ROGER TAYLOR AS... THE OUTSIDER
While the band Queen have been on hiatus from touring due to the pandemic, both guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor busied themselves with their own solo music. May concentrated on reissuing his past solo albums into expanded editions, and Taylor went a step further and recorded a brand new solo record, his first since 2013’s Fun on Earth.
Taylor’s new record, Outsider, is an eclectic piece of rock art. It's an album that will pull no punches lyrically about the dire state of the world in one song (“Gangsters Are Running the World’) and then insist that your mind completely escape reality with another (“The Clapping Song”). But there is a meditative sense of hope in even the most serious pieces of music. The album itself starts off with a pulsing push with the song “Tides,” which sounds more like the French band Air than classic Queen.
Although Taylor will perform his solo material (and certain Queen songs) in the U.K. with a handpicked band in October, the ensemble will unlikely venture over to the U.S. Instead, Taylor will wait until the mothership — a term he gives the band Queen and crew — can tour America.
The following is an exclusive interview with Roger Taylor about the new solo album, , its studio guests like Scottish singer-songwriter KT Tunstall (who Taylor calls “delightful”) and his overall concern about the current
