A love of the music of the band, Queen, guided Patrick Myers on a journey that has exceeded his wildest dreams.
“I find it rewarding to do. It gives you energy back. Traveling hours a day doesn’t give you energy, but I look forward to the show,” said Myers who sings the role of Freddie Mercury in Killer Queen, which will be at the Bell Auditorium March 2.
Myers has performed as Mercury since the 1990s, and it’s taken him all over the globe, but he didn’t start out to be the front man of a group paying homage to a legendary band.
Myers’s first musical love was passed to him from his mom. A huge fan of The Beatles, she played their music around her son, but the group had broken up by then. While he enjoyed the music of the Fab Four, Myers, who is from Great Britain, wished to follow a band that was still producing new music.
He was about 13 when a friend put a set of headphones on him with instructions to just listen. It was Queen’s “Greatest Hits,” and it was love at first sound.
He couldn’t afford to buy all of the band’s music, but he started with one record, then added other albums plus a bootleg cassette recording or two until his library was complete. In school, he found friends who shared a love of the music of Queen as well as David Bowie.
Mercury didn’t announce that he had AIDS until the day before his death on Nov. 24, 1991, sending shockwaves through the world and a resurgence in interest in the band’s music.
“There weren’t any Queen tributes then,” said Myers who only knew of an ABBA tribute at the time. They sang the songs of ABBA, adding costumes to the show. “We had just missed out seeing Queen live. We were a bit too young on their last tour. They’d take breaks so it didn’t cross our minds that Freddie might be ill, and we said, ‘Let’s do a concert for everyone. Let’s make it with proper costumes.”
One concert in 1993 changed everything. His tribute was not the first choice for an event in London. When the original group didn’t work out, Myers was the replacement.
His poster was plastered around London, and things went from there with the group headlining all over London. The performance has even won awards.
He hasn’t stopped since, and it never gets old, he said. The songs and his appreciation for the band only deepen as time passes.
“It’s been good fun, and I’ve been in good company with these amazing songs. I’ve seen them from the nuts and bolts of them having worked with them from the inside out. I’m still, if not more, deeply impressed as I was when I was a teenager when I first heard them because you realize just how difficult it is to write a good song, let alone a good album and then to do that again and again and again and the styles changed,” he said.
They survived glam rock, synth and new wave creating new songs but still retaining their signature Queen sound and he said “Innuendo,” the last one Mercury sang on before his death was some of the best music Queen ever produced.
The March 2 concert isn’t the replication of a single Queen concert but a representation of the band over the years. Myers said there are certain songs the band typically started and ended with so Killer Queen tries to be true to those, but in the middle section, anything can happen. There are songs Queen never played live. And Myers has been known to integrate some deeper cuts for true Queen lovers.
Of course, they will perform the favorites such as “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “We Are the Champions/We Will Rock You.”
“People go crazy with those,” he said.
Killer Queen will begin at 7:30 p.m. For tickets, go here.
Charmain Z. Brackett, the publisher of Augusta Good News and Inspiring: Women of Augusta, has covered Augusta’s news for more than 35 years. Reach her at charmain@augustagoodnews.com. Sign up for the newsletter here.
