Most artists are going to need to have a certain degree of confidence to even attempt to take on The Beatles. The Fab Four already had one of the greatest songbooks known to man, so if you’re not following their model down to the letter when making a song in that vein, you’re going to look like someone who heard ‘Hey Jude’ for the first time and thought you could do the exact same thing. Although the world had seemed to move on from The Beatles’ brand of rock and roll by the 1990s, Taylor Hawkins believed that everything that the 1960s icon did was done tenfold by Queen.
Granted, every member of Queen would probably tell you that they were influenced directly by The Beatles. Freddie Mercury’s show tunes throughout the band’s tenure certainly sound like the “granny shit” music that John Lennon accused Paul McCartney of, and ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ probably wouldn’t exist had the Fab Four not toyed with what could be done with a pop song on ‘A Day in The Life’.
When working on the album A Night at the Opera, drummer Roger Taylor admitted that The Beatles were always the model that they set for themselves, telling Classic Albums, “I suppose we were influenced primarily by The Beatles’ albums, really. Certainly Rubber Soul, Revolver and Abbey Road. They were very eclectic.”
If Lennon and McCartney could write eclectic songs together throughout a 14-track album, imagine what each writer in Queen could do. Looking through an album like The Game, there are pieces that cross the boundaries of arena rock, baroque pop, rockabilly, and even hints of disco, and never once does it feel disjointed.
It’s that versatility that appealed to Hawkins when he started out, saying, “Queen were kind of my music school. Like a Beatles record, Queen records had everything. Queen are The Beatles on steroids. And I don’t mean this in any disrespect to The Beatles because there would be no Queen if there had been no Beatles, and many of the tricks Queen used were Beatles tricks: stacking the harmonies, running the guitars backwards, writing big pieces of music that strung four songs together.”
Despite their massive chart appeal, Queen also managed to take on the same experimental traits as The Beatles. They were always looking to make something that could sell to radio, but where else would you hear something like ‘Killer Queen’, which could have passed for a rock and roll cabaret song if it didn’t have that incredible guitar solo in the breakdown?
While Hawkins never really had a say in how any of Foo Fighters’ records were made, it’s clear that some of Queen’s influence rubbed off on him during his lifetime. Regardless of the amount of pummeling drums he laid down on record, his stage presence felt like he was channelling John Bonham’s precision with Mercury’s whimsical style, always making the most intense drum rolls look like a walk in the park.
That’s not to say that Hawkins couldn’t have some fun when playing their material onstage, though, occasionally taking the mic to perform songs like ‘Under Pressure’ and ‘Tie Your Mother Down’ live. Not every Queen album could have matched the golden track record of The Beatles, but given how many rock bands have attempted to reach the Fab Four’s level of fame, Queen might be one of the few who are actually able to match their Liverpool teachers.
