My interest in Queen is waning

I dont feel that at all. I could not care less about the Q+AL thing currently though. But if there is a new song with Freddie vocals or something like that I get excited. The same with new footage of the classic lineup. To those who seems to not be interested at all: I am sure there are forums for knitting or something else you are not interested in where you can rather spend your time.

As far as creativity is concerned, it's evident they're all great writers, all four of them. Freddie of course had a spark that ignited the other three, but as has been pointed out there are so many great songs from all four of them that Freddie hardly had any hand in - sometimes not even a vocal. It's interesting to me that Freddie's spark was re-ignited not from within Queen but from Montserrat Caballe and Mike Moran, and it's very interesting to me that he chose to work with Mike Moran on the Barcelona project. Freddie probably could have done something very good without Mike Moran on the project, but Mike Moran brought a vocabulary and a proficiency in musical literacy that Freddie didn't really have. No disrespect to Freddie is meant by that, and I think had Freddie not felt he had some limitation in that regard he'd probably have never asked Mike Moran to be a co-writer and producer on Barcelona.

Looking back over history, the composers who died very young like Mendelssohn, Chopin, Mozart, to name three superstars, they went through a rough phase of producing fairly run of the mill stuff (for the time), although it was always incredibly polished and competent. Beethoven, who got a bit longer, went through a similar thing but he had twenty-two years on Mozart and his musical literacy and research really pushed him out of his comfort zone and he then produced some of the most revolutionary works of his career in his last five years of life. Whether you like them or not, they are revolutionary - the Missa Solemnis, the last string quartets, the late piano sonatas, the 9th symphony, and there was a great deal of research into the previous 300 years of music that went into that.

I know that Freddie did a lot of historical research, or at least his education bled into his work. He was clearly influenced by the Commedia Dell'Arte of the old Italian theatre (Harlequin, anyone?), and his compositions such as March of the Black Queen, Liar, and Bohemian Rhapsody are operatic *in their construction* - it's not just the middle section of Bohemian Rhapsody that makes it operatic, it's the overarching structure of the song. Although Freddie very much painted with a broad brush and in primary colours much of the time in his music (that's something Queen were famous for and loved for), there was a great deal of subtlety there. I feel had Freddie lived he would have continued to research and produce solo projects or musicals that were based on that research. Queen would still exist and we'd get an album every five years or something, and that would still be something he was very proud of, but I think we'd see many interesting projects from the Freddie camp.

Roger doesn't have that classical influence behind him and nor does he have much interest in it, but that's *NO* criticism. He has a great deal of other *HUGELY* important influences in his work through pop, blues, art rock, all sorts of thoroughly precocious and pretentious things that he knows how to distil into the perfect song. There's something of the David Bowie about Roger, but it's more pop, it's more consumable by the general public. Roger and Freddie together were a great pop team when you think about stuff like Radio Gaga and A kind of Magic.

John of course has the Motown and Soul influence that Freddie adored, but he wasn't so much into the guitar which I think pissed Brian off a bit. Even the way John constructed bass lines live was beautiful. Their current bassist can copy John's riffs and is a good player, but he is no John Deacon, as technically brilliant as he may be.

I sometimes think that Brian wants to stay in the comfort zone, and has wanted to stay there ever since Queen stopped being a quartet back in 1991. My own thought is that as much as I love Brian and his guitar playing, and as happy as I am to see that he is still working, his work just isn't all that interesting especially considering the band he was in. He kind of plays like a very good session musician these days, and doesn't live up to his past as one of rock's best song writers in one of the world's biggest bands. It's like he doesn't want to do any work to improve himself and his craft, and hasn't really been that interested in improvement since.... well if I'm being brutal, quite honestly the 1970s (although I have a soft spot for 80s Queen, it being my childhood and all!). I kind of feel like he has a creative blind spot that he could overcome if he worked on it.

This in my humble and limited opinion is the problem with a lot of rock and pop acts - they're limited by their lack of knowledge, and Freddie recognised that the only way to break through the barrier was to gain more knowledge outside his comfort zone. I like to think that Freddie would have given us some highly innovative if not chart friendly music over the past 29 years had he been around (maybe a proper collaboration with David Bowie sometime around 2010....), but that with John's retirement, and Brian living off the glory days, there isn't anything left in Queen that's all that I can really feel passionate about. I'm happy about the shows, don't get me wrong, but we could have had far more solo albums (from both Brian and Roger), and The Cosmos Rocks could have been so much better if the need to sound like a parody of the old Queen, and egos didn't get in the way. It could have led to all sorts of good things but didn't.

I dunno, I'm not a world famous artist with millions in the bank, so it's not really my place to make such a condemnation, but it's how I feel.

I still *ADORE* the back catalogue, and I love watching Freddie on stage, it's still really special to me, but there's nothing that inspires me to part with my cash or invest much time in new releases. Yes, my lack of interest today doesn't mean the music means less to me, but I get more from listening to Bach these days. That sounds pretentious doesn't it? Sorry!

We're getting into general Queenish chat here a bit, but I think that's cool. It relates to the OP inasmuch as it demonstrates that everyone has their own relationship with the group and its work. Absolutely, as with a few other groups (especially The Beatles and The Who IMO) there is a whole backstory and history to the group that, if you're interested in the music, is absolutely fascinating and endlessly debatable. Especially when new info comes up.
And then again, there is the more 'academic' side of things, the studios, the instruments, how and when songs were constructed.
Beyond that, if you're musical you can get right into the chords, the modes, the actual nuts and bolts of the music.
And then there's lyrics..

Queen have such a big and diverse catalogue, once you're immersed in it all this other stuff becomes more and more interesting, to me anyway.

But in terms of listening to the albums - there comes a time when it just becomes wallpaper. Someone above said they didn't listen to Queen for weeks at a time. I think it's maybe a year since I put on any Queen music. Not to say I'll avoid it or turn it off, and if there's an interesting video (or podcast) I'll still hear them, but only as I might with any band.

Personally speaking - after 91 there was nothing new, or very little, and that is a long, long time ago. I guess it was around MIH time when I realised I'd done Queen to death, and beyond. It took until the live releases in the 00s for me to get interested again, because pre internet and DVDs, stuff like BackChat or Modern Times R&R Live were rare as hen's teeth (and I wasn't searching them out anyway).

And also, once I started to read QOL forums, and read online fan and critic articles, I got interested again, for a bit.

Nowadays.. a very important reason I rarely play my Queen LPs is because they are precious. I want them to sound as fresh as possible. I want to recreate as much as I can, how they first grabbed me in the late 80s/early 90s.  (The LATE 80s/EARLY 90s.. think about that.. 30 years. Go back the equivalent length of time before Innuendo, and The Beatles were still playing residencies in Hamburg, with Teddy Boy quiffs.)

It's more likely that I'll catch Rainbow or Hammersmith on a rerun and be taken by surprise. I'll think, "this group is brilliant".

For me that's the best way. Be a fan, but sometimes take a big, big break. Queen will always be there. And if you don't go back, so what? It's a big world. Take what works for you, or inspires you, and go from there. 

Honestly I thought the film was terrible. Sure, it brought Queen to a wider and younger audience, which Freddie would be happy about, but it portrayed Freddie in a very bad light. When I watched the film I felt it was cringeworthy in places, and it was so obvious that Brian May's hand was all over the script. Lines like "you must be the clever one" or whatever it was that Freddie was supposed to have said to Brian when he supposedly first met Smile in the back of the truck, and then the odd suggestion that Freddie's solo album and drug and sex habit nearly brought the band to ruin just painted him as a very bleak character. Don't get me wrong, I know Freddie was quite hedonistic, I'm aware he could be arrogant, and the cash advance for his solo album was very large. In interviews from 1984 and 1985 he spoke about his solo album as if it was the eighth wonder of the world, said he'd never use rejected Queen songs (which he actually did use in some cases), and wasn't always very nice about Brian, Roger and John. But so what? It seems that in the 1982-1985 period none of them were being all that nice to each other, and all four egos helped throw the spanner in the works. Brian and Roger both had solo projects before Freddie's, which isn't mentioned in the film, not even as a passing comment. It's not like Roger and Brian were completely sober through that period either, and John was known to pour quite a few cocktails down his neck apparently. It seems that Brian used the film to speak to Freddie's destructive decadence, and make himself out to be a stable saint in the process. The fact is that Brian cheated on his wife with Anita Dobson, and cheated on Anita Dobson with Julie Glover, and while I've no further evidence and his personal life is actually nothing to do with me, it strikes me that these might not be the only times Brian has treated women badly - so he's hardly a saint. Roger had a rather complicated personal life as well, none of which is mentioned in the film. That could be a timeline issue of course, because a lot of Roger and Brian's known indiscretions happened after Live-Aid but nevertheless, they aren't in a position to throw stones at Freddie's behaviour. There were other ways this could have been dealt with. I also felt the long scene of the tour in America where they played "Fat Bottomed Girls" (in 1974...) and said hello to each city was really just filler.

I didn't mind that the timeline was slightly altered, I didn't even care that Freddie recorded We Will Rock You with a moustache (that was just dumb really), or that Freddie's AIDS diagnosis was disclosed before Live-Aid, but again they could have dealt with that differently. Doing the whole Live-Aid set in the film (OK it became about half of it by the time the edit was done) was also a bit of unnecessary filler, especially since Queen's performance at LiveAid is widely available online and on DVD. There were other things that could have been done instead, and while the dramatic timeline might not have been as interesting with The Cross, for example, there may have been a way to truncate some of the filler earlier on in the film and finish up with Made In Heaven. But no, that wouldn't have allowed Brian to stick the knife in to Freddie's back and make Freddie out to be this rather austere and boring villainous type who had a moment of clarity and begged the band to continue.

The other thing that the film actually missed completely is that Freddie didn't take himself all that seriously - and at one stage he didn't even take the music that seriously. He had a rather flippant nature which was missed in the film, and he could be absolutely hilarious but they made him out to be this kind of tortured artist. Perhaps there was something of the tortured artist about Freddie, deep inside, but that certainly wasn't how he presented himself in interviews.

Yes, the film grinds my gears. It was over-hyped and didn't deliver.

Sebastian - you're of course right about John playing a lot of guitar but what I should have said was, John wasn't interested in the heavy rock guitar sound that Brian was into, and he wasn't as interested in using Brian's big sound on his songs. Actually Freddie and Brian for all that they annoyed each other (which is well known), they actually had quite a good creative partnership. Freddie often came up with the heavy riffs and Brian loved to play them. Brian pushed Freddie's voice pretty much beyond what he thought he could do on some of his songs (notably The Show Must Go On, of course), and so the two of them did complement each other.

The Queen of today though, has very much become the Brian May show. The timeline has been completely re-written in places by Brian, histories have been denied (he said on live radio that Queen hadn't played together for years before Live Aid - it was actually a little over six weeks....), and the whole thing just feels a bit bland compared to what it could and should be. I'm not saying Queen shouldn't perform, and I'm not even in the "no John no Queen" camp - although their last album of original material (Cosmos Rocks) was a complete flop and I'm now repeating myself so I'll stop.....

Like everyone else on here, I'd like to see some real archive material, more documentaries on the creative process, talk about how Freddie constructed harmonies, how Brian achieved certain sounds, listen to the old live shows from the 70s which are generally more interesting than the 80s shows, and have a proper critical appraisal of their work. I didn't buy the studio collection vinyl but I thought it was a nice idea. It would have appealed to me more if at that point they had decided to re-issue the live albums in a better mix, and had a couple of albums of B-sides and archive material, or maybe even finally issued that alternative Miracle or some kind of EP as to what *might* have been - it's probably for the best that The Alternative Miracle didn't see the light of day in 1989 but it's interesting to us now.

Anyway. Sigh. I see Queen Live At the Caird Hall in Dundee has surfaced on YouTube. I'm going to listen to that instead.

Dude where's your long hair.
Lol
You used to look like a Queen historian.

I will love their music forever - I guess. But the future does not look good for Queen fans. What are we waiting for ? Scraping the barrels ones again and again ? A sequel to the Bohemian Rhapsody movie ? no, no, no, no, no, no, NO ! More live dates with Lambert ? Not my party ( and I cry if I want too ). A return of John ? hahahaha - never !
All these years it was a nice ride, espescially in my teenage years. Beeing a fan for me has turned in to a formality. But I let myself be convinced of the opposite

I sometimes feel this, I could listen to nothing but Queen music for the rest of my life, but I usually listen to one artist solid for a few moths on the go and then switch to a new artist and so on and so on but somehow I always end up back at either Queen or The Beatles!

100% this ^.
look at the other big 70s rock bands in the 80s. Genesis? Yes? Aerosmith? Kiss? Fleetwood Mac? ZZ Top? Foreigner? Roxy Music? ELO? Rainbow? 
It's hard to think of many 70s rock bands who didn't become over-commercialised mainstream "brands" in the 80s.

in many respects it's impossible to blame them. money talks. and "going mainstream" is the easiest route to making more money.

Anyone suggesting that what they're doing now (or at anytime since Freddie's death) is some kind of "against the band's grain" rank hypocrisy is delusional. Freddie's whole ethos was about commercialism. There's enough quotes from him to prove it.

Many here refer to the band as Freddie's band and a vehicle for his talent. Well, to those people I say, you can't pick and choose your reasoning. If it really was Freddie's Vehicle (it really wasn't) - then the shit-awful direction the band took during the 80s must (by default) be of its Chief Architect - Freddie.

I disagree, they explored music and went to other directions to meet the fans of the 80s

U still think your funny, tell me whats the difference between here and QZ. You are still acting retarded though you are a moderator. Plz grow up

just had a look at his other posts (only 14) - it's not his first time of posting in that manner. he's now banned.