Are You a True Queen Fan?

Queen: A British Rock Band Summary

• Queen is a British rock band formed in London in 1970 by Freddie Mercury, Brian May, Roger Taylor, and later joined by John Deacon.

• They were influenced by progressive rock, hard rock, and heavy metal.

• Queen's early works were more experimental, but they later ventured into more conventional styles, such as arena rock and pop rock.

• Before forming Queen, May and Taylor had played together in the band Smile, and Mercury joined in 1970.

• The band's success started with their second album, Queen II, in 1974, and later with their international hit "Bohemian Rhapsody" in A Night at the Opera in 1975.

• Queen became one of the biggest stadium rock bands in the world in the early 1980s.

• Mercury was diagnosed with AIDS in 1987, and the band released two more albums before he died in 1991.

• The band has sold over 250 million to 300 million records worldwide, making them one of the world's best-selling music artists.

• Queen received the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music in 1990 and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001.

• All four members were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003, and they received the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Song Collection in 2005.

• Queen's performance at the 1985 Live Aid concert is ranked among the greatest in rock history.

• The band continues to tour as "Queen +" with vocalists Paul Rodgers and Adam Lambert since 2004.Queen: From A Night at the Opera to Stadium Tours

• Queen's success in Japan in mid-April to early May was met with thousands of screaming fans, but they were still tied to the original Trident deal and wages.

• EMI contacted lawyer Jim Beach, who tried to find a way of extracting them from their contract, which they negotiated out of in August after an acrimonious split with Trident, and searched for new management.

• Queen started work on their fourth album, A Night at the Opera, which was the most expensive album ever produced at the time, costing £40,000 and using three different studios.

• "Bohemian Rhapsody" originated from pieces of music that Mercury had written at Ealing College and was promoted with a music video directed by Bruce Gowers, which is considered to have practically invented the music video seven years before MTV went on the air.

• A Night at the Opera was very successful in the UK and went triple platinum in the United States, with the British public voting it the 13th-greatest album of all time in a 2004 Channel 4 poll.

• Queen played a landmark gig on 18 September 1976, a free concert in Hyde Park, London, organised by Richard Branson, which set an attendance record at the park with 150,000 people in the audience.

• Queen released Jazz in 1978, which reached number two in the UK and number six on the Billboard 200 in the US, and included the hit singles "Fat Bottomed Girls" and "Bicycle Race" on a double-sided record.

• In 1979, Queen released their first live album, Live Killers, which went platinum twice in the US, and also released the very successful single "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", which was their first number one single in the United States.

• Queen began their 1980s career with The Game, which featured the singles "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and "Another One Bites the Dust", both of which reached number one in the US.

• Queen became the first major rock band to play significant shows in Latin America during The Game Tour in February 1981, including five shows in Argentina, one of which drew the largest single concert crowd in Argentine history with an audience of 300,000 in Buenos Aires.

• Queen's South American concerts were topped by the ballad "Love of My Life", which stole the show, and Mercury would stop singing and conduct the audience as they took over.

• In 1981, Queen won the award for Favorite Pop/Rock Single for "Another One Bites the Dust" at the American Music Awards, and in 1982, they released their album Hot Space, which featured a more dance-oriented sound and reached number four in the UK.

• Queen embarked on their Hot Space Tour in the summer of 1982, which included their first performances in Eastern Europe, and also played at the Milton Keynes Bowl, where they broke the venue's attendance record by drawing 65,000 people.Queen: 1979-1991

• Queen's 1980 album "The Game" marked a new direction for the band, with more pop and disco influences. It included the hit singles "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and "Another One Bites the Dust".

• The band faced difficulties during their 1981 tour of South America, with a lack of planning and suitable facilities leading to projectile throwing from audiences. However, they played two successful sell-out nights in Montreal and recorded their performance for the live album "Queen Rock Montreal".

• Queen collaborated with David Bowie on the 1981 single "Under Pressure", which topped the UK charts.

• "Greatest Hits", Queen's first compilation album, was released in October 1981 and became the best-selling album in UK chart history, selling over 7 million copies in the UK and spending over 1000 weeks in the UK Album Chart.

• Queen's 1982 album "Hot Space" was a departure from their usual sound, mixing pop rock, dance, disco, funk, and R&B. The album confused some fans, but still reached number 4 in the UK.

• The band toured to promote "Hot Space", but some audiences were unreceptive to the new material. Queen stopped touring North America after their Hot Space Tour, as their popularity there had waned due to homophobia.

• After a nine-month break, Queen recorded their 1984 album "The Works", which included hit singles "Radio Ga Ga", "Hammer to Fall", and "I Want to Break Free". The album was a success in the UK, but failed to do well in the US due to issues with their new record label Capitol Records and controversy surrounding the video for "I Want to Break Free".

• In 1985, Queen headlined two nights of the Rock in Rio festival in Brazil and completed the Works Tour with sold-out shows in Australia and Japan.

• Queen's performance at Live Aid in 1985 was described as the highlight of the event and is ranked as the greatest rock performance of all time by an industry poll. The band was revitalized by the response to Live Aid.

• In 1986, Queen recorded the album "A Kind of Magic", containing several reworkings of songs written for the fantasy action film Highlander. The album was successful in the UK, but less so in the US.

• Queen's Magic Tour in 1986 was their final tour with Freddie Mercury and included a record-breaking concert at Slane Castle, Ireland, in front of an audience of 95,000.

• After working on various solo projects, Queen released "The Miracle" in 1989, which continued the direction of their previous album. The album began a change in direction of Queen's songwriting philosophy, with more collaborative songwriting and crediting the final product to Queen as a group.

• Queen's fourteenth studio album, "Innuendo", was released in early 1991, with hit singles released later in the year. The music video for "The Show Must Go On" featured archive footage of Queen's performances, fueling reports that Mercury was dying. Mercury was increasingly ill during the recording of the album and barely able to walk.Queen's history from 1991 to present day

• Freddie Mercury confirmed he had AIDS in a statement on his deathbed in 1991 and died within 24 hours from bronchial pneumonia as a complication of the disease.

• “Bohemian Rhapsody” was re-released as a single shortly after Mercury's death, with proceeds donated to the Terrence Higgins Trust, an AIDS charity.

• Queen’s popularity was stimulated in North America when “Bohemian Rhapsody” was featured in the 1992 comedy film Wayne's World.

• The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert was held at London's Wembley Stadium in 1992 to a crowd of 72,000 and raised over £20,000,000 for AIDS charities.

• Queen's last album with Mercury, titled Made in Heaven, was released in 1995, four years after his death.

• In 2004, Brian May and Roger Taylor announced they would reunite and tour with Paul Rodgers as "Queen + Paul Rodgers".

• Between 2005 and 2006, Queen + Paul Rodgers embarked on a world tour, which was the first time Queen toured since their last tour with Freddie Mercury in 1986.

• In 2009, May and Taylor performed "We Are the Champions" live on the season finale of American Idol with winner Kris Allen and runner-up Adam Lambert providing a vocal duet.

• Queen's first five albums were re-released in the UK and some other territories as remastered deluxe editions in 2011.

• Queen + Adam Lambert played two shows at the Hammersmith Apollo, London in 2012, both of which sold out within 24 hours of tickets going on open sale.

• On 12 August 2012, Queen performed at the closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

• In 2014, Queen released Queen Forever, a compilation album featuring previously unreleased tracks and new arrangements of previously released songs.

• Queen + Adam Lambert have continued to tour and perform together, with Lambert as the lead vocalist.