03-29-2005 – Evening Standard – Brixton

ONE couldn’t help wondering what Freddie Mercury would have made of this. Front of stage, twirling the microphone stand, stood Paul Rodgers, probably the most stoically heterosexual belter of his generation.

Paul is a relatively small fellow, but he bestrides a pair of black leather trousers like a colossus. He has a big voice, but does not aspire to the upper registers. In short, he is not Freddie Mercury.

Fortunately, Brian May has taken the requisite steps to become a pantomime dame.

He is now the absolute queen of Queen, having established his supremacy over the rest of the string-twiddling tribe by appearing in silhouette on the top of Buckingham Palace.

Should anyone have been so neglectful to have forgotten this, Brian re-enacted this ascent of man by performing a guitar solo against a video backdrop of that unhappy residence. Naturally, his hair is still in a state of deep perm.

What Queen have going for them, after a great gap of years, is the belief in a big, oldfashioned sound.

The guitar and drums are stupendously thunderous, and it took at least four songs before I became aware of anyone else on stage.

Somewhere along the line, Queen have lost a bass player as well as Freddie, and the two surviving members have inserted a clause in their contract which gives them a degree of sonic precedence. A preference for Second World War searchlights also reinforces the impression that as far as Brian and his yesmen are concerned, nothing has changed since the middle of the Eighties.

And that is how it should be.

I could be wrong about this, but there has always been the suspicion in my household that Queen were a rock band as envisioned by Noel Coward in an ugly mood.

They don’t have any great songs, just cunning aggregations of teasing verses and great big choruses. Stuff like We Will Rock You and We Are The Champions is utterly moronic unless you are part of a crowd which is in the grip of a lager frenzy.

On the other hand, Queen have had greatness thrust upon them because of untimely death. When Freddie appears on that same video screen to give us the first part of Bohemian Rhapsody, it would take a flinty soul to be unmoved.

But talking of untimely death leads to thoughts of the late Paul Kossoff, the guitarist with Free, the band in which Rodgers first earned a decent crust.

When this newly convened consortium get together on a version of All Right Now, then you just know you are in the presence of a more venerable representation of rock aristocracy.

The truth of the matter is that that great show-off Freddie Mercury will be spinning in his grave. But then he would not have had it any other way.