The Latest Breaking News from Roger Taylor

“I didn’t know what to do. It sounded like an angry wasp”: Brian May recalls the time he played live through Jimi Hendrix’s Marshall – and it didn’t go well

Hendrix might have had the Marshall stack under his spell but the Queen says he struggled to play a chord

MusicRadar · Feb 4, 2025

"I had to play this sh***y little kit. It was just awful. I really had a bad time": Roger Taylor looks back on a problem Queen finally fixed after 50 years

Listen to Roger Taylor's isolated drum tracks from three different versions of Queen's first album highlight Liar

Louder · Jan 24, 2025

New Year’s Eve TV: Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s disco brings this goddamn house right down!

The glitter queen brings in 2025 with style. Plus: the Hootenanny is back with Boomtown Rats, Marc Almond and Roger Taylor. Here’s what to watch this evening

The Guardian - UK · Dec 31, 2024

“I have never heard a better ‘rock’ piano”: From The Beatles to Bowie, Queen to Elton John, how the rich, distinctive tone of the Trident Studios house piano graced the grooves of some of the finest songs ever recorded

It’s what Macca played on Hey Jude

MusicRadar · Nov 14, 2024

“I had moments where I thought, ‘I am in a great place. I can make music… then somehow, everything would fall apart. That’s what the song was about”: Brian May on how The Night Comes Down was born of depression – and the desire to prove people wrong

With a radically-modded cheapo classical guitar, a head clouded by darkness, May wrote a great Queen epic and tore up the production rulebook that said you can’t mix electric and acoustic

MusicRadar · Nov 8, 2024

“As soon as he is in the studio, he hears his voicing come back at him through the speakers and says, ‘No, I don’t like that’”: Queen's Brian May and Roger Taylor on how “manic goat” Freddie Mercury found his voice and became rock’s greatest frontman

The making of Queen’s debut album was a learning process for all, none more so than Mercury who used the studio as a tool for radical self-improvement and take full command of his instrument

MusicRadar · Nov 5, 2024

“I still have the guitar. It still buzzes”: Brian May reveals the radical mods he made to his £10 acoustic for Queen’s debut album, all to make it buzz

Recently reissued and “rebuilt”, Queen’s 1973 debut was a time of learning and experimentation for the band, with May customising a cheapo acoustic for one of the coolest tones on the record

MusicRadar · Oct 31, 2024

"If I'd been a solo artist, I think I'd have laid on the floor and cried": In 1973, faced with bad reviews of their debut album, Queen turned to bad reviews of Led Zeppelin for comfort

Brian May and Roger Taylor go behind the scenes of the making of their debut album

Louder · Oct 31, 2024

Freddie Mercury's 'dreadful singing' sounded like a 'goat'

Freddie Mercury's "dreadful" singing sounded like a "goat", according to his Queen bandmate Roger Taylor.

BANG Premier · Oct 26, 2024

“He was playing this kit that had cushions in it and tape all over it. It didn’t sound like Rodge”: Queen hated Roger Taylor’s drum sound on their debut album so much that they “augmented” every beat for its reissue

Their eponymous debut is a stone-cold rock classic but Queen have never been happy with its sound, especially Taylor’s drums. For its “rebuilt” and renamed reissue, they forensically applied digital tech to transform the sound of each individual drum hit

MusicRadar · Oct 25, 2024