Queen + Paul Rodgers = !
Heard about this a few weeks ago: two of the members of Queen (Brian May and Roger Taylor) teamed up with Paul Rodgers (of Free and Bad Company fame) to play a live show at Sheffield in England. As soon as I convinced myself this wasn't a dream, I decided to buy it right then. We got the two disc plus DVD set yesterday, and it's already on both iTunes and in both cars on CD.
It's called Return of the Champions, and has one of the lousiest album covers I've seen in years. The front has a simple crowd shot, and the back shows Brian and Paul, but Brian has his back to the camera. WTF? The booklet inside has much better pictures to be used for the cover, so I don't get that.
I figured it would be Paul singing Freddie's parts in Queen covers, but that's not all. It really is "Queen + Paul Rodgers," since they feature a few of Paul's greatest hits from his long career. What blew me away was the old Free song "Wishing Well," which I had completely forgotten about. What a great tune.
Not too surprisingly included is the Bad Company big hit "Can't Get Enough," which I heard about 200 times in 1974 and I have never ever gotten tired of it. I dearly love that song. There are two songs I will never get tired of hearing, and I don't know why it's those two after all these years. The other one is "Baby Baby" by Amy Grant. I know, I can't explain.
Let me explain how the matchup on this album works for me. If I'm listening to a rock song, you can kick out the guitarist and replace him with Brian May and that's a big upgrade (the only exception to that is Jimmy Page, God's Gift to Six and Twelve Stringed Things). Same goes for the vocalist and Paul Rodgers, and there ain't no exception there. He's the very best there is, blues or rock, and I would pay to hear him sing the phone book.
Freddie was, of course, unique, and Paul doesn't try to imitate him at all, bringing his own terrific style to each Queen song. He does have to sort of sing opera for the Rhapsody which is strange, but he does a great job nonetheless. Roger and Brian sing a couple of songs, although Roger sings a song that he didn't sing on the album and doesn't sing another song which he did sing on the album. But whatever.
It's not often that you hear about something, and expect it to be good, and find out it's way better than you thought. I see the lower expectations phenomenon happening a lot, but I thought this would be good to start with. It just blew me away. Collaborations like this, and Sin City, are the stuff of dreams.
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music
6 comments:
Crap. Now I'm sitting here trying to figure out if I can handle Queen without Freddy Mercury.
I just don't know.
I'll have to think about it some more.
That is the question for Queen fans who are not also Paul Rodgers fans, which would be not me. I'm sure that a lot of Queen fans will find this matchup unsatisfying, but let's face it, nobody sings like Freddie did. Nobody.
The crowd sure seemed to have a good time, even yelling out all the proper responses at a Queen concert like "Ready Freddie!" and stuff like that. Your call, of course.
Don't know who Paul Rodgers is but Queen have some good tunes. I like the two Marx Brothers albums best. And I'm always amazed how naive we were in the 70s and 80s: there was shock and surprise when Freddie came out of the closet... the band's called QUEEN, for goodness sake!
I'm always leery of match-ups like that since they can be disasterous. I think it was that (also godawful) Godzilla movie that had Jimmy Page and Puff Daddy teaming up for Kashmir? Or what about those MTV awards with Eminem and Elton John. Sometimes they surprise you though. I think Queen + Paul Rodgers would be worth a listen.
Paul Rodgers was (is?) the lead singer for Bad Company. I'm sure you've heard at least two of their songs on the radio ad naseum:
Might be some pop-ups!
Bad Company (Group name, song name, and most of the lyrics too)
Feel Like Makin' Love
I'm always amazed that no one knew he was gay after they heard the words to "Loverboy". It's a little on the subtle side, but if you really listen, it becomes wryly obvious.
Then there's "Don't Stop Me Now", when he says "I'm gonna make a supersonic man outta you," which I don't really find all that subtle at all.
Back when I was a teenager and I used to self-consciously change all the pronouns in the songs I sang along with (so it didn't sound like I liked girls, lest all those boys I was best friends with got the wrong idea) I always got confused singing along to Queen songs. Hard to remember which pronouns you have to switch when it's Freddie you're singing along with.
Thanks, Bishop. I was amazed the first time I saw a karaoke songbook in the States. I thought I knew music but there's a lot of homegrown stuff that doesn't export. I've heard of Bad Company before but I thought Chuck was asking me to leave.
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