Roger Taylor: Rock and Roll Funster (Interview)
Written by: Ken Sharp
Photo: Jim Marks
For a self-described “frustrated guitarist” whose parents had wished pursued a more sensible vocation (he earned a degree in Biology) than one in the unpredictable world of rock and roll, Roger Taylor steadfastly followed his own path both in Queen and as a solo artist, carving out a formidable 40+ year career of musical adventures on his own terms.
With Queen, Taylor was 1/4 of a vital partnership, equal parts combustibility and creative invention. He was the band’s resident rocker penning such metallic finery as Modern Times Rock n’ Roll, Sheer Heart Attack, I’m In Love with My Car and One Vision. Yet he could also surprise with his versatility as a songsmith with Radio Ga Ga (techno-rock), Rock It (Prime Jive) (funk), A Kind of Magic (pop R&B) and the grandiose power ballad These Are the Days of Our Lives.His mastery of myriad styles and idioms would carry over to his solo career; the first fruits of his solo pursuits outside of Queen came in 1977 with the one-off single, I Wanna Testify, a reworking of The Parliaments’ 1967 original single.
Four years later came Fun in Space, Taylor’s first full fledged solo album. From there, Taylor balanced his work with Queen with his extracurricular musical pursuits. over the next two decades four solo albums followed in its wake, Strange Frontier, Happiness?, Electric Fire and Fun on Earth along with three albums by off-shoot band, The Cross.
Out now are two career spanning collections showcasing the expansive stylistic breadth of Taylor’s artistry, Roger Taylor: Best, an 18-track career overview, and The Lot, a lavish 12-CD and 1 DVD presentation culling all of Taylor’s solo albums and work with The Cross plus discs rounding up all available singles and remixes. A bonus DVD features a collection of promo videos, live clips and more.
And all the while Queen, dutifully shepherded by Taylor and guitarist Brian May, rolls on with its eye on both the past, present and future–the band is currently on tour with vocalist Adam Lambert.
Years in the making, the long-awaited Live at the Rainbow ’74 CD/DVD set has finally been released to universal acclaim.
Meanwhile, Queen Forever, a new compilation album, hit streets in November, the addition of three previously unreleased tracks adding to its allure, There Must Be More to Life Than This, Let Me in Your Heart Again and a bare-bones rendition of the Freddie Mercury solo track, Love Kills. Against this whirlwind of activity, we corralled the legendary drummer on a rare day off to revisit his storied past.
Rock Cellar Magazine: At what point did you realize you’d made it as a musician and that you’d never have to go back working in the clothing stall at the Kensington Market in London?
Roger Taylor: (laughs) Oh, that question is so hard, it’s difficult to answer. I imagine I felt we’d finally cracked it when we had our first hit with Killer Queen, I would say. That was when that moment hit me. Although you convince yourself you’ve made it early on, it all comes down to if you don’t have faith and you don’t imagine that you’re more successful than you actually are then you probably wouldn’t have the impetus to go on.
Rock Cellar Magazine: Your parents initially had different ideas for you in hopes of you pursuing a serious and sensible career, when did they accept and warm up to you having a career in music?
Roger Taylor: My parents were very separate; they lived separately for a lot of my life. But they were supportive, really. I remember my Dad got me this very ancient second hand half a drum kit when I was really young, like 12 years old. He was very supportive of that but I don’t think either of my parents ever thought I’d do it for a living. But my mother put up with it during my teenage years.
I always was in bands. But my parents never really thought I could actually make a living at it. I guess when Bohemian Rhapsody was number one for so long in the UK was a turning point. I remember that my mom came to see a Queen show that we did and Bohemian Rhapsody went to number one that day and I think she was finally convinced then, it was like “he’s obviously doing this.”
Rock Cellar Magazine: She didn’t have to worry about you anymore
Roger Taylor: Well, she worried about me, yeah. She always worried about me. I think if you’re a parent you worry, no matter the age of your child.
Rock Cellar Magazine: Every musician dreams of stardom but 99.9% never get there. Once you achieved the near impossible with Queen, was success better than you imagined or just different?
Roger Taylor: I can’t say success was better than I imagined; it was just more complicated, really. The definition of success is really difficult. I mean, I know so many famous supposedly successful people that are pretty broke so it’s a very soft blurred edged definition I think.
Rock Cellar Magazine: I guess it all comes down to how you define success.
Roger Taylor: Yeah, I think so, that’s a good way to put it. It’s pretty simple; I think if you’re happy you’re successful in life. (laughs)
Rock Cellar Magazine: Back in 77, you released the solo single I Wanna Testify and four years later, your first solo album Fun in Space, was this a case of blowing off creative steam being in a band with four strong writers or was this a matter of doing material that would not fit within the confines of Queen?
Years in the making, the long-awaited Live at the Rainbow ’74 CD/DVD set has finally been released to universal acclaim.
Meanwhile, Queen Forever, a new compilation album, hit streets in November, the addition of three previously unreleased tracks adding to its allure, There Must Be More to Life Than This, Let Me in Your Heart Again and a bare-bones rendition of the Freddie Mercury solo track, Love Kills. Against this whirlwind of activity, we corralled the legendary drummer on a rare day off to revisit his storied past.
Rock Cellar Magazine: At what point did you realize you’d made it as a musician and that you’d never have to go back working in the clothing stall at the Kensington Market in London?
Roger Taylor: (laughs) Oh, that question is so hard, it’s difficult to answer. I imagine I felt we’d finally cracked it when we had our first hit with Killer Queen, I would say. That was when that moment hit me. Although you convince yourself you’ve made it early on, it all comes down to if you don’t have faith and you don’t imagine that you’re more successful than you actually are then you probably wouldn’t have the impetus to go on.
Rock Cellar Magazine: Your parents initially had different ideas for you in hopes of you pursuing a serious and sensible career, when did they accept and warm up to you having a career in music?
Roger Taylor: My parents were very separate; they lived separately for a lot of my life. But they were supportive, really. I remember my Dad got me this very ancient second hand half a drum kit when I was really young, like 12 years old. He was very supportive of that but I don’t think either of my parents ever thought I’d do it for a living. But my mother put up with it during my teenage years.
I always was in bands. But my parents never really thought I could actually make a living at it. I guess when Bohemian Rhapsody was number one for so long in the UK was a turning point. I remember that my mom came to see a Queen show that we did and Bohemian Rhapsody went to number one that day and I think she was finally convinced then, it was like “he’s obviously doing this.”
Rock Cellar Magazine: She didn’t have to worry about you anymore
Roger Taylor: Well, she worried about me, yeah. She always worried about me. I think if you’re a parent you worry, no matter the age of your child.
Rock Cellar Magazine: Every musician dreams of stardom but 99.9% never get there. Once you achieved the near impossible with Queen, was success better than you imagined or just different?
Roger Taylor: I can’t say success was better than I imagined; it was just more complicated, really. The definition of success is really difficult. I mean, I know so many famous supposedly successful people that are pretty broke so it’s a very soft blurred edged definition I think.
Rock Cellar Magazine: I guess it all comes down to how you define success.
Roger Taylor: Yeah, I think so, that’s a good way to put it. It’s pretty simple; I think if you’re happy you’re successful in life. (laughs)
Rock Cellar Magazine: Back in 77, you released the solo single I Wanna Testify and four years later, your first solo album Fun in Space, was this a case of blowing off creative steam being in a band with four strong writers or was this a matter of doing material that would not fit within the confines of Queen?
Roger Taylor: It was a case of wanting to express just me. Up to that point I’d been in a band, which is such a collective.
But it’s sort of inevitable that you think you want to do something that you solely want to do and not have to get three other people’s okay. So yeah, but it was ultimately about self expression.
That said, I was always very happy working in the group context with Queen and when I look back now I was actually happier working in the group context because we always felt we were more invulnerable as a band rather than being on your own, which is much more of a vulnerable situation.
Rock Cellar Magazine: Being a solo artist adds many additional layers of responsibilities on you which are often shared in a band context.
Roger Taylor: Absolutely. I think Queen was always more than the sum of its parts. When you’re on your own it’s much much tougher than you think; the buck stops with you. You have to be decisive because it really is that much tougher on you.
Rock Cellar Magazine: Were your ambitions and goals different working as a solo artist and with the Cross than with Queen? Perhaps you felt more of a sense of freedom knowing your success with Queen afforded you the ability of pure expression without worrying about having hits.
Roger Taylor: Well said. I think you’re absolutely right. With Queen we were very ambitious and success was the prime directive, you know. But yeah, you’re right, I felt much freer. I didn’t expect my solo career to be massively commercially successful so I was free to sort of do what I want. I could be slightly more political.
Queen was never a political band really. We didn’t see that as our role at all. So yeah, you can be much more yourself working solo.
Rock Cellar Magazine: You mentioned politics and that fits right into my next question. One of the standouts on Roger Taylor: Best is the song The Unblinking Eye (Everything Is Broken), a powerful and timely reflection on the world today with its pointed lyrics, ”Why send our young men out to die in wars that we don’t understand, why on earth should we be meddling in places like Afghanistan.”
Roger Taylor: Thanks for mentioning that song, that’s very good. You really are putting yourself on a limb when you say stuff like that. It’s very direct and it says exactly what you feel. You’re sort of laying yourself wide open but that’s okay because if that’s what you believe, which I certainly do, I felt at the time somebody should say something. (laughs) It seems that the age of the protest song is just gone and that’s a shame.
It’s just not really there anymore.
Rock Cellar Magazine: Well, you brought it back.
Roger Taylor: (laughs) Well, yeah, exactly. It didn’t stop the world but it’s never going to. But I think sometimes you’ve got to come out and take a stand and say something. As you said before, your previous point, I wasn’t trying to be successful as much as wanting the freedom to be able to say something that I felt strongly about and I was able to do so on that song.
Rock Cellar Magazine: Going back to your beginnings as a songwriter, was there a watermark moment for you where you came up with a song that wasn’t just good but great which made you feel I’ve cracked it, I’ve arrived as a songwriter? Now I have an idea of which one I’d choose but’s that solely my own personal opinion.
Roger Taylor: Well, tell me which one…
Roger Taylor: (laughs) Ah right, fair enough. Up to that date, Tenement Funster was definitely my best. (laughs) But I quite like the one I wrote after it, I’m in Love with My Car. But I think you hit the nail on the head there; I thought that was the first decent proper song I’d written up to that point in our career.
Rock Cellar Magazine: Were you writing a lot of songs during that period, Roger?
Roger Taylor: No. I was not writing enough at that time. Writing is a habit that you get into and Freddie (Mercury) and Brian (May) were much more into the habit of writing than I was. We were all very closely involved in arrangements and performance but they were the two main writers in Queen back in the beginning.
I had less input because it’s not so easy on the drums; it’s not a natural writing instrument. But my writing sort of flowered as I worked on it more and more and now I find writing the most rewarding part of it for me.
Rock Cellar Magazine: By the way, what exactly is a “Tenement Funster?” Inquiring minds want to know…
Roger Taylor: (laughs) Well, it’s just an expression that I just sort of made up. It was like the prankster on the block, the naughty boy, you know what I mean. It was the good-time guy in the area. (laughs) I’ve never heard that term before of a “Tenement Funster” so I sort of made it up.
Rock Cellar Magazine: Going back to Modern Times Rock ‘n Roll from Queen’s debut album, you’ve been writing songs for over four decades. Given the experience of writing songs being akin to magic, pulling the proverbial rabbit out of the hat so to speak, is coming up with something that pleases you easier or more difficult today?
Roger Taylor: I don’t think that it’s ever easy. It’s so easy to write to a formula which I try hard not to do. But it’s very hard to not get into the habit of, now I need a middle-eight here or now I need a solo here. In songwriting there really shouldn’t be rules. So it’s hard to write songs and not be seen as formulaic, you know. It’s difficult. It’s nice to try and break rules successfully but it’s not easy. But I don’t find writing any easier than I used to. It’s always been tough.
Rock Cellar Magazine: Being a drummer and obviously also being able to play other instruments too, how does that percussive DNA impacted on the shape and form of your writing?
Roger Taylor: Yeah, it’s just what I bring to it. Obviously being a drummer you think in terms of rhythm. Before I was slightly more technical, I would rely a lot more on rhythm in my songwriting which I found to be the most important thing anyway. (laughs) I love songs with one chord, you know. (laughs) I like The Clapping Song by Shirley Ellis.
Rock Cellar Magazine: Listening to your complete solo work as presented on The Lot box set from start to finish, can you hear the progression of your artistry?
Roger Taylor: I think these albums are long snapshots of who I was at the time, definitely. There’s very much ‘80s lyrics on the album, Strange Frontier, when we were all sort of living under slightly more of a nuclear shadow. So the lyrics are of the time in some way but yeah, they are snapshots really and they have to be. I’m sure you know all the albums Bob Dylan has made and they are so different but they are snapshots of where he was at the time and in some pretty strange places (laughs) but then these gems come forward.
Rock Cellar Magazine: This year marks the 40th anniversary of Queen’s first U.S. tour which kicked off in April of ’74 in Denver playing 14 cities and wound up in New York City at the Uris Theater.
Roger Taylor: It was fabulous. It was very exciting. It was all new and we got on great with Mott the Hoople who were headlining those shows, which was fantastic. They treated us well and we gave them a run for their money every night. Bu they were great. We learned some tricks off of them. America was just so big and so new.
I remember thinking that the birds sound different over here. It was just great. I remember so many of the cities we played–New Orleans, New York, Memphis. It’s a shame that the tour was cut short because Brian was sick. We were gonna go on to Boston but we never got there on that tour. But I remember so much about the tour. It all seemed so big.
To us British boys it seemed pretty luxurious. Holiday Inns were fabulous. (laughs)
Rock Cellar Magazine: Knowing the size of the States compared to England, was it daunting in terms of the effort Queen would need to muster to break through in America?
Roger Taylor: We felt if we all worked together and believed in ourselves we’d eventually crack it. We did think this place is huge and the distances are huge; every city is a different market in a way so you have to crack that city. But we did absolutely love it; we sort of relished it in a way.
Rock Cellar Magazine: Queen’s Live at the Rainbow ‘74 was recently released on DVD and CD and shows off the harder edged of the band’s wok, which has perhaps been overlooked. How do you look back on that show and that period for the band in general?
Roger Taylor: I enjoyed listening to it again. I was real surprised to remember what a heavy rock band we were before we had hits. I was listening to it, and having not heard it for years, I went into rehearsal for the latest Queen tour with Brian with Live at the Rainbow fresh in my mind said, “Why don’t we start with a couple of these old very heavy songs we used to do?” I think people have forgotten that Queen were a heavy rock band, really. (laughs) I was very pleased with the way that Live at the Rainbow project came out. I thought it was a nice thing.
Rock Cellar Magazine: If you could whisper a word of advice in the ear of 21-year-old Roger Taylor, what would you tell him?
Roger Taylor: I think you sometimes learn from you mistakes but I’d say you have to have faith in yourself and not give up. Mind you sometimes that’s hard to follow. But the best advice I could give myself or anyone for that matter is to work hard and have faith; you can’t do any more than that, really.
Rock Cellar Magazine: Were there moments of doubt for you whether Queen would ultimately make it?
Roger Taylor: No, strangely enough I didn’t have any doubts we’d make it. We always thought even when we were broke that Queen would make it. We never entertained the possibility of not making it because that was unthinkable. (laughs) We were focused on what we were doing.
Rock Cellar Magazine: For someone who knows nothing about Roger Taylor the solo artist, what solo album would you point them to get their initial education?
Roger Taylor: Well, I can’t answer that. That’s too difficult; I wouldn’t have a clue, I’d say buy the new CD, Best and that’ll give you a good idea of what I’m all about as a solo artist and see what you like. (laughs)
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