Biography from RollingStone.com
The enormously popular British band Queen epitomized pomp rock, with elaborate stage setups, smoke bombs, flashpots, lead singer Freddie Mercury's half-martial, half-coy preening onstage, and highly produced, much-overdubbed music on record. Queen can be traced back to 1967, when Brian May and Roger Taylor joined singer Tim Staffell in a group called Smile. Staffell soon left to go solo, and the remaining two Smiles teamed up with Freddie Mercury (from a group called Wreckage) and later John Deacon. They played very few gigs at the start, avoiding the club circuit and rehearsing for two years while they all remained in college. (May began work on a Ph.D. in astronomy; Taylor has a degree in biology; Deacon, a degree in electronics; and Mercury had one in illustration and design.) They began touring in 1973, when their debut album was released. After a second LP, the band made its U.S. tour debut, opening for Mott the Hoople.
Queen’s sound combined showy glam rock, heavy metal, and intricate vocal harmonies produced by multitracking Mercury’s voice. May’s guitar was also thickly overdubbed; A Night at the Opera included “God Save the Queen” rendered as a chorale of lead guitar lines. (Until 1980’s The Game, the quartet’s albums boasted that “no synths” were used.) Queen’s third LP, Sheer Heart Attack, featured “Killer Queen,” its first U.S. Top 20 hit. The LP also became its first U.S. gold.
Heavy-metal fans loved Queen (despite Freddie Mercury’s onstage pseudo-dramatics, which had more to do with his admitted influence Liza Minnelli than with Robert Plant), and the band’s audience grew with its breakthrough LP, A Night at the Opera. It contained the six-minute gold “Bohemian Rhapsody” (#2, 1976), which featured a Mercury solo episode of “mama mia” with dozens of vocal tracks. “Bohemian Rhapsody” stayed at #1 in England for nine weeks, breaking the record Paul Anka had held since 1957 for his “Diana.” The promotional video produced for it was one of the first nonperformance, conceptual rock videos.
Queen has had eight gold and six platinum records; through the mid-’80s only its second LP and the 1980 soundtrack to the film Flash Gordon failed to sell so impressively. The group’s U.S. Top 40 singles include “Killer Queen” (#12), 1975; “Bohemian Rhapsody” (#9), “You’re My Best Friend” (#16), “Somebody to Love” (#13), 1976; “We Are the Champions” b/w “We Will Rock You” (#4), 1977; “Fat Bottomed Girls” b/w “Bicycle Race” (#24), for which the group staged an all-female nude bicycle race, 1978; “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” (#1), 1979; “Another One Bites the Dust” (#1), 1980; “Under Pressure” with David Bowie (#29), 1981; “Body Language” (#11), 1982; and “Radio Ga-Ga” (#16), 1984. At first their hits were marchlike hard rock, but in the late ’70s the group began to branch out; its two biggest hits were the rockabilly-style “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” and the disco-style “Another One Bites the Dust,” a close relative of Chic’s “Good Times,” that went to #1 pop and R&B.
In 1981 Taylor released a solo album, Fun in Space, and later in the year the band recorded with an outsider for the first time, writing and singing with David Bowie on “Under Pressure,” included on both their platinum Greatest Hits and Hot Space. One side of Hot Space was typically bombastic rock, while the other contained funk followups to “Another One Bites the Dust.” Fans were relatively cool to Hot Space; it did not go platinum. Queen’s next LP, The Works (#23, 1984), marked a return to hard-rock form. It contained the nostalgic “Radio Ga-Ga.”
Queen ceased to be a commercial force in the States; its next two LPs didn’t even go gold. Yet all over the world the group retained its regal status. The gold Innuendo, which went to #30 here, shot to #1 in Britain in early 1991. By then rumors were rampant that Mercury was ill with AIDS, something the group continually denied. That November he released a statement from his deathbed confirming the stories; just two days later he died of the disease in his London mansion at age 45.
On April 20, 1992, the surviving members of Queen were joined by a host of stars - including Elton John, Axl Rose, David Bowie, Def Leppard, and many other admirers - for a memorial concert held at Wembley Stadium that was broadcast to a worldwide audience of more than 1 billion. Ironically, around the time of the Wembley concert, Queen was enjoying its greatest American popularity in years, thanks to the memorable scene from the movie Wayne’s World, in which main characters Wayne (Mike Myers) and Garth (Dana Carvey) and buddies sing along to “Bohemian Rhapsody” as it blares on the car radio. The rereleased single soared to #2. A posthumous Mercury solo album was released in 1992. May continues to record solo and with the Brian May Band. Roger Taylor recorded three albums with a sideline band, the Cross, which began in 1987; he eventually resumed his solo career. In 1995 Queen finally completed its swan song Made in Heaven (#58), which features vocals recorded by Mercury during the last year of his life. In 1996 a statue of the singer was unveiled in Montreux, Switzerland. Queen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001.
from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)
Trivia selected from TV.com
--Queen became the first and currently the only band to have ever been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
--In 2005 Queen was inducted into VH1 Rock Honors.
--In 2004 Queen was inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame
--In 2004 Queen's hit song Bohemian Rhapsody was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
--The "Queen crest" (the logo used on some posters and albums) included all four of the band members Zodiac signs in it. It had a crab for Brian May (Cancer), fairies for Freddie Mercury (Virgo) and lions for John Deacon and Roger Taylor (Leo).
--Queen did the scoring for the major 1980 sci-fi film, "Flash Gordan".
--In 2002, Queen were honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.
--Queen pipped the Beatles to win the title of ‘Greatest British Band of All Time’ in a public vote. Queen polled 400 more votes than the Beatles in the poll conducted by BBC Radio 2, which asked listeners to choose between a list of five bands, also including The Rolling Stones, Take That and Oasis. Each group was judged on song-writing, lyrics, live gigs, originality and showmanship. Over 20,000 listeners voted in the poll. The Rolling Stones came third in the vote, followed by Oasis in fourth and Take That in fifth
--Queen's song We Are the Champions is ranked #86 on VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of Rock & Roll
--Queen is #13 on VH1's 100 Greatest Artist of Hard Rock.
--Bohemian Rhapsody was voted the No. 2 greatest number one hit of all time in the UK Channel 4 poll
--The members of Queen in order of oldest to youngest is Freddie (would be 59), then Brian (58), then Roger (57), and John is the youngest (54), even though he looks like the oldest.
--Freddie Mercury's real name is Farrokh Bulsara, and was the oldest member of the band
--Critics claim that Queen greatest release was their A Night at the Opera. On this release was the song Bohemian Rhapsody.
--Queen received their first Gold Album in The United States in 1974 as well
---Later in 1974 Queen released Shear Heart Attack and since their gained reputation their album was a huge success in Brittan and in Europe
--Queen is now recognized as paving the way for music videos as they did so with their number one hit Bohemian Rhapsody.
--Queen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame located in Cleveland, Ohio in 2001.
--For many years Queen was looked down upon for their life style and music. It wasn’t until recently that they were recognized as being the pioneers of heavy metal, glam rock, progressive rock and stadium rock.
--In terms of weeks spent on the chart however, in 2005, Queen passed The Beatles for spending more weeks on the charts
--Queen has sold an estimated 190 million music devices since they began.
Discography (for more information check Wikipedia)
1973 Queen
1974 Queen II
1974 Sheer Heart Attack
1975 A Night at the Opera
1976 A Day at the Races
1977 News of the World
1978 Jazz
1980 The Game
1980 Flash Gordon
1982 Hot Space
1984 The Works
1986 A Kind of Magic
1989 The Miracle
1991 Innuendo
1995 Made in Heaven
Official Queen Website: http://www.queenonline.com/