Roger Taylor: biography, personal life, photo

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Roger Meddows Taylor is an English musician, singer and songwriter. He is a multi-instrumentalist, but is best known as the drummer for the rock band Queen. His musical career started early. Thanks to his unique drumming style and strong high voice, he gained great fame soon after the beginning of his creative activity.

Recognition

Taylor was voted eighth on the list of the greatest drummers of the 20th century by Planet Rock listeners. This survey was conducted in 2005. Since then, Roger Taylor's popularity has not only not faded, but has increased, thanks to the numerous projects in which this musician has recently taken part.

Further in the article we will talk about the beginning of the creative path of this outstanding musician, his work in the Queen group, as well as what he is currently doing.

Childhood

The maternity hospital, in which the future musician was born, was once visited by Elizabeth II. During this visit, the titled person was introduced to sixteen expectant mothers,including Roger Taylor's mom.

At the age of seven, he and some of his friends formed a band in which the boy played the ukulele. At the age of 15, Taylor joined the Reaction ensemble, which by that time was already considered semi-professional and toured a lot. Initially, the hero of this article played the guitar in this band, but then he decided to become a drummer, as he felt a great interest in this instrument. The boy's professional idol was Keith Moon from The Who. Roger tried to copy the powerful sound of his drums.

Education

In 1967, Taylor went to London to study dentistry at the Metropolitan Medical College. He soon got bored with the science of dentistry and moved to the biology department at the London Polytechnic Institute.

Roger Taylor in his youth

In 1968, the subject of an article at Imperial College saw an ad for a fledgling band looking for a drummer. He responded to it and met with Brian May, the band's guitarist, and Tim Staffel, who was the vocalist and bassist at the time. As a result, he was accepted into the team, which lasted 2 years. "Smile" broke up after the vocalist left for another band. The musicians wrote 9 songs, one of which was included in the repertoire of the Queen group. "Smile" reunited for one intro in 1992 to perform several songs during a concert by Roger Taylor and The Cross.

BIn 1969, the hero of the article worked with Freddie Mercury in the Kensington Market store. Both guys lived nearby at the time. Freddie was then a big fan of the Smile group. When the team broke up, Freddie agreed with two of its members to create a new team. For him, he came up with a catchy name - Queen.

Member of the legendary band

While working for Queen, Roger Taylor (pictured below) was a regular songwriter. As a composer, he has contributed to all of the band's albums, from the earliest. For each record, he composed at least one song and always recorded vocals for his works himself. Taylor also created a huge number of songs in collaboration with Freddie Mercury. Three songs he contributed to reached number one on the UK charts.

Among the most famous songs of Roger Taylor are: These are the days of our lives, Innuendo, Under pressure and others. He is also considered the main author of the hit One vision, although this composition was composed by the entire group.

Besides drumming, Taylor occasionally plays keyboards, guitar and bass during recording and live performances of his own songs. In the eighties, in parallel with his work in Queen, he also performed and created albums with his own group called The Cross. In this group, he was a vocalist and played rhythm guitar.

Solo career

Roger Taylor recorded his first song during a break from work on the Queen's album News of the world,which came out in 1977. The song was called I wanna testify.

Roger Taylor's first album Fan in space was released in 1981. The musician independently recorded the parts of all instruments for him. However, this record did not receive much fame. Due to the busy touring schedule of Queen, the musician did not have enough free time to promote the record.

Roger Taylor's Queen bandmates Freddie Mercury, Brian May and John Deacon took part in the recording of the 1984 Strange frontier CD. The album completely repeats the fate of the previous disc. Due to the huge number of concerts in support of Queen's The Works record, Taylor was unable to perform solo with his own material.

In 1986, Roger tried himself in a new role. He was one of the producers of Magnum's album. Then he organized his own team called The Cross. For 6 years of existence of this group, three albums have been created.

In 1994, Roger Taylor released his most successful album, Happiness. One of the songs of this disc rose to first place in the English hit parade. After that, the musician created 3 more solo albums, each of which was highly appreciated by music critics.

Taylor spoke about the last disc, as well as about the reunion of Queen with vocalist Adam Lambert in an interview. Roger Taylor released a collection of 18 of his best songs in 2014. This disc is made up of compositions from different times, starting from Iwanna testify from 1977 to tracks from the last album called Fun on earth.

In November of the same 2014, the complete works of Roger Taylor were released on 12 discs. The set also includes a DVD of his concerts and a 64-page hardback book. In one of his interviews, Roger Taylor said about this release: "This is not a collection of my best drum solos. I wanted to create a collection of songs that I have ever recorded not only as part of the Queen group, but also solo. This is a very responsible step for me. But at the same time, I feel the satisfaction of bringing together everything that I have ever done and fitting it under one cover. It turned out great. Now I can put an end to it and move on."

In the same year, the drummer announced the release of a record with the best compositions of Queen called Queen forever, which includes 3 tracks that have never been released before. One of them is Mercury's duet with Michael Jackson, recorded in the late eighties. Two legendary artists sang together the song There must be more to life than this. This and two other new tracks are unknown versions of songs from Mercury's solo albums. Roger Taylor also said that there is another unreleased work where Freddie and Michael sing together, but the band was unable to get permission to release it.

Queen and Adam Lambert

In January 2015, Queen, along with American singer Adam Lambert, embarked on a tour ofEurope. The hero of this article also participated in this event, remaining true to his team. He spoke about the upcoming tour like this: "I would like new songs to be recorded during this collaboration. I think it would be a good experiment. It's just interesting to see what comes out of it. Will it be an album or something else, I don't know yet".

"We had a good time everywhere," says Roger, recalling the previous tour, and adds: "Every night we performed in a new place, and everywhere we were welcomed with great love. It was a surprise for me. Just think, after after so many years on the stage, we are still in the ranks!"

Great company

Foo Fighters musician Taylor Hawkins invited Roger Taylor to perform at their Fall 2018 concert. The veteran of the scene gladly accepted this offer and joined the stellar company, consisting of Hawkins himself and his friends. The group, assembled for a single performance, performed the song Under pressure, which Freddie Mercury sang in a duet with David Bowie in 1982.

Working in movies

In 2014, Roger Taylor starred in the TV series The Life of Rock. This tape was broadcast on the BBC channel. The main character of the film is Brian (a fictional character) - a member of the popular art rock band in the 1970s. Roger Taylor plays himself in this series.

Conclusion

Roger Taylor is one of the greatest drummers in the history of rock music. His skill can be appreciated by lookingvideo footage of Queen's concert We will rock you, in which he plays a brilliant solo. The original manner of singing of this musician has been delighting music lovers for several decades. The high notes he strikes in falsetto are so natural that when listening to the first Queen albums, many people thought that these vocal parts were performed by a woman. Roger Taylor's Journey's end video and other music videos of his songs can be viewed on Queen's YouTube channel. The musician has released a number of interesting solo works, each of which deserves the attention of music lovers.