Killer Queen get set to take seaside by storm

Yeah, it’s 25 years this year, which is staggering really.

It began when we were kids, the year I left home was the year we got the news Freddie Mercury had died.

In those days it was quite easy to not know that Freddie was even ill, because if you didn’t read the paper you wouldn’t know.

I never got the chance to see them live so the whole thing was to do a concert for everyone our age, who would never get to see a Queen concert.

Once we started we realised it was really difficult to do, especially getting the songs nailed.

It slowed us down and so what was going to be summer of ’92 became summer of ’93.

We had Goldsmiths College help us and managed to bag our first gig at ULU.

I really wanted to do it but I thought it was a ridiculous idea that people would want to see someone else pretending to be Queen.

We ended up sitting in the wings in front of 1,000 students and it was horrifyingly scary.

We just wanted to get the show done.

It went incredibly well and was so much fun to do because we rode of a big wave of love and affection for the music.

So I assume you never would have imagined you would still be going after 25 years?

We didn’t think we’d be going after 25 minutes.

There was no other show booked. There was no plan.

We did the show, went home to our halls of residence, and within a couple of weeks the guy that was managing ULU said he wanted to manage us.

He’d booked a 20-date tour and we all thought we were free of uni, we never thought it would come to anything.

The new decade dawned and stadiums realised they hadn’t had a Queen show in a long time so all of a sudden we were getting asked to play these massive shows.

It was so surreal, trying to plan a massive show.

We ended up playing places that Queen never even played.

We missed seeing Queen and ended up being a guy on stage with his mates doing a Queen concert.

Now we’ve been all over the world and it’s been brilliant, and great fun, and utterly surreal.

As the years fly by I simply can’t believe it, it feels like a silly dream.

So let’s go back to before the band, what drew you to Queen in the first place?

I didn’t know what they were like visually, and I didn’t know they were the same band that had done all these songs I loved because they always seemed to have a different look.

Someone put some headphones on my head and told me it was Queen and it blew my mind.

The thing that is amazing about Queen is the songwriting.

It was just so much to take in, so rich, and so colourful, they just kept turning out really good stuff.

In those days once a song was out of the charts it was gone but then it was Live Aid and it was only then that I realised that’s what they looked like.

So what’s your favourite thing about doing these shows?

The thing that I find good about it is that I really enjoy getting out there and doing it, me and the band love doing it because we’re having a good time.

I guess it comes back to the music but also there is still that great reception to it.

It seems that Queen have become representative of a rock concert.

These days we get a lot of people in the audience who bring their kids to their first-ever concert, they know all the words and it’s great.

They see us dressed like Queen and completely buy into it. If we were doing songs that didn’t have that depth or calibre it wouldn’t be as good, but doing it with such good material it’s a pleasure to perform.

So why is this the show to see?

Music for me is really magic and it really gets the spirit cooking.

I think there’s so much stuff where you disappear into the screen, but the energy of this is far better.

It’s a chance to put your phone in your pocket and be there as a collective voice, with this shared experience.

It’s not all about shouting We Will Rock You, there are also very articulate songs.

Killer Queen play Brighton’s Theatre Royal on Wednesday, October 10.

For more information and tickets visit: https://www.atgtickets.com/venues/theatre-royal-brighton/