Queen and Adam Lambert

Okay- I got sucked in by Idol. There is no escape. The IPod my bosses play blares out Daughtry and David Cook, and it doesn’t sound bad in a harmless Creed-kind of way. My wife and kids go on and on about it all the time and now Queen is expressing an interest in Adam Lambert. Hmmmmmmm. Nobody will ever replace Freddie Mercury, especially not Paul Rogers, but Lambert may be the guy if they want to play new music that is remotely like their own.
You may first ask why Queen feels like they need to play at all. There is no way any singer anyway will work with them the way Mercury did. Not only was his voice the most recognizable thing about the band, but he was also arguably the best songwriter in the band and was largely responsible for arranging they layered vocals they are so well known for. For well over a decade they didn’t even attempt it, perhaps reluctant to mess with their legacy, choosing the route of Led Zeppelin over the questionable yet very lucrative route of the David Gilmour-led Pink Floyd. They then hooked up with Rogers, and had a pretty good run commercially, filling up stadiums around the world, and releasing Cosmos Rock. They sounded nothing like Queen, though. Rogers is about as far as you can get from Mercury, vocal wise. While he is a competent blues rock singer, his voice does not fit the classic Queen sound. Brian May and Roger Taylor gamely tried to fit their playing styles around him, with May playing some of his best guitar since News of the World, but it came off more as a heavily produced Bad Company than it did Queen. Perhaps even more missed was the songwriting of Mercury and the departed John Deacon. With a few exceptions, the songwriting was terrible. Rogers is a pedestrian songwriter, and there was a reason that Mercury and Deacon wrote most of the memorable Queen tunes. Rogers ended up running back to his old mates in Bad Company, leaving May and Taylor without a singer.
Enter Lambert. He got on Idol doing “Bohemian Rhapsody”. His flamboyant appearance and singing style brought on comparisons to Freddie. He had that mix of Broadway and hard rock that Queen had been missing. When they all did “We Are the Champions” he looked like a natural fit. You can never replace Freddie, but if they decided to make music with Lambert, it would seem on the surface to be a perfect match. Before all of us old Queen fans get too happy, though, we need to look into this.
First, while Lambert singing and stage presence is vaguely reminiscent of Freddie, he may not offer the other things that Freddie did. Nobody knows if Adam can write, and since Deacon is not in the fold, that leaves us with the same songwriting issues we saw on Cosmos. Sure, if Queen’s looking to clean up on a greatest hits tour, it doesn’t matter much, but this writer has a feeling that they want to work on new music, so the writing may be an issue.
Second, Lambert wants to do his own thing. While he said he’d love to sing with Queen, he’s also working on his own album and tour. Working with Queen would help his exposure to older fans that don’t follow Idol, while it would help Queen perhaps even more, turning a younger demographic to their still fresh-sounding music. Lambert seems pretty destined to follow his own course. Perhaps the Queen guys will wait around, but it doesn’t make a reunion necessarily a done deal.
Third, once again, why does need Queen need to re-form as Queen? The presence of Lambert would make for a very profitable tour, but does Queen want to risk their fine legacy on a rent-a-singer greatest hits tour? Robert Plant declined a couple of years ago on another go-around with Zeppelin that would’ve been huge. Why does Queen need to get out there without Freddie? Aesthetically, wouldn’t it be best to leave their legacy just as it is?
Lawyers and commitments aside, I can see this happening. The money and the exposure will be priceless. But if anybody sees it as anything more, they are fooling themselves. Queen would make a great backing band for Lambert, and the singer could win new fans by doing reasonably faithful renditions of Queen songs. But who even knows what will happen to him? The musical scrap heap is full of artists who did well on Idol, but disappeared soon after. Lambert seems like he has more going on than most of the others, but who knows? We don’t know yet if he can write a tune, we don’t know what kind of people he will be working with; it’s a great unknown, especially in today’s balkanized musical universe. So in sum, perhaps it’s not a bad idea if he hooks up with Queen, but for Taylor and May, it is more uncertain, but what the hell? Why not? It won’t destroy their legacy, and give the guys a few more years to live off their glory