It’s the last week of Pride Month and lifelong fans of Freddie Mercury are ready to rock.
The Queen tribute band Killer Queen hits Capital One Hall in Tysons, Virginia on July 2.
WTOP caught up with Patrick Myers, who projects the iconic voice of the late frontman.
“He had an extraordinary voice,” Myers told WTOP. “Freddie as a performer and as a singer, very much lived in the moment. He was such an artist. … He was so creative and so alive in the moment. … It’s always rich and passionate in different varieties of tone and style. He’s always a delight to listen to, so yes it’s a challenge, but it’s a glorious challenge. If you’re gonna try and copy people and make a tribute to them, you might as well choose the best.”
The tribute band has been rocking for 30 years. The band was formed in 1993, just two years after Mercury died in 1991.
“While Freddie was still alive, we were a college band at London University,” Myers said. “Queen had just released the album ‘Innuendo,’ which was brilliant. … When we got the news that Freddie had died, we were all in collective grief together, so we started singing and playing the songs to each other. … There weren’t any other tributes at that point, so we thought let’s trailblaze a little bit, let’s do the costumes, make it look and sound like Queen.”
The show features all of Queen’s trademark performance elements from Live Aid at Wembley Stadium in 1985.
“It’s totally exhilarating being on stage doing Killer Queen,” Myers said. “The songs are so amazing and the audience reaction to the songs is so powerful and passionate, it’s just a delight to do. The songs are so beautifully received by the audience, they join in and they throw their arms in the air and they do call-and-response, all of the things that you’d want from a classic-rock gig, Queen audiences do, because the songs are built for them.”
Along the way, you’ll hear all of your favorite Queen hits from 1973 to 1995.
“There’s so many great songs — there’s big anthems like ‘We Will Rock You,’ ‘We Are the Champions,’ there’s extraordinary songs like ‘Somebody to Love,’ beautiful, unique songs like ‘You’re My Best Friend,’ ‘Another One Bites the Dust,’ ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love,’ ‘Under Pressure,'” Myers said. “‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ goes without saying. … Of course we do ‘Fat Bottomed Girls,’ ‘Killer Queen,’ ‘Bicycle Race,’ we really pack them in.”
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