05-09-1991 – Tulsa World – VH-1 Special

One-Hour Documentary Spotlights Group Rock Band Queen – Back With a Vengence

Say they’re great. Say they’re awful. Say they’re trendy or outrageous or hip. Call them by name: Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon. But don’t call them has-beens.

Queen, believed by some fans and fellow musicians to have been the hottest hard rock band of the ’70s or any other decade, is back with a vengeance. They have a new record, “Innuendo,” that harkens to the good old days of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Liar” and “Killer Queen.” It’s on a new label, Hollywood, a Disney company like Buena Vista and Touchstone Pictures.

And Thursday night at 10:30 p.m., they star in a one-hour documentary, “Queen: The Magic Years,” on VH-1, Cable Channel 3 in Tulsa.

It’s worth a watch simply to see Mercury’s many flamboyant guises over the years since 1973. And young dance-pop fans will hear more of “Under Pressure” than the distinctive bassline swiped by their idol Vanilla Ice.

Peter Ustinov, of all people, introduces this visual anthology, and the hour is strewn with comments – good and bad – by Bob Geldof, Paul McCartney, Jackie Stewart, Roger Daltrey, Jeff Beck, Danny DeVito and tons more.

Think back and you’ll remember that DeVito hosted “Saturday Night Live” when Queen appeared as the musical guest in 1982. It was their first and only live TV performance in the U.S.

See Mercury on stage with the Royal Ballet. See the band mobbed by Japanese fans in 1975. See them in the studio and at Live Aid. See their 1976 free concert in Hyde Park. And above all, see them at work on bizarre but innovative video productions.

Contemporaries laud them.

Jeff Beck: “Brian May is the best pop guitarist.”

Eurhythmics’ Dave Stewart: “`Bohemian Rhapsody’ went off at 90 degrees from all that had gone before. It was a courageous composition, and it earned (Queen) their first No. 1 in the U.K.”

Paul McCartney: “They always have had real musical skill.”

Rod Stewart: “We were going to form a band and call it Teeth, Nose and Hair. Freddie would be Teeth, I’d be Nose and Elton (John) would be Hair.”

Bob Geldof: “They were the best band of the day (Live Aid, 1986). They understood the concept and made their 17 minutes or whatever it was on stage a real global jukebox. … They really are normal and approachable but also the most unlikely band on the planet. You have this hippie guitarist (May), the trendy drummer (Taylor), a classic bassist (Deacon) and the most outrageous vocalist and frontman (Mercury).”

Queen also had and continues to have the tightest vocal harmony four voices can produce and a flair for the theatrical that borders on bombast.

But in interview clips, humility tries to rise above ego. May, for example, says, “It seems unimagineable what has happened to us.” The mostly-silent Mercury explains that “the me you see on stage is not the me off stage.”

And from Taylor: “We don’t want to become old, rich and useless. We want to keep on innovating.”