ROCHESTER — Patrick Myers was too young to catch Queen live on what would be the pioneering arena rock 'n' roll band’s final tour in 1986. “We were just kids living with our parents,” said Myers, who grew up in and lives in England, UK. “No one was going to take us to London.
” Myers assumed things could work out that he would be old enough to catch Queen’s next tour. There wasn’t one. Freddy Mercury, the band's lead vocalist and pianist, died of AIDS in 1991.
“We were all (as a generation) kind of mourning collectively for Freddy,” Myers said. ADVERTISEMENT As Myers finished school, he and some bandmates decided to put on a concert performing Queen songs. Myers had played with some rock bands and written his own songs.
He had also studied theater, classical guitar and vocal music. Simply singing Queen songs wasn’t going to be enough for him. Myers decided to put on a show and try to embody Mercury on stage for a series of summer shows.
“We were just students who wanted to somehow make a Queen concert happen,” Myers said. “It’s a tall order, obviously, because Queen and Freddy are fantastic, but we love doing it, because we love the challenge.” When Myers and company put on the show in the 1990s, tribute bands weren’t common, let alone a lucrative industry.
“We couldn’t go and see a Queen tribute band because they didn’t exist,” Myers said. Something in the combination of Myers’ performance and a generation of fans hungry to see Quee.
