Why not a bigger or better or more interesting band? Plenty of choices that have not been filmed before... Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, The Stooges, Nirvana. Any of these would have made a better story. Was it because Freddie was gay and therefore seen to be a more PC choice of subject matter?
shareQueen has sold more worldwide than any of the bands you listed.
Yes...even Led Zeppelin.
Queens awesome but they did not outsell Zep. Zep dominated the 70 with every album hitting 10 million in sales.
shareYes...in America they outsold Queen. But over time, Queen have outsold Led Zeppelin worldwide.
shareUnless you are excluding America as part of worldwide (which shouldn't be), then no Queen are 10 million certified behind (more if you go by claimed).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_music_artists#250_million_or_more_records
The figures of total certified units within the tables below are based on certified units of albums, singles (including digital downloads) and videos.
06: Led Zeppelin: Total available certified units: 140 million. Claimed: 200 - 300 million units.
07: Pink Floyd: Total available certified units: 120 million. Claimed: 200 - 250 million units.
11: Queen: Total available certified units: 130 million. Claimed: 170 - 200 million units.
With The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Madonna and Elton John coming in ahead of Led Zeppelin.
Having said that Queen still have great sales and a great story to tell in a Movie, and having typed that I now realise that Pink Floyd would make a fascinating one as well, from Syd Barrett right through to the split with Roger Waters. I've given reasons below as to why I think a Led Zeppelin one would be tough to make along with a The Who one, but Floyd would have an easy to place timeline and lots of events to pin it to.
I stand correctedl, Joway.
Thanks!
No probs, still like I said Queen deserved to have a movie made of them as the story is a good one, personally think it was a shame they didn't keep the timeline intact but was still a good movie as far as movies go. Regardless I wouldn't be surprised if they do jump past Led Zeppelin when the 2018 figures are done, especially if the movie soundtrack is included as a Queen album and I'm sure some will be back catalogue buying as well. Ten million isn't that huge of a gap and if the USA starts picking up on Queen again now then it will close quickly, they basically got younger people in via American Idol, X-Factor and The Voice appearances (with contestants in all 3 doing Queen songs), and the movie iced the cake of interest I feel.
Honestly if I was Queen and their management I'd be re-releasing the Greatest Hits one and two albums stat, the first one is still the best-selling album of all time in the UK (spent 833 weeks in the UK Charts) and was certified eight times platinum in the United States and is Queen's most commercially successful album worldwide. Three is a bit dodgy though as it has some Queen songs on and some solo songs and some from the tribute show, however I'd be inclined to do 1 and 2 either with a separate disc that has the videos on or include a code so people can download them or release the videos as a BluRay/DVD and a code to download the songs (seeing videos are counted as record sales now).
Agree, Joway.
shareThis is obviously false, or the movie would be about Yanni and Kenny G.
share“More interesting band”? “A bigger band”? More interesting than being an openly gay band that (1) wrote and performed the world’s favorite, most-played song, We Are The Champions, followed closely by Another One Bites The Dust and We Will Rock You, (2) was voted by working rock critics as having given the single greatest live rock performance thus far in history at Live Aid, and (3) was voted by Britons to be the greatest Brit rock band to date? Really? They combined Glam Rock with Kick Ass. I’m glad you enjoy Grunge and Punk, but there’s not much interest in those dated genres today. Full-on Rock ‘n’ Roll will never die. And, hell, the movie Sid and Nancy came out long ago. The more you understand about the history of rock, the more you love it.
shareHear, hear!
Well said!
Thank you. I grew up with rock ‘n’ roll. My mother fed me Elvis. I knew Bill Haley and the Comets. I LOVED Buddy Holly. If Elvis was the King, Buddy Holly was the Crown Prince. One of my colleagues in Advertising copywriting, whose taste I respected, turned me on
to Queen. I loved their eponymous album Queen (with the album-cover proviso, “no synths[Moog synthethizers, because Brian May could make his Fender guitar sound better than a Moog]),” but their Queen 2, with its vinyl Side White and Side Black, juxtaposing the White Queen with the Black Queen, sold me completely. March Of The Black Queen, with all of its tempo and mood changes, was a harbinger of Bohemian Rhapsody. I am biased. I got to meet John Deacon, Roger Meadows-Taylor and Brian May in Boston’s The Rat rock dive cesspool nightclub decades ago. They were, and remain, three of the most memorable folks I expect ever to meet. Freddy was off having sex.
On balance, I candidly think The Who, with their combination of ROCK songwriting (The Beatles are second only to George/Ira Gerschwin in terms of pop music writing, and that’s saying one hell of a lot), singing (Daltry, versus Robert Plant, Jagger, Bowie, Mercury), drumming (Moon versus Ginger Baker), lead guitar (Clapton, May, Paige; let’s leave Jimi out to this, because he wasn’t with any one band, he was a force of nature), and bass (Bruce, no other contenders in Rock, but, as a footnote, Brian Bromberg in Jazz, and that’s saying something, which is: Jack Bruce is the best Rock bassist thus far, in a league of his own) are up against massive competition, and do not win in every category. No band does. I think that The Who, when looking at the tie-breaking category of Most Energy Ever, win the R_Kane trophy of Best Rock Band Thus Far; but Queen win the title of my favorite rock band ever. Now I’m Here? Queen II? The soundtrack to Highlander? Bohemian Rhapsody? God Save The Queen (“no synths”)? Tie Your Mother Down? The March Of The Black Queen? The Seven Seas Of Rhye? This band had a passion and a vision that makes them special. Their passion was equaled by Hendrix in his various bands, arguably by Clapton, again in his various bands, by Zeppelin, by The Stones before they got old CONTINUED
, but none of them shared Queen’s vision. Zeppelin came the closest, with their allusions to The Lord Of The Rings. Queen set their own path.
Indeed, it would be more than interesting to see a movie charted around the music of Queen II and The Seven Seas Of Rhye.
What a shame that neither Mercury nor Bowie could be in it.
R.Kane
Do tell more of your meeting with Roger, Brian and John! What year, what you said to them, how'd they act...etc.
Please!
That was a LONG time ago, very late on a Saturday night in a very loud basement rock club. It was around the time that they released Sheer Heart Attack. The place was Boston’s version of CBGB. Lots of bands who played there went on to become big: The Cars, Talking Heads, ‘Til Tuesday, Aerosmith. I think it was cool that Queen showed up there to check it out. I never saw any other Name band who’d finished their concert at Boston Garden come to the club. This tells me that Queen wanted to stay in touch with the grass roots of rock. I seemed to be the only one in the place who recognized them. I also recognized all the members of Thin Lizzy, who opened for them. I spoke with Brian; John and Roger were talking with each other, quietly. Brian was very friendly, not at all full of himself. I thanked him for playing such intelligent rock and roll. Then the guys from Thin Lizzy bought me a beer, because they liked how I danced!
shareWhat an incredible story, R_Kane, a real attention-grabber that really show's your creative side and personality to boot! Now, I'm not going to say that I'm huge fan of the band, only recalling from memory the names of their hits, but am curiously fascinated into their interesting and unorthodox lives, how it shaped their music.
I hear that Brian May is not only a scholar (seriously) but also quite a down-to-Earth gentleman, so humble, which you confirm from the basis you provide in your story. Other people need to read your posts. It's stuff like this that make people, myself included, come to MovieChat to be part of the community.
I would love to hear more sometime. Great share, my friend.
~~/o/
Thank you, twinA. I’ve met Louis Armstrong, The Lone Ranger (Clayton Moore), partied with Patty LaBelle when she was in LaBelle, danced with Patti Smith and had dinner with Dana Delaney (at a dinner party, not a date). Why put limits on yourself? The world is more than willing to do that for you!
shareThank you for elaborating, R Kane.
Very, very cool!
You’re welcome. Isn’t it pleasant to have some civil and genuine discourse on MC? Sharing little parts of ourselves, and maybe even expanding someone else’s horizons in the process. It should be clear that I love music. I love Classical and Jazz as much as I do Rock, each in its own way. I wonder how many people realize how much Jazz and Classical influence there is in Rock. I can hear the Classical influence in Queen songs like The Prophet’s Song and Bohemian Rhapsody. I can hear the Jazz influence in the bands Traffic and The Doors (especially in Riders On The Storm). I firmly believe that the more you learn and know, the more you enjoy. One way to learn is by sharing with others. Not by yelling at them or insulting them, as is too often the case on message boards.
It need not be so. Thank you for asking me to elaborate.
@R_Kane - Also The Who would be a very difficult movie to make, three documentaries as in The Kids Are Alright, Amazing Journey and the BBC Quadrophenia one really only scratch the surface and where would you end it and also have it not be all about Keith Moon (as that's the story Hollywood would want). Even Zeppelin would be tough as how do you cover them spinning out of The Yardbirds into Led Zeppelin (almost being called The New Yardbirds) and then follow through with all the influences they had from the blues and so-forth, both would be really difficult to fit into a 2 hour time structure.
shareVery good points. I hadn’t thought about the possible narrative structures for films about other great rock bands, and I doubt that any of the posters who were suggesting them as better choices than Queen for a biopic did, either. That’s a great contribution to this discussion! Thank you. It’s always a pleasure to meet another Yardbirds (which is slang for “prison inmates”) fan. That band produced some GREAT axe men; and, Good Lord!, how the Brits love the Blues.
shareThanks and I missed with Led Zeppelin that Steve Marriott from The Small Faces was the first choice as the singer, he turned it down and suggested Robert Plant, to which instead Humble Pie Marriott went.
Then you can spin-off endlessly with Peter Frampton in Humble Pie and of course The Small Faces becoming The Faces with Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood coming into the mix. Kenney Jones staying in The Small Faces/Faces and eventually replacing Keith Moon in The Who, Ronnie Lane from The Faces also did 4 collaborative albums with Pete Townsend and one with Steve Marriott in 1980. Then you have Ronnie Wood and Rod Stewart being in the Jeff Beck Group before the Faces and of course Wood ended up in The Rolling Stones (while still doing other things with David Bowie, Eric Clapton and Prince).
All those bands (with the Yardbirds front and centre) are so intertwined in some way it makes 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon look like Kindergarten stuff, it would be so difficult to tell any of their stories completely or semi-accurately.
Neil Young would be an interesting one, as he could be followed as an individual from project to project, as he was pretty enigmatic in all instances. However, I could go on for weeks with the family tree of that from The Squires to The Mynah Birds to Buffalo Springfield to CSNY and Neil's various other bands, so I'll stop :)
I'm not really interested in what genres that a generation that who can't figure out what gender they are and find it moral to have gay super heros tounge fighting in childrens comic books find dated. They made this movie because Hollywood is a bunch of queers that are idolizing their queer god
shareDo you really have to ask? It's because Queen is for the gays
shareQueen were a rock band. Their fans largely were - and still are - straight men. They were the epitome of what's now known as 'dad rock', couldn't really be much further removed than music "for gays", whatever the hell that is, but as you seem to favor talking in broad stereotypes, then from the same time period it was likely to be disco and then Madonna.
shareMore like Liberal Men
shareIn 70s/80s? As if. It was probably one of the most right-wing decades in western society and, were your suggestion even remotely accurate, there wouldn't be nearly enough fans to have made Queen's career as huge was it was.
Maybe you just need to get over the fact that a gay man had more talent than you ever will.
That would be The Beatles then, as they were the tradition breakers of the 70s, not Queen.
shareI assume you are under 25, or maybe that's you're IQ, if you spent just 10 mins reading you would understand how incredibly stupid you;'re comment is, then again I would suppose that you couldn't possibly last ten minutes reading without some pictures to keep your puerile brain amused.
sharePC FTMFW.
I have this feeling that one day soon, I have heard nothing, the most overrated guitarist of all time will have a flick made of his life. Jimi Hendrix
Over
Rated
Over
Rated
I like Jimi Hendrix but damn, he's OVER RATEDDDDDDd
At the time, there were no bigger bands. And there haven't been any better since then. The Stooges? Has anybody but you ever heard of them, or are you making them up?
shareYou don't know The Stooges and think I made them up? Wow! Get an education, man. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stooges
BTW when Queen was most popular in the late 70s, Led Zeppelin was still far bigger than they were, even into the '80s after LZ had broken up following Bonham's death.
"You don't know The Stooges and think I made them up? Wow! Get an education, man."
Well, I've followed your advice and got an education. I think The Stooges played at the Elks Club up the road once, and may have even done a prom at my old high school gym. Thanks for the heads up.
Your ignorance is your greatest strength. Stay stupid and the world can never touch you.
shareWhy a movie about Queen?
Because as I understand it, Brian May and Roger Taylor spent about a decade helping to push the project through Development Hell.
I assume their motive was to introduce Queen to a new generation, and damn, job well done.
Prince movie shown studios that musician biography movies are profitable, so everyones jumping on the bandwagon now.
share