No, it really is jus like riding a bike. From a drummer's point of view, the only question is stamina and getting the hands hard again. Brian and I have done the odd one-off. When we open one of these We Will Rock You shows, we usually play a party for the cast, so we're always reminded of the songs. I've not gone back to the albums, but I do find you can browse back - especially with personal computers and iPods. It makes everything so much more accessible. That's when you find out that you think you know how a song goes but there's some little bit you've forgotten.

And you have tan extra guitarist on tour…

Yes, Jamie Moses is with us now. It just helps take some of the load off Brian. When I look back, it was incredible the row we used to make when it was just the four of us [laughs]. I don't know how we did it.

Oddly enough, one of the writers for this magazine has family in Truro [Roger's hometown in Cornwall]. They remember you as "a bloody noisy kid who always played drums with the garage doors open".

Ah, ha [laughing]. That's probably very true. Ha, I hope they suffered. I'll send them an invoice for the performance.

Who were your heroes back then?

John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan. But my drumming heroes were guys like Mitch Mitchell [of the Jimi Hendrix Experience] and Keith Moon and Bonzo [Led Zeppelin's John Bonham]. When England had The Who and Zeppelin, we had the two finest rock 'n' roll bands in the world. No one could touch them.
Listening to bands such as Led Zeppelin and The Who, then, musicianship must have been very important to Queen when you were starting out…

That was what it was all about in those days [laughs]. Less so, now. I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing. Nowadays you're almost surprised when a great musician comes along. Like that guy in Keane. He has a great voice - and that's obviously a gift. In those days you had to be a virtuoso.

How competitive were Queen back in those early days?

Very [emphatically]. Any band from that era that says they weren't competitive were either liars… or the Incredible String Band. We were always like, Shit, I wish we could be where Led Zeppelin are. Or else we'd be looking at more up-and-coming groups and wanting to do better - like Yes. They were very clever, brilliant musicians, we used to go and watch them a lot.

 

QUEEN LEGEND ALWAYS included a mention of Taylor and Freddie's shared stall at the fabled hippie emporium Kensington Market in London. The drummer was then studying dentistry at London hospital, while the singer was busy at Ealing College of Art. When Hendrix died on 18 September 1970, the pair even closed the stall as a mark of respect

 

How was Freddie as a business partner on the stall. Did he look after the money?

Bloody hell, no [laughs]. That would have been an absolute disaster. You could say Freddie took care of… the, er, artistic side. I used to spend my student grant on the rent of the stall and w were very hand to mouth. We did it for about 18 months, it just kept us ticking along when we'd first started Queen. But when we'd run out of art to sell courtesy of Ealing College we got into old Edwardian clothes, but then we found we were starting to drift towards the rag trade… and we were fairly shit at it.

Was it frustrating waiting for Queen to take off?

You got frustrated at how long it would take to, say, get a gig at the Marquee. But we were young, and we had total blind faith in what we were doing. So we stuck at it. But to start with we didn't know how fucking hard it was to get a foot on the ladder. Eventually we inveigled our way in

What was Freddie like as a flatmate?

Very tidy. We used to wait for a weekly hamper from his mother - and then I used to eat as much of it as I could. He had quite a strict upbringing, and the maternal influence was very strong. My mother's got quite an imperial way with her and, yes, Freddie was afraid of her - in fact everyone was afraid of my mother [laughs]. She kept him in line. I recall she could never work out how Freddie's trousers had such a perfect crease in them.

What other bands were you going to see back then?

Well, Freddie was an absolute Hendrix fanatic. He'd been to see him something like 14 times around London in clubs like Blaises. I remember thinking David Bowie was going to break big. I'd seen him at Friars in Aylesbury, during the Hunky Dory era. The first time I'd seen him he had been dressed as a woman - waist-length hair, in a dress. Then me and Freddie drove up to see him again in my little Mini. The first thing we could see were the silhouettes of the band on stage because of this back lighting - and there was these alien haircuts. And I think it was the first Ziggy Stardust gig. Freddie and I both thought Bowie had great charisma and a great vibe.