When John Deacon, Brian May, Roger Taylor and Frederick Bulsara changed the name of their band from 'Smile' to 'Queen', they couldn't have known how appropriate the moniker would be. Not because of Freddie's camp flamboyance, but because they are as likely to appear at an extravagant, patriotic event as the monarch. From The Olympics to Live Aid, if a rock act is required to stir the nation, we turn to members of Queen. Her Majesty herself even suffered the indignity of Brian May and his homemade guitar wailing away on her roof as part of the golden jubilee.
If a magazine or radio station compiles the best British singles of all time, you can clear off before the climax.
It will be 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. Guaranteed. There's no denying Queen have carved themselves a special niche in British psyche, they are the de facto national band. I just don't know why.
My youth was dominated by the growls and rants of punk rock but, as I matured, I mellowed and allowed other genres and even formally reviled bands, into my record collection.
Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Marvin Gaye, Steely Dan - one by one, they all broke down my defences and stole my admiration. But not Queen. I thought they were overblown, tacky and annoying in 1977 and that's the way I see them now.
I know the arguments against this position all too well. 'Freddie was such a great showman', they say. Really? I've watched many Queen concert performances and I would concede that Mercury could prance around a stage, twirling that weird mic-on-a-stick with the best of them. But getting the crowd to do a call-and-response ('Eeee-oooohhhh') is the oldest trick in the book. And inviting the audience to put their hands above their heads will never constitute the height of creative performance. What Mercury did on stage wasn't 'great', just corny as hell.
'But the songs are brilliant', others will assert. They're not though, are they? On the whole they are just very loud and very dumb. 'We Are The Champions', 'Don't Stop Me Now', 'The Show Must Go On' and 'We Will Rock You' (re-recorded with forgotten boy-band 5ive) are the closest to Spinal Tap a real band will ever come. When numbers like these strike up, my toes curl. It's rock music as football chant, but with perhaps, less emotion. Look further and find the hideous 'Bicycle Race' and its flipside 'Fat Bottomed Girls' - songs about girls with big arses. The album 'Jazz' even included a poster of naked women riding bikes. Either Queen were dreadful misogynists or it's all an infantile, unfunny joke.
(Actually, there are exceptions to prove the rule. 'The Days Of Our Lives' - recorded just before Freddie's death and appearing on the reverse of the posthumous re-release of Bohemian Rhapsody - gives us glimpse of the band Queen could have been, if they hadn't immersed themselves in clumsy bombast. It's a genuinely beautiful song.)
Getting exercised about lady's behinds is not the only example of Queen's appalling lack of judgement. Legend has it, at an album launch party, dwarves were hired to carry bowls of cocaine on their heads. At another bash, it is said, naked women were painted and tasked with serving the drinks while hookers serviced journalists in the back. Admittedly, Queen weren't unique in this rather horrific style of entertainment (cf: 'Hammer Of The Gods'), but appear to have been at the forefront of its popularity.
Which could almost be forgiven if it wasn't for the most wretched of their misdemeanours. Sun City is a casino and holiday resort, opened in 1979 in the province of Bophuthatswana. It's rather like an African Las Vegas. At its heart is the Super Bowl - an immense sport and concert venue. Unfortunately Sun City was part of apartheid South Africa, so throughout the 1980s black people were forbidden to visit. They weren't alone, not by any means, but Queen had no difficulty in taking the stage of the Super Bowl many times during that disgraceful era. Funnily enough, Deacon, May and Taylor rarely discuss these shows in interviews. I shouldn't imagine it's a favourite topic for Rod Stewart or Tina Turner (for shame) either.
Following the death of Freddie Mercury in 1991, it was widely assumed Queen would come to an end. After all, the singer was their main attraction - their USP. But no. There was a lot more juice to be squeezed from those tiresome anthems.
In the late eighties, if someone had told you Ben Elton would leave the alternative comedy arena to work with Andrew Lloyd Webber, you'd have laughed. If they'd told you he would be writing a musical based on the songs of Queen, you may have slapped them for their foolish delusions. But so it came to pass.
I don't know if you've seen 'We Will Rock You' - and it's not for me to dictate your theatrical choices - but it really is the most astonishing nonsense. It's set in a future when music is banned so the teenagers are really bored, but then they dig up an electric guitar and one of them called Scaramouche decides to ... no, sorry ... I really can't go on . Needless to say the show is, inexplicably, a worldwide smash.
Absolutely nobody was surprised when Brian May popped up towards the end of the closing ceremony at the Olympic Park with his alarming, wire-wool do and silky, fox bedecked gown wafting in the breeze. And, as you might expect, he was playing that made-out-of-a-fireplace guitar and we'd have worried for his health if he hadn't been there.
Nevertheless, his turn was just depressing. Because, with a selection more extensive and impressive than any other country on the planet, I still cannot understand why we choose the lumpen, pantomimic bulldozer of Queen to be our 'national rock band'.
