"Queen's music doesn't belong to Freddie. It doesn't even belong to Queen any more." Writer/comedian Ben Elton reveals why Robert DeNiro's dream of making a musical about Freddie Mercury's life was vetoed by Brian May and Roger Taylor

(Image credit: Denise Truscello/WireImage)

The phenomenal worldwide success of Queen's multi-award-winning, box office records-shattering 2018 biopic Bohemian Rhapsody seemed to take even the group's co-founding members and tirelessly devoted custodians Brian May and Roger Taylor by surprise.

But perhaps it shouldn't have, for since the tragic passing of the band's iconic frontman Freddie Mercury in 1991, their global fanbase has exhibited, time and time, again a remarkable appetite and appreciation for the various projects developed to celebrate, safeguard and extend the band's legacy and legend. It's fair to say that not every brand extension has been met with equal acclaim - whatever your outlook on the group's work with Paul Rodgers in the noughties, for instance, chances are that you remember that collaboration with considerably more affection than, say, May and Taylor's decision, in 2000, to re-record We Will Rock You alongside English boy band Five.

Arguably the most divisive artistic venture championed by the band's surviving members, however, is the jukebox musical We Will Rock You, which opened in London in 2002. Based on an original idea by writer and comedian Ben Elton, whose writing credits include beloved British sitcoms Blackadder, The Young Ones, The Line Blue Line, Mr Bean and more, the musical is "set in a post-apocalyptic future where individuality has been outlawed and music is controlled by algorithms" and tells the tale of "two young revolutionaries - Galileo and Scaramouche - who dare to defy the system to save rock ‘n’ roll", according to an official synopsis.

"This fist-pumping, foot-stomping anthem to freedom and self-expression is a musical for our time," the musical's producers state, "unapologetically bold and filled with the timeless power of Queen’s legendary music."

"Tt is a musical," Brian May explained in 2014, "but we came into it as a body of people who really didn’t relate that well to the genre of musical theater. We didn’t want to put on something like My Fair Lady. This is rock and roll and it had to be something very different."

Whatever your perception of the production - which has played to over 20 million people in 28 countries since its premiere - it is, undeniably, different. But it would have been an entirely different project altogether had May and Taylor given the green light to the original pitch for the story, which was proposed by Hollywood legend Robert De Niro.

A life-long Queen fan, De Niro's vision for translating the band's music to West End and Broadway stages offered a much more traditional and less fantastical dramatisation of the group's career, Ben Elton reveals in his recent autobiography What Have I Done.

"Robert De Niro has a production company in NYC called Tribeca," Elton explains, later referring to the great actor simply as 'Bob'. "It's primarily a move-making concern, but they'd wanted to try a theatrical venture, and had fixed on a Queen musical... The idea was to make it a biography of Freddie, and they had progressed as far as staging a full-scale workshop production in New York.

"Unfortunately," Elton continues, "the idea had then hit a wall. Having gone over to see it, Brian May and Roger Taylor had not liked it at all."

I just didn't think that Freddie's life was the right subject for a Queen musical
Ben Elton

Elton says that one of the duo's principal concerns was the lack of humour in 'Bob' De Niro's take on the Queen story. The group's manager Jim Beach told him that the proposed musical was "very, very serious" with its "emotional engine" of the piece being Mercury's diagnosis and death from AIDS. In theory, Elton's mission - should he choose to accept it - was to bring some laughs to the script, and lighten it up for theatre audiences. But Elton had other ideas.

"It honestly had nothing to do with ego or ambition," Elton insists in his memoir. "I just didn't think that Freddie's life was the right subject for a Queen musical,

"Queen's music doesn't belong to Freddie," he declares. "It doesn't even belong to Queen any more. It belongs to the world."

Elton goes on to say that he felt that the story had to be "epic".

"Huge. Like the band. A legend. Like the band. That was the key."

And so, inspired in part by The Matrix, Elton devised an entirely new concept where computer generated pop culture was being fed to a docile population in a dystopian future, and - THE HORROR! - electric guitars, "that ultimate weapon of youth empowerment", would be banned! And live music would be outlawed! Until... some young Bohemian Rebels located the world's only remaining guitar, buried in stone by ancient Hairy Rock Gods, liberated it in defiance of the Killer Queen's authoritarian rule, and in doing so, ensured that the kids, and humanity in general, would be free, and moreover, FREE TO ROCK!

Huzzah!

If, at this point, you're thinking, "Wait, hang on, what a load of cheesy old shit, that sounds fucking awful" well... you might not be alone. But, hey, 20 million theatre goers can't be wrong, can they? Can they? Um... sure, let's go with that, that's probably for the best.

And so, a new legend was born. Well done Ben Elton! Unlucky 'Bob'! It's a shit business sometimes.

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.

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