Even Simon Cowell said it. They are the “toughest shoes in the world to fill.” Adam Lambert has been fronting Queen since 2011 but band icon Roger Taylor hit back at anyone who attends one of their concerts and compains their new lead singer is not Freddie Mercury with a simple message: “Fred’s dead and he’s not going to be there… Don’t come.” Incredible new footage shows Lambert on stage, speaking to the crowd about how how overwhelming it is. New interviews reveal what he is trying to do and his sense of “victory.”
A new film, The Show Must Go On: The Queen + Adam Lambert Story, aired on ABC in America.
The documentary shows Lambert on stage telling the audience: “I know some of you out there are thinking, ‘He’s no Freddie Mercury, though. No sh**. There will only be, for all of time, one rock god, Freddie Mercury. Thank you for giving me a chance.'”
Queen’s Brian May adds that its not only impossible to rcreate what Freddie did, it is pointless. Music must evolve, and Freddie himself would have understood that.
Lambert added: “The biggest trip I was going through was the fact that I knew that by singing these songs as the lead singer that I was inevitably going to be compared to Freddie.
“People know the songs because of the recordings, I learned the songs because of the recordings. Freddie’s unbelievable. His voice is one in a million, trillion, zillion. I’m filling in for this God.
“I’m not him. I knew that I wasn’t Freddie.”
“Once I got over my own head trip ‘Oh God, are they going to compare me to Freddie? Oh God, am I good enough?’, I realised this once own lifetime chance to be a vessel and just perform.
“When these early performances were so well received it was a sense of victory because the stakes were so high for me.”
The film has not aired yet in the UK but you can watch clips HERE