Freddie Mercury may be gone but he’s certainly not forgotten.
There’s also no denying the impact that Mercury or the band Queen left around the world either.
This Tuesday, rock and roll fans will get a chance to experience what a Queen concert would’ve been like during the group’s primal years in the 70s and 80s with a tribute performance by Patrick Myers (as Mercury) and his band Killer Queen at the Wagner Noël Performing Arts Center.
Killer Queen is a tribute band that’s currently been touring all over the country playing the signature classics from the famous British rock band including (of course) Bohemian Rhapsody, Under Pressure, We are the Champions, We Will Rock You and Another One Bites the Dust.
The group is nearing the end of the United States portion of its 2022 tour with shows all over the state of Texas.
The band has six shows in the Lone Star State over a one week span including the Wagner Noël on Tuesday.
It’ll be the first time the tribute band has performed in the Odessa-Midland area.
“We’re looking forward to it,” Myers said of Tuesday’s performance.
Myers says the group has enjoyed going around the country on tour.
“It’s been a fantastic tour in America,” Myers said. “We’ve been doing 20 weeks altogether this year so it’s quite a long time. It’s just a great show. Doing an American tour is so different. Each part of America is so different. That’s what we’ve discovered about playing in America.”
However, they saved the best part of the American tour as Myers says they enjoy playing in Texas.
“What we’ve discovered about playing in Texas is that it’s such a big kick for us because the audience is always there,” Myers said. “They just love rock and roll and they love having a really good time. We’ve saved all of our Texas dates until the end of the tour so that we can go out with a bang.”
After Midland, the group will perform at Dosey Doe in Houston on July 28 and Brewster’s Ice House in Corpus Christi on July 29 before finishing up at Payne Arena in Hidalgo.
The band is coming off a performance at Lava Cantina in Colony and Austin City Limits in Austin.
Killer Queen was formed back in June 1993. Their first public shows were at London University, following in the footsteps of the real Queen who had played their first shows there 21 years earlier.
Myers never got the opportunity to see Queen or Freddie Mercury in person.
In November 1991, Mercury — the rock front man of the group — died of AIDS at the age of 45.
“When I was a kid, we had just missed seeing Queen,” Myers said. “We never saw Queen with Freddie because they stopped touring when Freddie passed away. That was such a big secret that was always kept quiet. We thought they would tour again.”
When Myers and his friends started the tribute group, he said it was a way about trying to make up for that.
“A queen concert is like a rite of passage,” Myers said. “You want to be there with your hands in the air. You want to shout and you want to scream.”
So when it came time for Killer Queen to put together, Myers and the rest of his group grabbed some clothes and tried to look as close to the actual Queen as they could.
“You can never do it the same as Queen but you can get all those ingredients, the costumes, the looks, the vocal styles, the movements and the atmosphere, you can get a bottle of those elements and then give it to an audience and let them decide if they want to pretend they’re at an impossible concert.”
Tribute concerts and groups have been all the rage for years now but believe it or not, there was a time when they weren’t as big as they are today. That was around the time Killer Queen was formed in the early 90s.
“There wasn’t really a scene for tribute bands at the time,” Myers said of his group’s beginning. “There were tribute bands for the Beatles and ABBA but that was about it at the time. The idea that there would be a whole industry about that wasn’t really happening. It was in the air but it wasn’t there.”
Because of that, Myers said they weren’t sure if people would be accepting the group as a tribute.
“We didn’t know if the people would want this,” Myers said. “We were fans of Queen and we wanted people to accept us as a genuine tribute to Queen. But we also wanted to be fun and humorous at the same time. There were a lot of elements. We were wondering how this would work. We just weren’t sure.”
But after going out and performing their first concert, the rest would soon become history.
“We went out and did our best and did that first show and it remains one of the best nights of my life,” Myers said. “ It remains vivid even though it was a long time ago. It was transformative as an experience. That was the first time I heard Queen music live when we were performing it, which is weird.”
It’s one thing to listen to Queen’s songs but it’s been another to play them. Only when he started singing them did Myers realize how powerful they are.
“It’s amazing how much craftsmanship and songwriting there is when you play every one of those tracks,” Myers said. “People remember Queen as being great performers and great videos and a great collection of people but they are fantastic writers. Some people take their writing for granted. It’s effortlessly brilliant. The quality of the songwriting was great. That’s why some people when they discover Queen now, they go crazy.”
Over the years, Queen’s legacy has lived on, thanks in part to nostalgia as well as film including “Bohemian Rhapsody” which came out in 2018 starring Rami Malek as Mercury. YouTube and Tik-Toks have introduced the famous group to newer, younger listeners.
“The 10-year-olds and seven-year-olds that are discovering Queen now…. they’ve just watched Freddy on the Bohemian Rhapsody film or on Tik-Toks or Youtube, they want to see that so you give them as close to that as you can,” Myers said. “The reaction you get from the crowd is so warm and euphoric. It’s great. It’s a very rewarding experience.”
If you go
- What: Killer Queen.
- When: 7:30 p.m.
- Where: Wagner Noël Performing Arts Center.
- Where to purchase tickets: tinyurl.com/5zbb6zmv
