Quotes from Roger Taylor

The sound levels on stage were so loud with all that constant banging and smash, smash, smash; it did untold damage to the fine nerve endings in the inner ear, though it is worse in the left, which is the side of my snare drum and the monitor.

We used to rehearse in unused lecture halls at Imperial and recorded our first album, 'Queen,' in 1971 while I was studying for my biology finals - it is amazing I passed.

Once a musician, always a musician.

Nobody does our music better than us.

I don't want impersonators playing our music badly.

Our story is in two halves, as the band's career up to Freddie's death was 20 years, and 20 years later, our music is as popular as it was then. It's a sort of everlasting... income.

We've been fairly eclectic in our time, and we did branch out. Whenever we got a little bit too far out, people started to moan and groan a bit.

Everybody's got an opinion, and I was just lucky enough to have an outlet for mine.

I'll tell you what I really loved: the version of 'Somebody to Love' that was in 'Happy Feet.' That was fantastic.

Freddie obviously knew he was ill long before we did. We knew there was something wrong, but we didn't know what it was. He told us eventually. We didnt want to believe it was true. But we all stuck round him, formed a circle, and gave him support.

I played with a few local bands in the West Country, where I grew up, but when I was 18, I moved to London, which at that time was probably the most exciting musical city in the world. I was supposed to be studying dentistry, but all the time I was looking for a band to join.

I didn't take a lot of the videos seriously; making videos was one of the most tedious things that you can imagine.

I think people thought we were sort of right-wing or something, which we certainly are not. I think they got the wrong idea from the videos, that we were some kind of neo-fascist band. I heard a lot of that.