Ecco ROLLING STONE USA - recensione di Cosmos Rocks

Inside the reunited band's new album and massive stadium tour

ROLLING STONE
By ALAN LIGHT
[From Issue 1065 — November 13, 2008]

Thirteen years after their last album, and 17 years after the death of incomparable frontman Freddie Mercury, Queen are looking, once again, like champions of the world. With a new singer — Paul Rodgers, formerly of Bad Company and Free — a new album and a monumental tour covering 20 countries in 11 weeks, the band with the bestselling album in the history of the U.K. is making a dramatic return to the spotlight.

Guitarist Brian May, drummer Roger Taylor and Rodgers kicked off the tour in September with one of the biggest concerts of all time, an AIDS benefit in front of more than 350,000 people in Kharkiv, Ukraine. (The show will be screened in hundreds of U.S. movie theaters on November 6th.) Billed as Queen + Paul Rodgers, the trio have toured before, in 2005, but this time, there is a new reason to get back onstage: the release of The Cosmos Rocks, Queen's first new album since 1995's Made in Heaven.

In November 2004, May and Taylor performed with Rodgers at a U.K. Music Hall of Fame induction dinner. At the time, May and Taylor were busy overseeing the various productions of the Queen stage musical We Will Rock You, and May was also finishing his doctorate thesis in astronomy. "It was supposed to be just that one night," says Rodgers. "But we came off so buzzed by what we'd done, we all thought we should do some more. There was a certain spark in whatever we played, whether it was my material or Queen material. It seemed the logical next step to see how far we could go with it, and whether it would work with new songs."

Shortly before finishing the album this summer, the trio are gathered for lunch in the garden of Taylor's 13th-century estate — a former priory southwest of London — to discuss the events that led to the creation of The Cosmos Rocks, which was recorded upstairs in this very residence. "Writing together," says Taylor, "was a dive into the dark — really tentative at first." But when Rodgers offered up a song called "Time to Shine," the ice was broken. "It was very suitable for us," says Taylor. "Quite grand and big." Adds May, "That song was the first time we thought, 'Ooh, we have a record here — this actually sounds like us.'"

"Time to Shine" — a centerpiece of The Cosmos Rocks — is big, all right, with a propulsive "Pinball Wizard"-style intro, thumping drums, a snaky solo from May and a hint of Eastern drone in the vocal arrangement. In a small playback room off the studio (where drinks are served in Queen glasses resting on Queen coasters), the group listens to 13 tracks in various states of mix. "Surf's Up...School's Out" opens with May's trademark stack of guitars, giving way to a stop-and-start arrangement featuring an instantly recognizable wall of harmonies, dissonant piano and Rodgers singing, "I've got a criminal urge to twist and shout." ("There's quite a few retro touches on the album," says Taylor, "which I think at our age we're entitled to use with impunity.") More straightforward is "Voodoo," a loose, bluesy groove that was mostly recorded live in one take, after a session spent jamming on "House of the Rising Sun" and other classic tunes.

"I was always blown away by those fabulous orchestral block harmonies that Queen are famous for, and always wondered how they did that," says Rodgers. "Well, now I know — it's all in Brian's head! We'd go out and multitrack all these harmonies, and Roger and I really didn't know what it was going to sound like. And then we go back in the control room and our guys push up the faders and — there it is!"

May notes that Rodgers' contributions were equally important. "We sometimes get carried away on flights of fancy," he says. "It's nice to paint pictures in the studio, but Paul brought us back to a greater awareness of the instinctive side and also back to the blues."

On a shelf above the mixing board, below a Pinocchio clock, are three miniature figurines depicting May, Taylor and Mercury. Conspicuously absent is bassist John Deacon, who has opted out of all band-related activity for more than a decade. On the album, May and Rodgers share bass duties; onstage, the parts are played by Danny Miranda, formerly of Blue Öyster Cult, whom they poached from the Las Vegas production of We Will Rock You. "Whenever we tour," says May, "we always put a little feeler out and say, 'Perhaps you might be interested, John.' But he's not."

As for the other missing member, May and Taylor insist that Mercury would be pleased with their choice of frontman. "Freddie was a huge Paul Rodgers fan," says Taylor. "Absolutely adored his voice. He was a different animal, but he would have loved to be able to sing like that."

They point to "We Are the Champions" as a song that might seem impossible to tackle but that has found new power with Rodgers. "Any number of people could come along and imitate Freddie, but it would be pointless," says May. "It's wonderful to hear Paul inhabiting the songs and making them new. I know that's what Freddie would want."

Following the massive Ukraine blowout, the band headed to sold-out dates in enormous soccer stadiums from Moscow to Rio — illustrating the scale at which Queen operate. So it's not like there was the option of a quiet, modest launch for The Cosmos Rocks. "Somebody asked me the other day, 'What's it like singing for Queen?'" says Rodgers. "And I said, 'It's a bit like sitting on the front of a rocket, going twice the speed of sound, without a seat belt.' And it's great."

© brianmay.com

Roger Taylor is the purveyor of massive and beautiful beats. Brian May is a genuine guitar hero whose orchestrated guitar harmonies gave Queen much of its regal air. Paul Rodgers brings his reputation as one of the finest rock singers to the fold

Like so many significant stories in the world of post-’60s rock, this one begins with the Beatles. More specifically, it begins with the 1968 double-album released simply as “The Beatles,” but known as “The White Album.” Across the span of two vinyl discs, the Fab Four delved into nearly every musical style imaginable, from the old-school rock ’n’ roll of “Back in the USSR” to the proto-heavy metal squall of “Helter Skelter;” the folksy country stroll of “Rocky Raccoon” to the trippy psychedelia of “Dear Prudence;” and from the pure music hall charm of “Martha My Dear” to the avant-garde soul of “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road?”

Already the most successful band in the world, the Beatles employed that fame as a license to split into four separate bands with four separate songwriters, and further, to fully indulge every whim of personal taste. In the process, the band created — wittingly or otherwise –what would come to be known as progressive rock.

Though it was forged in the fiery furnace of David Bowie’s gender-bending glam-rock, British quartet Queen built its career on –and employed as bedrock for its musical philosophy –the sprawling “White Album.”

It would add to the multi-idiomatic melange the Beatles presented with their masterpiece, bringing in an estimable amount of camp, show-tune grandiosity, the Sturm und Drang of opera, and ultimately, the anthemic qualities of arena-sized “big rock.” Along the way, the group would sell in excess of 150 million albums worldwide, making it one of the most successful bands in history.

Indelibly ambitious, deeply musical and fearlessly flamboyant, Queen meant many things to many people.

Singer, pianist, songwriter and one-of-a-kind frontman Freddie Mercury possessed an operatic tenor and an uncanny ability to carry off hard rock histrionics, white man’s soul, and fey Tin Pan Alley pop craftsmanship with equal aplomb and readily apparent conviction.

In Brian May, Queen boasted a genuine guitar hero, a musician whose larger-than-life solos and keen ear for orchestrated guitar harmonies gave the band much of its regal air and musical street-cred.

Drummer Roger Taylor sang like Rod Stewart and played like Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham. Bassist John Deacon was the quiet one, but his melodic lines and deep, guttural thump anchored the group, and he would prove to be perhaps the most pop-savvy of the Queen composers.

All four of them could write, all four of them were virtuosos, and most significantly, all four of them could sing. The ability to move with ease between musical styles became a Queen trademark, but it was the massive, neooperatic layering of the band’s harmony vocals that made it wholly unique within the rock landscape of the ’70s. This recipe informed all of the band’s hits, whether the song in question be the iconic mini-opera “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the arena-sized (English) football chant heroics of “We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions,” or the shameless disco-funk appropriation “Another One Bites the Dust.”

When, in 1991, Freddie Mercury succumbed to a lengthy battle with AIDS-related illnesses at the age of 45, Queen died along with him. The eccentric Mercury was not just another singer, and thus, was not replaceable. The surving members called it a day, after releasing one posthumous Mercury-based album, 1995’s “Made in Heaven.” That seemed to be that.

May, Taylor and Deacon kept a low profile, while the band’s enduring influence became readily apparent in the work of a new generation of bands, and its catalog continued to sell to a generation of listeners not even born when Queen scored most of its biggest hits.

In 2004, however, May and Taylor –Deacon was firm in his commitment to retirement – played a one-off gig at an English industry awards show with former Free/Bad Company/ the Firm singer Paul Rodgers. The magic, it seemed, had not wholly abandoned them. Soon enough, the trio –with the help of a few backing musicians –had rehearsed a program of Queen songs, peppered with a few of the various hits Rodgers had accrued over the years. (Between his efforts with the various bands he fronted, Rodgers has accrued nearly 150 million worldwide album sales himself.)

“Paul is not really replacing Freddie, because no man can,” Taylor said to The Buffalo News prior to a Queen + Paul Rodgers Buffalo tour stop in 2006. “He is completely his own man, and he brings a sound, style and approach that is wholly his own to the table. That’s why we can feel good about carrying on –it doesn’t at all feel like we’ve replaced Freddie. It’s more like we’ve formed a new band to play this repertoire of music that, I must say, still retains an awful lot of power.”

At the time of the Buffalo concert, Taylor was noncommittal about writing and recording plans for this new band. “We’re committed to this tour, but we have no plans beyond that,” the drummer said.

Now, however, the first album of new Queen material to be released sans the towering vocals and considerable songwriting acumen of Mercury is poised to hit the streets. Concurrently, the influence of Queen’s large-screen, grandiose vision of rock music is more pervasive than ever. It’s both interesting and ironic that Queen, the very band so many among the first generation of British punk rockers claimed to be rebelling against as bloated and irrelevant, has in fact had a broader influence than most of those angry young neo-anarchists. “God save the Queen,” indeed.

invece sul sito gli danno 2 stelle ed è `negativa.
eccola qui:

Queen's first studio album in 13 years sounds a little like the band's old albums, with stomping rockers, over-the-top power ballads and pyrotechnic solos difficult to replicate on Rock Band. But one thing's missing: late frontman Freddie Mercury, whose charisma Bad Company's Paul Rodgers can't match. Under Rodgers' command, Cosmos Rocks evokes an unmemorable stretch of drive-time radio, with slow songs like "Say It's Not True" recalling Air Supply. The classic-rock clichés aren't all Rodgers' fault: Original band members helped write tracks like "Still Burnin'," a generic bar-band jam laced with chestnuts like "music makes the world go 'round." Queen 2.0 are competent enough to rock arenas, but don't expect a repeat of the glory days.

fraccobaldo79, 03/11/2008 10.45:

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invece sul sito gli danno 2 stelle ed è `negativa.
eccola qui:

Queen's first studio album in 13 years sounds a little like the band's old albums, with stomping rockers, over-the-top power ballads and pyrotechnic solos difficult to replicate on Rock Band. But one thing's missing: late frontman Freddie Mercury, whose charisma Bad Company's Paul Rodgers can't match. Under Rodgers' command, Cosmos Rocks evokes an unmemorable stretch of drive-time radio, with slow songs like "Say It's Not True" recalling Air Supply. The classic-rock clichés aren't all Rodgers' fault: Original band members helped write tracks like "Still Burnin'," a generic bar-band jam laced with chestnuts like "music makes the world go 'round." Queen 2.0 are competent enough to rock arenas, but don't expect a repeat of the glory days.

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ma sempre Rolling Stone?

comunque il sunto di tutta l'avventura dei Queen + PR è in questa frase..

Queen 2.0 are competent enough to rock arenas, but don't expect a repeat of the glory days.

DavBS, 03/11/2008 11:00:

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ma sempre Rolling Stone?

comunque il sunto di tutta l'avventura dei Queen + PR è in questa frase..

Queen 2.0 are competent enough to rock arenas, but don't expect a repeat of the glory days.

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si, dav, il sito americano.
qui http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/23506959/review/23589020/the_cosmos_rocks