QUEEN

Im going to present to you the most commercially successful musical band of all time. A rock band Queen. Queen are a British rock band. The band was formed in 1970 in London. It was formed after the collapse of a band Smile. In that band were two members, one was Brian May who played guitar and Roger Taylor who played drums. Soon Freddie Mercury and John Deacon joined the band. The band was active at the time of the 70s to 90s. If we are looking from the music side, they found a common language of heavy rock, performed many genres of rock (stadium rock, glam and glitter rock, progressive rock, hard rock). But they didn`t become famous overnight. At first they played at small celebrations and events. A leader of a band Queen was Freddie Mercury. He also renamed band an draw the crest of their band. It is known as Queen Crest. It contains zodiac signs of all band members. Two lions, cancer and two fairies for virgo. Lions are holding a letter Q on which is cancer and below the letter are two fairies. Members of the band Queen were Brian May, Roger Taylor, Freddie Mercury and John Deacon as I mentioned before. But I didn`t mention what role did they have. Brian was the guitarist, songwriter and occasionally, singer. Roger was the drummer and a singer, John was the bassist and last but not least, the most known member, Freddie, was the lead vocalist and songwriter. Their first album was Queen, released in 1973, but the album which lead them to success was Queen II and it was released in 1974. They became more renowned. But the release in 1974 of Sheer Heart Attack and in 1975 of the album A Night at the Opera gained them international success. Album Sheer Heart Attack reached number two in the UK. After that they released several albums: A Day at the Races - 1976 News of The World - 1977 Jazz - 1978 The Game - 1980 Flash Gordon - 1980 Hot Space - 1982 The Works - 1984 A Kind of Magic - 1986 The Miracle - 1989 Innuendo - 1991 Made In Heaven 1995 The most important is the sixth album released in 1977 News of The World. The album contains very popular songs that we all know today. The two songs are We Will Rock You and We Are The Champions. These are the songs people always sing at sports events, during the breaks or when something spectacular happens. This means that the two became stadium anthems. So, consequently Queen became one of the biggest stadium rock bands in the world. Queen took the glory and reaped the success. But unfortunately, in 1991 Mercury died of AIDS. The following, Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert was organized in his honour. On that concert many famous musicians took up/participated such as Led Zeppelin, Elton John, Axl Rose(guns and roses?) and Metallica. In 1995, Queen released the last album titled Made in Heaven. Then in January 1997 John Deacon decided to retire, because he wanted to spend more time with his family. So May and Taylor were left alone. From

then on they performed together and in 2005 they chose to cooperate with Paul Rodgers. They went on a few tours. On May 2009 Rodgers left the band. He explained that he wasnt meant to be a permanent arrangement.

For the end I`m going to tell you more about the album A Night at the Opera. The album A Night at the Opera was the most expensive album ever produced. That album contains the song Bohemian Rhapsody which became a commercial success. This is a song written by Freddie Mercury. It stayed in number one place in the UK Singles Chart for nine straight weeks. It was number one in several others charts and it was also number two for five weeks on the US Billboard hot 100. They sold more than a million copies by the end of January 1976. The song reached number one again, in 1991, when the lead singer, Freddie Mercury, died. In the UK the song was number one for five weeks. The song became the UKs third best selling single of all time.

Now we are going to listen to the most popular song of Queen titled Bohemian Rhapsody. Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ9rUzIMcZQ&ob=av2e

Katja travs,2.d