Brian May says that Freddie Mercury would like Queen to continue

The legendary Queen co-founder and guitarist Brian May said in an interview with Total Guitar that the late vocalist Freddie Mercury would like the band to continue. He also said that it doesn’t matter who tours with him and Roger Taylor, people will still want Mercury.

The bassist John Deacon retired from the band in 1997 and since then May and drummer Roger Taylor had worked with many other artists under the moniker of Queen. The two most famous ones are the singer Paul Rodgers (Free and Bad Company) and Adam Lambert.

Brian May says that Freddie Mercury would like Queen to continue

“Well, we have been in the studio. We did knock a few ideas around in the middle of one of those (Queen + Adam Lambert) tours. But it just never quite reached the place where we felt it was going to be right. So we haven’t pursued it so far. That’s all I can tell you. So I really don’t know. But I think there’s a bit of a barrier there. I think if people see Queen on a record label, they still want it to be Freddie singing. It could be Jesus Christ on it, but they’d still want Freddie, and I don’t blame people for that.”

“There are people on Instagram who get annoyed with me: ‘Why are you still carrying on without Freddie?’ And I go, ‘Don’t tell me what to do. I do what I feel that I should be doing.”

He continued:

There are people who feel like we shouldn’t even be going on stage without Freddie. But I think that would have been very sad, and it’s not what Freddie would have wanted either. He would have wanted us to continue developing. And of course, because we are continuing and developing, it keeps that legacy alive.

“You know, I often have this conversation with Freddie’s sister, Kash. She gets those questions as well: ‘Why are they doing this without Freddie?’ And she completely gets what we’re doing. She says, ‘This is what Freddie would have wanted. He would not want have wanted his songs or the band’s songs to become museum pieces. He would have wanted them to live.’ And that’s what we’re doing. We make the Queen legacy live. Absolutely,” Brian May said.

The last tour that Queen did with Freddie Mercury was in 1986, five years before his death in 1991 at the age of 45. They only got back to the stage with a real tour in 2005 with Paul Rodgers, also performing in 2008.

Three years later Adam Lambert joined the group and since then they have toured in 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2022.