Freddie Mercury Queen Headlines Continue Into 2015 [Videos]
Freddie Mercury has been in the headlines over the month of November for a number of reasons, and his name will continue to appear in the media in 2015 due to activity by his former band. In addition to continuation of the biopic project about Freddie Mercury, the tour with Adam Lambert and former Queen bandmates will start its third year.
Along with music reviews about the release of three new songs, topics in the news about Queen have covered the theft of a Freddie Mercury statue by Queen drummer Roger Taylor. On November 17, it was reported to Radio Times Magazine by writer Ben Elton, who penned the stage musical We Will Rock You, that the golden statue on top of the porch at the West End Theatre was taken down after the 12-year run for the show ended by Taylor.
About the incident, Elton said, “It’s in Roger Taylor’s garden, which I believe Brian May is not happy with.”
As part of their November 10 release of the album Forever, Queen shared three unreleased Freddie Mercury songs. At that time, it was announced that “one of the songs was placed on iTunes with the intentions that the proceeds will go to fight AIDS.” Reviews about the 2014 album and the new song have been generally well-received by critics and fans on websites like Amazon.
However, the Daily Mail writer who reviewed the previously unreleased songs said that they do not generally like the music of Freddie Mercury. The writer then published a supportive “Queen Fact” related to the band that showed the writer was in the minority of this negative opinion.
“Queen’s ‘Greatest Hits’ album (1981) is purported to reside in one out of every three UK households.”
A large number of write-ups about Freddie Mercury’s life appear annually to celebrate the day he died 23 years ago on November 24, 1991. Among the stories about Freddie Mercury published in November were a few hints pertaining to his biopic.
Since 2010, the former bandmates and film project frontmen, Roger Taylor and Brian May, have been spearheading the Freddie Mercury biopic project. The most recent update they personally gave about the Freddie Mercury movie in the media was at the Queen and Adam Lambert tour announcement press conference on March 6, 2014.
In September 2010, it was announced by media outlets like Pitchfork that Sacha Baron Cohen would play Freddie Mercury. He subsequently dropped out and was replaced by Ben Whishaw.
In regards to starring in the Freddie Mercury biopics, in August 2014 Whishaw told Time Out London, “Actually, I don’t know what’s happening, it seems to be on a back burner. It was going, then there were problems getting the script working.”
http://youtu.be/8bb6f1fudSw?list=PL2tMgWgIvcWm43buGy5qfDwO38eq3T7vY
In 2015, headlines will continue about Freddie Mercury due to more than the continuation of the biopic project. It was announced in the fall of 2014 that the tour with Adam Lambert and the remaining Queen band members will carry forward. The band went on tour for the first time with Lambert replacing Freddie Mercury in 2012.
After playing almost 50 world dates over the past two years, the band’s webpage, Queen Online, announced that they will start playing England with their replacement Freddie Mercury on January 13, 2015 at the Newcastle Arena. The tour will end on February 19 in Zurich.
[Feature photo credit: Mick Rock, Freddie Mercury wearing a Zandra Rhodes costume, 1974.]
