collaborated with music legend David Bowie on their classic track Under
Pressure, which appeared on the album Hot Space in 1982. Regardless of this historical
collaboration, this disco-influenced album is not well regarded by the public or the music
press.
1984 was the year that hit songs such as Radio Gaga and I Want to Break Free, which
belong to the album The Works, enjoyed heavy radio rotation. The Next year, in 1985,
Queen played their historical Live Aid concert in Wembley Stadium, which lasted 20
minutes.
In 1986 Queen released A Kind of Magic, which included relevant songs such as One
Vision and the title track. Three years after this, in 1989, the Miracle was released. It
contains some well-known Queen songs, such as I Want It All, The Invisible Man, and
Breakthru.
The 90s: Freddie’s final recordings
The last years in the life of Freddie Mercury were not easy for him, especially regarding
his health. He could not deliver the same energy and vocal performances as in previous
years. Nevertheless, in 1991 Queen managed to release what would be their last album
while Mercury was alive: Innuendo. Then, on November 24, 1991, the great Freddie
Mercury passed away.
After the death of Freddie Mercury, Queen released one more album in 1995, called
Made in Heaven. It was recorded using the vocal tracks that the singer left before
passing. The album includes popular songs such as You Don´t Fool Me, I Was Born to
Love You, and the title track.
Without Freddie, there is no Queen
After this final album with Freddie Mercury on vocals, Queen disbanded. John Deacon
retired completely from music, while Roger Taylor and Brian May continued playing
some of Queen’s classics with many different singers.

Timeline 1

Band members
John HYPERLINK
"https://queenband.home.blog/2019/01/13/john-
deacon/"Deacon
John Richard Deacon (born 19 August 1951) is an English retired musician, best known
for being the bass guitarist for the rock band Queen. He composed several songs for the
group—including Top 10 hits “You’re My Best Friend”, “Another One Bites the Dust”,
“Back Chat”, and “I Want to Break Free”—and was involved in the band’s financial
management.

Deacon grew up in Oadby, Leicestershire, playing bass in a local band, The Opposition,
before moving to study electronics at Chelsea College, London. He joined Queen in 1971
on the strength of his musical and electronic skills, particularly the home-made Deacy
Amp which guitarist Brian May used to create guitar orchestras throughout Queen’s
career. From the third album, Sheer Heart Attack, onwards, he wrote at least one song
per album, several of which became hits. As well as bass, Deacon played some guitar and
keyboards on Queen’s studio work.

Following lead singer Freddie Mercury’s death in 1991, and the following year’s Tribute
Concert, Deacon only performed a few times with the remaining members of Queen
before retiring from the music industry in 1997 after recording “No-One but You (Only
the Good Die Young)”. He has not performed on any of the other projects that the other
two surviving members, Brian May and Roger Taylor, have put together .

Brian May
Brian Harold May, CBE (born 19 July 1947) is an English musician, singer, songwriter,
astrophysicist and photographer. He is best known as the lead guitarist of the rock band
Queen. He uses a home-built electric guitar called the Red Special. His compositions for
the band include “We Will Rock You”, “Tie Your Mother Down”, “I Want It All”, “Fat
Bottomed Girls”, “Flash”, “Hammer to Fall”, “Save Me”, “Who Wants to Live Forever”,
and “The Show Must Go On”.

May was a co-founder of Queen with lead singer Freddie Mercury and drummer Roger
Taylor, having previously performed with Taylor in the band Smile, which he had joined
while he was at university. Within five years of their formation in 1970 and the
recruitment of bass player John Deacon completing the lineup, Queen had become one
of the biggest rock bands in the world with the success of the album A Night at the
Opera and its single “Bohemian Rhapsody”. From the mid-1970s until the early 1990s,
Queen were an almost constant presence in the UK charts and played some of the
biggest venues in the world, most notably giving an acclaimed performance at Live Aid
in 1985. As a member of Queen, May became regarded as a virtuoso musician and he
was identified with a distinctive sound created through his layered guitar work.

Following the death of Mercury in 1991, Queen were put on hiatus for several years but
were eventually reconvened by May and Taylor for further performances featuring other
vocalists. In 2005, a Planet Rock poll saw May voted the seventh greatest guitarist of all
time. He was ranked at No. 26 on Rolling Stone’s list of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of
All Time”. In 2012, he was ranked the second greatest guitarist in a Guitar World
magazine readers poll. In 2001, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as
one of the band’s members, and in 2018 he received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement
Award which recognises “the most distinctive recordings in music history”.

May was appointed a CBE by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005 for “services to the music
industry and for charity work”. May earned a PhD in astrophysics from Imperial College
London in 2007, and was Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University from 2008 to
2013. He was a “science team collaborator” with NASA’s New Horizons Pluto mission.
He is also a cofounder of the awareness campaign Asteroid Day. Asteroid 52665
Brianmay was named after him. May is also an animal rights activist, campaigning
against the hunting of foxes and the culling of badgers in the UK.
Roger Taylor
Roger Meddows Taylor (born 26 July 1949) is an English musician, singer, songwriter,
and multi-instrumentalist, best known as the drummer for the rock band Queen. As a
drummer, Taylor was recognised early in his career for his unique sound. He was voted
by radio listeners as the eighth-greatest drummer in classic rock music history in a poll
conducted by Planet Rock in 2005.

As a songwriter, Taylor contributed songs to Queen’s albums from the beginning,

composing at least one track on every album, and often singing lead vocals on his own
compositions. He wrote or co-wrote three UK number 1s (“These Are the Days of Our
Lives”, “Innuendo” and “Under Pressure”) and contributed a further five major hits
(“Radio Ga Ga”, “A Kind of Magic”, “Heaven for Everyone”, “Breakthru”, and “The
Invisible Man”). He is also the main writer on the international top-ten hit “One Vision”,
although the track is credited to the whole band. He has collaborated with such artists as
Eric Clapton, Roger Waters, Roger Daltrey, Robert Plant, Phil Collins, Genesis, Jimmy
Nail, Elton John, Gary Numan, Shakin’ Stevens, Foo Fighters, Al Stewart, Steve Vai,
Yoshiki, Cyndi Almouzni, and Bon Jovi. As a producer, he has produced albums by
Virginia Wolf, Jimmy Nail and Magnum.

In addition to his drum work, Taylor sometimes played keyboards, guitars and bass on
his own songs. During the 1980s, in addition to his work with Queen, he formed a
parallel band known as the Cross, in which he was the lead singer and rhythm guitarist.
During the early 1980s, Taylor was also a panellist on the popular UK quiz show Pop
Quiz, hosted by Mike Read.

In 2014, he appeared in The Life of Rock with Brian Pern as himself. Taylor is also well
known for his falsetto vocal range.

Freddie Mercury
Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara; 5 September 1946 – 24 November 1991) was a
British singer-songwriter, record producer and lead vocalist of the rock band Queen. He
is regarded as one of the greatest singers in the history of popular music, and was known
for his flamboyant stage persona and four-octave vocal range.

Mercury was born in Zanzibar to Parsi parents from India. After growing up in Zanzibar
and then India, his family moved to Middlesex, England, in his late teens. He formed
Queen in 1970 with guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor. Mercury wrote
numerous hits for Queen, including “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “Killer Queen”, “Somebody
to Love”, “Don’t Stop Me Now”, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”, and “We Are the
Champions”. He also led a solo career while performing with Queen, and occasionally
served as a producer and guest musician for other artists. Mercury died in 1991 at age 45
due to complications from AIDS, having confirmed the day before his death that he had
contracted the disease.

As a member of Queen, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001,
the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003, and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2004. In 1992,
a year after his death, Mercury was posthumously awarded the Brit Award for
Outstanding Contribution to British Music, and a tribute concert was held at Wembley
Stadium, London. In 2002, he was placed number 58 in the BBC’s 2002 poll of the 100
Greatest Britons. Mercury was voted best male singer of all time in a 2005 poll
organised by Blender and MTV2.

Mercury was also ranked at 18 on the 2008 Rolling Stone list of the 100 greatest singers
ever; and ranked the second best lead singer in a 2011 Rolling Stone readers’ pick.
Mercury was described by AllMusic as “one of rock’s greatest all-time entertainers,” with
“one of the greatest voices in all of music.” Upon its release in November 2018, the
biographical film about Mercury and Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody, became the highest-
grossing musical biographical film of all time.

A kind of magic
It's a kind of magic
It's a kind of magic
A kind of magic
One dream, one soul, one prize, one goal
One golden glance of what should be
It's a kind of magic
One shaft of light that shows the way
No mortal man can win this day
It's a kind of magic
The bell that rings inside your mind
Is challenging the doors of time
It's a kind of magic
The waiting seems eternity
The day will dawn of sanity
Is this a kind of magic?
It's a kind of magic
There can be only one
This rage that lasts a thousand years
Will soon be done
This flame that burns inside of me
I'm hearing secret harmonies
It's a kind of magic
The bell that rings inside your mind
Is challenging the doors of time
It's a kind of magic
It's a kind of magic
This rage that lasts a thousand years
Will soon be, will soon be
Will soon be done
This is a kind of magic
There can be only one
This rage that lasts a thousand years
Will soon be done
Magic
It's a kind of magic
It's a kind of magic
Magic, magic, magic, magic
Magic, it's magic
Alright
Yeah, yeah
Whoo
It's a kind of magic
 Radio Ga Ga
I'd sit alone and watch your light
My only friend through teenage nights
And everything I had to know
I heard it on my radio
You gave them all those old time stars
Through wars of worlds invaded by Mars
You made 'em laugh, you made 'em cry
You made us feel like we could fly (radio)
So don't become some background noise
A backdrop for the girls and boys
Who just don't know, or just don't care
And just complain when you're not there
You had your time, you had the power
You've yet to have your finest hour
Radio (radio)
All we hear is radio ga ga
Radio goo goo
Radio ga ga
All we hear is radio ga ga
Radio blah blah
Radio, what's new?
Radio, someone still loves you
We watch the shows, we watch the stars
On videos for hours and hours
We hardly need to use our ears
How music changes through the years
Let's hope you never leave, old friend
Like all good things, on you we depend
So stick around, 'cause we might miss you
When we grow tired of all this visual
You had your time, you had the power
You've yet to have your finest hour
Radio (radio)
All we hear is radio ga ga
Radio goo goo
Radio ga ga
All we hear is radio ga ga
Radio goo goo
Radio ga ga
All we hear is radio ga ga
Radio blah blah
Radio, what's new?
Someone still loves you
Radio ga ga (radio ga ga)
Radio ga ga (radio ga ga)
Radio ga ga (radio ga ga)
You had your time, you had the power
You've yet to have your finest hour
Radio (radio)

Crazy little thing called love

This thing called love

I just can't handle it
This thing called love
I must get 'round to it
I ain't ready
Crazy little thing called love

This thing (this thing) called love (called love)

It cries (like a baby), in a cradle all night
It swings (woo), it jives (woo)
Shakes all over like a jellyfish
I kinda like it
Crazy little thing called love

There goes my baby

She knows how to rock and roll
She drives me crazy
She gives me hot and cold fever
She leaves me in a cool, cool sweat

I gotta be cool, relax

Get hip and get on my tracks
Take a back seat, hitchhike
And take a long ride on my motorbike
Until I'm ready
Crazy little thing called love

Yeah

I gotta be cool, relax

Get hip and get on my tracks
Take a back seat, hitchhike
And take a long ride on my motorbike
Until I'm ready (ready Freddie)
Crazy little thing called love

This thing called love

I just can't handle it
This thing called love
I must get 'round to it
I ain't ready
Crazy little thing called love

Crazy little thing called love (yeah, yeah)

Crazy little thing called love (yeah, yeah)
Crazy little thing called love (yeah, yeah)
Crazy little thing called love (yeah, yeah)

Don't stop me now

Tonight, I'm gonna have myself a real good time
I feel alive
And the world, I'll turn it inside out, yeah!
I'm floating around in ecstasy
So don't stop me now
Don't stop me

'Cause I'm having a good time, having a good time

I'm a shooting star leaping through the sky
Like a tiger defying the laws of gravity
I'm a racing car passing by, like Lady Godiva
I'm gonna go, go, go
There's no stopping me
I'm burning through the sky, yeah!
Two hundred degrees
That's why they call me Mister Fahrenheit
I'm travelling at the speed of light
I wanna make a supersonic man out of you

Don't stop me now

I'm having such a good time
I'm having a ball
Don't stop me now
If you wanna have a good time, just give me a call
Don't stop me now ('cause I'm havin' a good time)
Don't stop me now (yes, I'm havin' a good time)
I don't wanna stop at all

I'm a rocket ship on my way to Mars

On a collision course
I am a satellite, I'm out of control
I am a sex machine ready to reload
Like an atom bomb about to
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, explode

I'm burning through the sky, yeah!

Two hundred degrees
That's why they call me Mister Fahrenheit
I'm travelling at the speed of light
I wanna make a supersonic woman of you

Don't stop me, don't stop me, don't stop me

Hey, hey, hey
Don't stop me, don't stop me, ooh, ooh, ooh
I like it
Don't stop me, don't stop me
Have a good time, good time
Don't stop me, don't stop me
Ooh, I'm burning through the sky, yeah!
Two hundred degrees
That's why they call me Mister Fahrenheit
I'm travelling at the speed of light
I wanna make a supersonic man out of you

Don't stop me now

I'm having such a good time
I'm having a ball
Don't stop me now
If you wanna have a good time, just give me a call
Don't stop me now ('cause I'm havin' a good time)
Don't stop me now (yes, I'm havin' a good time)
I don't wanna stop at all

Bohemian Rhapsody
Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality
Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see
I'm just a poor boy, I need no sympathy
Because I'm easy come, easy go, little high, little low
Any way the wind blows doesn't really matter to me, to me

Mama, just killed a man

Put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger, now he's dead
Mama, life had just begun
But now I've gone and thrown it all away
Mama, ooh, didn't mean to make you cry
If I'm not back again this time tomorrow
Carry on, carry on as if nothing really matters

Too late, my time has come

Sends shivers down my spine, body's aching all the time
Goodbye, everybody, I've got to go
Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth
Mama, ooh (any way the wind blows)
I don't wanna die
I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all

I see a little silhouetto of a man

Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango?
Thunderbolt and lightning, very, very frightening me
(Galileo) Galileo, (Galileo) Galileo, Galileo Figaro, magnifico
But I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
He's just a poor boy from a poor family
Spare him his life from this monstrosity

Easy come, easy go, will you let me go?

No, we will not let you go (let him go)
We will not let you go (let him go)
We will not let you go (let me go)
Will not let you go (let me go)
Never, never, never, never let me go
No, no, no, no, no, no, no
Oh, mamma mia, mamma mia
Mamma mia, let me go
Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me, for me, for me
So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye?
So you think you can love me and leave me to die?
Oh, baby, can't do this to me, baby
Just gotta get out, just gotta get right outta here
Ooh
Ooh, yeah, ooh, yeah
Nothing really matters, anyone can see
Nothing really matters
Nothing really matters to me
 Love of my life

Love of my life, you've hurt me

You've broken my heart, and now you leave me

Love of my life, can't you see?

Bring it back, bring it back

Don't take it away from me

Because you don't know

What it means to me

Love of my life, don't leave me

You've taken my love, and now desert me

Love of my life, can't you see?

Bring it back, bring it back

Don't take it away from me

Because you don't know

What it means to me

You will remember

When this is blown over

And everything's all by the way

When I grow older

I will be there at your side to remind you

How I still love you

(I still love you)

Back, hurry back

Please, bring it back home to me

Because you don't know

What it means to me

Love of my life

Love of my life

Ooh, ooh

We will rock you

Buddy, you're a boy, make a big noise

Playing in the street, gonna be a big man someday

You got mud on your face, you big disgrace

Kicking your can all over the place, singin'

We will, we will rock you

We will, we will rock you

Buddy, you're a young man, hard man

Shouting in the street, gonna take on the world someday

You got blood on your face, you big disgrace

Waving your banner all over the place

We will, we will rock you, sing it

We will, we will rock you

Buddy, you're an old man, poor man

Pleading with your eyes, gonna make you some peace someday

You got mud on your face, big disgrace

Somebody better put you back into your place

We will, we will rock you, sing it

We will, we will rock you, everybody

We will, we will rock you, hmm

We will, we will rock you

Alright
 Friends will be friends

Another red letter day

So the pound has dropped and the children are creating
The other half ran away
Taking all the cash and leaving you with the lumber
Got a pain in the chest
Doctors on strike what you need is a rest
It's not easy love, but you've got friends you can trust
Friends will be friends
When you're in need of love they give you care and attention
Friends will be friends
When you're through with life and all hope is lost
Hold out your hand 'cause friends will be friends
Right till the end
Now it's a beautiful day
The postman delivered a letter from your lover
Only a phone call away
You tried to track him down but somebody stole his number
As a matter of fact
You're getting used to life without him in your way
It's so easy now, 'cause you got friends you can trust
Friends will be friends
When you're in need of love they give you care and attention
Friends will be friends
When you're through with life and all hope is lost
Hold out your hand 'cause friends will be friends
Right till the end
It's so easy now, 'cause you got friends you can trust
Friends will be friends
When you're in need of love they give you care and attention
Friends will be friends
When you're through with life and all hope is lost
Hold out your hand friends will be friends
Right till the end
Friends will be friends
When you're in need of love they give you care and attention
Friends will be friends
When you're through with life and all hope is lost
Hold out your hand 'cause right till the end, friends will be friends
Yeah, yeah