Queen

Arguably one of the greatest hard rock bands of all time, Queen was founded around 1970 when two London college students named Brian May and Roger Taylor formed a progressive rock band called Smile. A few changes to music and personnel over the years would find the group taking a more stridently dramatic tone, with a tremendous showman named Freddie Mercury joining their ranks. Born Farrokh Bulsara, Mercury had a huge voice with impeccable control, not to mention an unmistakable flair for theatricality. After renaming the band Queen and picking up a quiet but extremely talented bassist named John Deacon, the group set to work on their self-titled debut, an opulent, progressive record borrowing more from the booming thunder of classical than from the technical skill that so many other prog groups depended on. That mix of hard rock and coyly operatic drama would characterize Queen's next several albums, each of which grew their popularity the world over. Within a few years, Queen began retooling their image both visually and musically, embracing a straight ahead rock sound, albeit with the expertly layered preciseness that they were known for. Their 1977 hit record News of the World, with its dual hits "We are the Champions" and "We Will Rock You," solidified the group's new sound. They would enter the '80s as fully fledged superstars. They were the first major band to tour the stadiums of Latin America, playing for over 300,000 people in Buenos Aires, and for a TV audience of 1.6 billion at the legendary benefit concert Live Aid. After releasing 1986's A Kind of Magic, and album composed of half songs written for the soundtrack to the movie "Highlander" (1986) and half unrelated songs, the band embarked on their final tour. More successful albums would follow, but within the group, energy was waning as Mercury succumbed to the illness of AIDS, which had very little treatment at the time. He publicly announced that he was suffering from the disease in November of 1991 and passed away within 24 hours. The surviving members of Queen honored him five months later with The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, an event held at Wembley Stadium for a crowd of 72,000, with performers such as Def Leppard, Robert Plant, Guns N' Roses, Elton John, performing Queen's songs with the surviving members of the band. The concert raised £20,000,000 for AIDS charities. Though John Deacon would subsequently retire from the group, Taylor and May continued to play Queen material for decades to come with guest vocalists including Paul Rodgers and Adam Lambert. In 2018, the long-gestating biopic "Bohemian Rhapsody," starring Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury, became an international box office sensation despite many Queen fans grousing over major liberties taken with the facts of the group's history.