Rock band Queen hosted some notoriously decadent parties in their 1970s and 1980s heyday. Arguably, the most eye-popping was the Halloween launch bash for their album Jazz (1978) in a New Orleans hotel. According to music lore, the hotel’s ballroom was converted into a steamy swamp, with entertainment provided by drag queens, dwarves, fire-eaters, female mud wrestlers, strippers, snakes, voodoo dancers, steel bands, Zulu warriors and people in cages suspended from the ceiling.

Sitting with drummer Roger Taylor on leather sofas in the vast music room of his Surrey mansion, I ask whether it’s all true. “I’m afraid it is, yeah,” says the 76-year-old, shades covering his famously piercing blue eyes.

“There was also a man who was paid to move under meat.”

I’m sorry, what?

“He was paid to move under meat,” he repeats. “So, when you approached the table – it was a massive table covered in cold cuts – and he was a person of restricted growth. And people would approach the meats, and he’d just go…” Taylor jiggles his body. “That was his job, I swear. I always thought that was the funniest. There were no bald dwarves with cocaine on their heads. That

was one of those stupid stories. A complete fable.” Now in his eighth decade, Taylor has found a far more sedate way to entertain himself. On Tuesday, Queen will launch their own brand of rosé wine. At £18 a pop, Queen Côtes de Provence Rosé – or Cuvée Rock n’ Roll 2025, as its label also calls it – is aimed at the mid-to-premium Whispering Angel market.

It is, says Taylor, “a sort of grown-up, adult, rosé – and I don’t think men should be afraid to be seen drinking it”. We’re two glasses in already. On a mosaic table in front of us sits an elegant,

half-empty bottle. “The paler the better. And the colder the better. And, really, it goes better in the summer,” says Taylor. Luckily, the sun’s beating down beyond the patio doors; it’s just possible to discern the outside world over the expansive miscellany of exquisite furniture, Persian rugs and shelves crammed with Grammy Awards, Brits and silver trophies.

Taylor’s passion for wine began on a flight home from Spain with Queen early in their career. Sitting in first class, the band – Taylor, guitarist Brian May, the late Freddie Mercury and bassist John Deacon – were served a “lovely” bordeaux with some blue cheese. “I thought, ‘This is ambrosia. We need a few more hits [and] we’ll buy loads of this.’ It really hit me how beautiful it was.”

But he’s no fancy connoisseur. At a small launch party in London days before we meet, Taylor was interviewed on stage by comedian and pal Paul Whitehouse, who turned up in a rumpled tuxedo as The Fast Show’s pickled aristocrat, the 13th Duke of Wybourne (“Me? In Soho? With a bottle of rosé and Queen’s Roger Taylor…?”). The pair’s easy manner was refreshingly anti-wine-snob. Taylor said he was “not an expert but a lifelong lover of wine, having consumed quite a lot of it”. “I’ve seen you consume a fair amount,” said Whitehouse. “You can talk,” came the reply.

Life after Freddie Mercury

Formed in London in 1970, Queen became one of the world’s biggest bands with their blend of operatic pop, driving rock and power ballads in songs such as We Are the Champions and I Want to Break Free. “Four very different characters with a really good chemistry,” is Taylor’s take. Mercury died in 1991 from complications related to Aids. “We were absolutely shattered by his death. John, in particular, was a mess,” says Taylor. Deacon left the band soon after, but May and Taylor carried on, first with former Free singer Paul Rodgers and then with American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert.

Taylor: ‘We were absolutely shattered by [Mercury’s] death. John, in particular, was a mess’

In 2024, the surviving members of Queen sold almost all of their recording, publishing and image rights to Sony Music for a reported £1bn, a record amount. The deal essentially covers everything except their revenue from live concerts. Taylor won’t comment on the figure beyond saying that it “made me very happy”, as, I suppose, a quarter of a billion pounds would. But as a result, Taylor, May, Deacon and Mercury’s estate no longer control what happens to Queen’s music and image. Sony does, or will do when it takes full control this June. The rosé is the first product of the Sony era, even though Taylor took the idea to them.

“I approached Sony [with the wine idea]. Sony are us now. When you sell the family silver you wonder [what will happen] but they’ve been nothing but charming. So positive. I’ve been really

impressed with them,” says Taylor, who adds that Sony has a “timetable” for Queen-related activity, though he won’t elaborate.

Does he worry about what they might do with the brand? “No. But they really consult us on everything. They’re really terrific partners.” Still, Sony could – if so minded – launch, say, a cash-cow Queen theme park and the band would have no comeback. “I mean, frankly, they could do what the hell they like if they really wanted to. It might p— us off, they could, but they don’t. So that’s great. I think Bruce Springsteen [who also sold his catalogue to Sony] found the same.”

Michael Jackson ‘was truly weird’ 

It’s eight years since the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody was released. Produced by Graham King, it became the highest-grossing music biopic in history, taking more than $900m (£660m) worldwide. King also produced the new Michael Jackson film Michael. “Graham showed [Michael] to us,” says Taylor. “I loved it. I heard that it got some bad reviews but, of course, as usual, the public thought differently. Graham knows how to uplift people when he makes films.”

Taylor is referring to Michael’s opening weekend, when it took a record $217m globally (beating Bohemian Rhapsody’s $124m opening). So, might Michael break Bohemian Rhapsody’s record? “It could well do. I hope not. Thanks Graham,” Taylor jokes, adding that he wishes the film well. A Michael sequel is already planned, and is likely to deal with the child abuse allegations the star faced. “I don’t know about all the accusations. All I know is there are a lot of people who wanted to make money off him,” says Taylor. “But the only thing I can say about him, he was truly weird.”

Bohemian Rhapsody had taken “10 years of meetings” to get made, Taylor says. “The film was great. We were lucky… It’s not easy to get a Hollywood movie off the ground.” For a while, Borat actor Sacha Baron Cohen was due to play Mercury rather than Rami Malek, who won an Oscar. Baron Cohen “would have been disastrous in it. It would have been a very different film. It would have been dark, depressing and all about him,” says Taylor.

One of the criticisms of the film was that it simplified Mercury’s homosexuality. But Taylor thinks it was true to life.

“In real life, Freddie did not make such a huge thing of it [being gay]. He just wanted people to listen to the music and enjoy it. He wasn’t on a crusade.” He also points out that the film was

“entertainment, not a documentary”. Last year, May said that Queen were having conversations to play the Sphere in Las Vegas. However, earlier this year he appeared to rule it out, saying that America is a dangerous place right now. I also note that Taylor speaks about Lambert in the past tense; they haven’t toured together since 2024. Is that phase of Queen done? “I’d work with Adam any day!” says Taylor. As of now, though, Queen have no live dates scheduled.

‘Yungblud is the last great rock star’

Taylor has been with his second wife, Sarina, since 2004, and he has five grown-up children from earlier relationships. Two are musicians. Daughter Lola is a jazz singer, while son Rufus is the drummer in rock band the Darkness. Rufus’s godfather was Taylor Hawkins, the late Foo Fighters drummer – and huge Queen fan – who died of a sudden cardiac arrest in 2022. I tell Taylor that I thought Rufus would be drafted into Foo Fighters as Hawkins’s replacement. “We all did. He would have been a great replacement but I don’t think Dave [Grohl, the Foo’s frontman] wanted to break up the Darkness,” he says. On music, there’s another character who Taylor rates: Doncaster-born rising star Yungblud. “I think he’s the last great rock star, with a smile that just charms everybody, a boundless energy and a great sound.” Could Queen collaborate? “I’d quite like to. I know Brian would, ‘cause Brian likes him as well.” Taylor can’t understand why Yungblud’s not bigger. He’s

not trendy, I suggest. “Oh he might do alright, then. Because trendy is often the death of a career,” he notes. Taylor has also just finished recording his seventh solo album, out later this year, which features an African choir. “I’m very happy,” he says.

Back on the wine front, Queen join a growing list of celebrities who’ve launched rosés, from Jon Bon Jovi to Brad Pitt. As we chat, I tell Taylor I’ve got him a present. From a bag I produce a chilled bottle of Kylie Minogue’s Signature Rosé and one of Sauvignon Blush by Gary Barlow. “No!” laughs a shocked Taylor when he discovers that the Take That singer is a fellow rosé-peddler. I suggest a blind taste test. It’s Monday lunchtime, but who wouldn’t want to get lightly sloshed with a rock legend? Not, I’m certain, for the first time in a life well-lived, Taylor says he’s game.

“I think we’d walk it,” he says confidently. Minutes later, four extra glasses sit in front of us. A soupçon of Kylie in two. An inch of Gary in the others. Taylor turns down my offer of a blindfold so we both just scrunch our eyes shut and dive in. The first wine is, in Taylor’s opinion, “horrible, it tastes like wee. I get shades of urine”. The second is “better” but with “a strange aftertaste”. We guess correctly: the first is the Barlow (sorry Gary) while the second is Kylie’s (although it must be said that Minogue also sells a more expensive Vin de Provence – untasted by us – which may be more comparable to Queen’s). Interview over, the endlessly affable drummer takes me to the bottom of his garden to show me the 20ft-high statue of Mercury that he had shipped from the canopy of London’s Dominion Theatre – where the Queen musical We Will Rock You played for more than a decade – to the rolling Surrey hills. Arm aloft, Mercury’s in full “Daaay-oh!” pose. The statue’s so big that Taylor had to apply for retrospective planning permission.

“They were going to put it in storage and I said, ‘I’ll put it in my garden.’ Since then, Brian’s had one made and he’s got it in his garden,” Taylor explains.

“That’s special,” I say, blinking up in awe. I tell him it’s like a national monument and mutter something about wanting one myself. But that might be the Queen talking.

Interview by

the Telegraph

Published