Live from The Roundhouse, Camden | 26th September 2026

“Everything I had to know, I’d heard it on my radio.”

Roger Taylor wrote those words in 1984. Forty two years later, I am standing in The Roundhouse with a house lager going warm in my hand, waiting to hear the man who wrote them sing them back to me. I don’t know it yet, but by the end of the night, I will be in tears.

I have been a Queen fan for 12 years. Not casually. Not in the way people say they like Queen because they know Bohemian Rhapsody. I mean the kind of love where you find something of yourself inside the sound, the words, the melodies, and you keep finding more the deeper you go. I am 22 years old and I am still discovering. Queen gave me my love of music. They gave me my creativity. In some ways, they gave me my eye behind the camera. I am a music photographer now, and there is a direct line between the first time I pressed play on Queen II comprised of Mick Rock’s iconic imagery and the first time I picked up a lens.

Roger Taylor is in his late seventies. I do not take that lightly. I wanted to see him in 2021 on his Outsider tour. I was 17 and could not bring myself to travel to London for a gig on my own. I missed the chance to see him play alongside Brian May, and it haunted me. Five years later, surrounded by friends who love this music the way I do, I am glad I waited. Some nights are supposed to find you when you are ready for them.

The Roundhouse itself holds its own memory. This is the venue where I once watched Paul McCartney, in the flesh, give a Q&A about his last album. Something I never imagined would happen. We are still lucky enough to live in a time where members of The Beatles, Queen and The Rolling Stones continue to give us evenings like these. In some cases, after more than 60 years. That will not last forever. It cannot. Every gig like this is borrowed time, and I walked through those doors knowing it.

The Support

Freddie Lennox opened. A folk singer in the Dylan mould, and while Queen always spoke about their fondness of Bob, this felt misplaced. The Roundhouse stage is a vast, cavernous space, and with nothing but an acoustic guitar, it swallowed him. I cannot recall the titles of his songs. I remember one track where he listed items of food. I remember wanting him to finish. Like all the worst support acts, he made me desperate for the main event rather than grateful for the warm up.

Strange Frontier

The lights dropped. A cheer rolled through the room like a wave breaking. And then Strange Frontier, arguably the most well known of Roger’s solo hits, crashed in.

A rock and roll number. Thrashing cymbals. Roger dancing around the kit, throwing punches into the air like a champion boxer who has not forgotten how to fight. He was not even behind the drums. He had taken his place at the mic stand. But you knew, watching him move, that the drummer had arrived.

He was dressed exactly how you would expect. Red velvet double breasted blazer. Signature Ray Bans. Under the amber wash of the stage lights he looked like a man who had never once considered slowing down. The crowd did not just welcome him. They roared. The kind of roar you feel in the soles of your feet.

I have photographed gigs in front of thousands people. I know the difference between an audience that has turned up and an audience that has come for a reason. Everyone at The Roundhouse that night was there for Roger. Not just for Queen. For the man. They would go on to prove it by knowing every word to every track, the deep cuts as much as the hits, and that energy turned the room into something electric from the very first song.

The Band

He was not alone up there. Spike Edney, the Queen legend, on keyboards, affectionately known as “the Wizard.” Tyler Warren on drums and vocals, a brilliant deputy for Rog whose own moment would come later. Tina Keys on keyboards, violin, acoustic guitar, percussion and backing vocals, bringing a warmth and tenderness to an otherwise thunderous lineup. Neil Fairclough on bass, a member of the Queen and Adam Lambert touring band. Christian Mendoza on guitar, another long time member of Roger’s solo outfit. The friendships between them were visible. The glances, the grins, the looseness in how they played off each other. It made the whole evening feel less like a stadium production and more like a gathering of people who genuinely love making music together.

The Wave Builds

What followed was a run of songs that turned anticipation into something physical. A Nation of Haircuts. “Fashion rules in a nation of haircuts.” With that red blazer, Roger was his own proof. The sliding guitar was infectious, and the song reminded you that Roger was always the most archetypal rockstar in Queen. The fast cars, the swagger. It runs through his solo material like a thread.

Then Gangsters Are Running This World, the Purple version from Outsider. The entire room sang the fast paced lyrics without missing a beat. Strangers next to me, people I had never met, all of us locked into the same rhythm, the same words, the same feeling. My face was physically hurting from grinning. I could feel my pulse in my temples. These moments of pure joy and escapism, where you forget everything outside the walls of the venue, they do not come round often enough. When they do, you hold on.

*I wanna fly on the wings of love… I want the clean fresh air in my face… I wanna tear down every border and wall… I wanna take part in the human race… I wanna fly on the wings of love… I wanna run down a path of hope… I wanna fly on the wings of love.*

Then Surrounder. A song about empowering women to find strength in domestic violence situations. On paper, one of the heaviest subjects you can write about. In performance, something far more complex. An almost joyous number, lifted by handclaps in the chorus and Tina Keys’ outstanding backing vocals. She complements Roger’s harsh, gravelly voice in a way that makes you realise how much the song needs both textures. The softness and the grit. But the words themselves, written by Roger, carry a weight that stays with you. They are too important to be missed. A favourite of mine from the last tour, and it hit just as hard the second time around.

The Honest Truth About the New Album

I See You Now brought the tempo down. A ballad. Written for Roger’s wife and a single from the new album. It is a tender song, and in the stillness of the room you could hear how Taylor’s voice has softened with age. There is a fragility there now that suits a love song.

But I have to be honest, and I think Roger would respect honesty. I do not think this track has the staying power for future setlists. And I feel the same way about the new album as a whole. The songs do not stand up to Outsider. In some ways this record is a continuation from that, but the journey through the track listing lacks the same cohesion, the same sense of a man with something urgent to say. The quality control dips. I say this with nothing but love, and the live setting rescued several of these tracks, but the album itself does not reach the same heights.

This would become a recurring theme through the night. The new material, competent but forgettable on record, finding new life in front of a crowd. And the older songs, the ones that have already proven themselves, reminding you why Roger Taylor has been doing this for over half a century.

The First Queen Song

Track six. We had made it this far without a Queen song, and then it arrived. I’m in Love with My Car. Roger sang lead on this when it first appeared in 1975 on A Night at the Opera, and it has always felt like the first true Roger Taylor composition. The first time his personality stepped out from behind the kit and announced itself. Its enduring popularity owes a great debt to being the B side of Bohemian Rhapsody, which meant it earned the same royalties on every copy sold. What a way to make a killing, Rog. On the album I have always skipped it. Live, surrounded by people singing every word, it was a completely different animal. Some songs only make sense when you can feel the room shaking.

Absolutely Anything followed, another from Outsider. Slower, more reflective, a well judged gear change. The setlist throughout the evening was always thoughtfully constructed, and you could feel the hand of someone who has been playing live for decades in the way the energy was managed, pulled back here so it could be pushed harder later.

Violence Insane

The title track from the new album and tour arrived next. On the record, I would struggle to pick it out of a lineup. But live, it was transformed. Roger used a second mic stand with vocal effects to produce the deeper, growling vocal heard on the recording, and the effect was immersive. The stage was flooded in harsh red light, cutting through the darkness of The Roundhouse, turning Roger into a silhouette and then a figure and then a force. With the crowd leaning in and the visual intensity wrapping around you, this was a song that demanded to be experienced rather than merely heard. The new album may not last, but this performance of it will stay with me.

## We Still Love You
The band knew exactly when to reach for something bigger. They always did.

These Are the Days of Our Lives. Written by Roger in 1990 for Innuendo, Queen’s final studio album with Freddie Mercury alive. At the time, the song served as a farewell. Freddie’s last music video. His whispered “I still love you” at the end, spoken into the camera with the full knowledge of what was coming. Roger wrote it as a father looking back on his younger days, but Freddie turned it into something else entirely. A goodbye that still, 35 years later, can stop a room.

Now, decades on, Roger performing it in his late seventies gave those words a different kind of gravity. Not a goodbye, not yet, but a reminder. Time is passing for all of us. The same tenderness, the same ache, the same feeling of wanting to hold onto something that is already slipping away. I could feel the room holding its breath. The only thing missing, for me, was a mention of Freddie, as they do when this song is performed with Queen. It would have completed the moment. But perhaps the silence said enough.

Tyler Warren’s Moment

Roger left the stage and Tyler Warren stepped into the spotlight behind the kit for Rock It (Prime Jive), a deep cut from The Game. He attacked it with ferocious energy, his loud, high vocals bouncing off the circular walls of The Roundhouse, driving the crowd into a singalong that proved this was no ordinary audience. It told everybody in the room exactly why he was the right man to hold those drumsticks. The crowd knew it was our moment to give something back, and we took it.

## Jealous Guy

Roger returned quietly. The Ray Bans were gone. The blazer was gone. What walked back onto that stage was something more stripped, more vulnerable, more human.

He played Jealous Guy. John Lennon’s Jealous Guy. One of the most delicate songs ever written, performed by a man whose voice is older now, softer, touched by age and wear in a way that suits the aching tenderness of the melody. We first heard Roger’s version on Jools Holland in 2024, and having it now on the album feels like preserving something precious. In the live setting, with the lights low and Tina Keys playing beautifully on the piano, the room went completely still. Nobody moved. Nobody sang along. We just listened. For me, this was the highlight of the entire night. Not the loudest moment or the most spectacular. The most honest.

## The Dip

What followed was the weakest stretch of the evening. Two political songs, which Roger introduced by saying “they would only be short.” Chump, about Donald Trump, drew a reaction, but you could feel the energy in the room drop. The crowd had come for music, for escape, for the shared experience of being inside something bigger than themselves. Queen understood this instinctively and built their greatest anthems around universal human experiences. Joy. Defiance. Love. Loss. Songs that unite a room rather than divide it. Roger’s solo career gives him the freedom to say whatever he wants without the constraints of a group, and that is his right. But these tracks felt like a detour from an otherwise brilliant evening, and the room told you so.

Under Pressure

The setlist rescued itself, as it had all night, by knowing exactly when to reach for the untouchable.

From the moment that bassline began, the room was transformed. Whatever energy had been lost was not just recovered but doubled. I could feel myself grinning again, properly grinning, and then something else. Tears. Actual tears, forming in my eyes and blurring the stage lights into something soft and golden. There is a feeling you get when one of these songs hits you in a live setting. A warmth spreading through your chest. A tightness in your throat. A sense that for three and a half minutes, nothing else in the world exists. Not your job, not your worries, not the journey home. Just the music and the people around you feeling the exact same thing. You cannot manufacture that. You cannot buy it. You can only be lucky enough to be standing in the right room at the right time.

## The Build

The rock and roll was back in full swing with Man on Fire. A blistering cover of Led Zeppelin’s Rock and Roll. And then A Kind of Magic, the smash hit written by Taylor in 1986.

This is where anticipation became almost unbearable. Fans already knew that Brian May was in the building. I could see him on the far side of the room, the unmistakable silhouette of that hair visible even in the half light. We also knew that on the last tour’s London show, Brian had walked out during this very song to perform alongside Roger. The room was holding its breath.

But he did not appear.

I was genuinely thrown. A ripple of confusion passed through the crowd. Nevertheless, it was a powerful rendition, Taylor throwing his arms wide for the crashing cymbal outro, and with that, he left the stage.

Silence. Then the murmur of a crowd trying to work out what comes next.

The Encore Begins

“Here’s a song you know well, but in a way you have never heard it.”

Roger came back, said those words, and walked off again. What followed was Bohemian Rhapsody, performed by the Ndlovu Youth Choir, who also feature on the new album. Their voices filled The Roundhouse in a way I was not prepared for. Harmonies and another language that reshaped one of the most iconic songs ever recorded into something almost sacred, stripping away the bombast and replacing it with pure, breathtaking human voice. I had never heard anything like it. Looking back, I do not think I fully appreciated the moment. My eyes were still scanning the room. Waiting.

Then A Beautiful World, with the choir. Like Violence Insane, it sounded considerably better live, the energy of people giving it a weight the studio recording never achieved. Then C’mon Summer, and Roger himself got back behind the kit. Seventy seven years old, and he still has the same precision across the snare. The same instinct. The same fire. It was wonderful to see him doing what he was born to do.

But the best was yet to come.

It spread through the crowd like a heartbeat finding its pulse. One section, then another, then the balcony, then the floor, until people were locked into it and The Roundhouse was vibrating from the foundations upward.

And somewhere, on the other side of The Roundhouse, a tall figure with unmistakable hair was making his way towards the stage.

STOMP. STOMP. CLAP.

It started quietly. A rhythm. Ancient and simple. The most recognisable beat in the history of rock music.

Stomp. Stomp. Clap.

Queen was my first arena concert when I was 18. That night changed something in me that has never changed back. Being here now, four years later, watching Roger and Brian together again, I felt every atom of why I fell in love with this band. Not just the music. The feeling. The way it makes you bigger than yourself. The way it connects you to strangers and to history and to something you cannot quite name but you know when it moves through you.

Stomp. Stomp. Clap.

Again. And again. And again.

We Will Rock You.

But the guitar tone that cut through the noise was different. Not a cover. Not an imitation. This was heavier. Grittier. Rawer. Louder than anything else all night. A sound that does not come from just any guitar, or just any pair of hands, or just any amplifier. A sound that comes from one man, one instrument and a sixpence forged together across five decades.

Welcome to the stage, Sir Brian Harold May.

The Roundhouse did not cheer. It detonated. The kind of eruption that hits you in the ribcage and does not stop. People screaming, people crying, people grabbing the strangers next to them. 

And then something happened that no one was ready for.

Roger stepped away from the microphone. Brian lowered his guitar. And the two of them, these two men who have played together since the early 1970s, who lost Freddie, who carried Queen forward, who are now in the twilight of lives spent making some of the greatest music ever recorded, walked towards each other and embraced. A long, tight, emotional embrace. Not for the cameras. Not for the crowd. For each other.

The room fell quiet. You could feel the collective understanding washing over every single person in that venue. We were not just watching two musicians. We were watching two old friends who know, as we all know, that there will not be many more nights like this.

Then Brian picked up the Red Special. Roger stepped back to the microphone. And the opening notes of Radio Ga Ga rang out.

The sound of Brian’s sixpence against the strings. The soaring slide guitar. And the crowd, as one, raising their hands for that iconic clap that has echoed through stadiums around the world for over 40 years. In The Roundhouse, in that moment, it felt like every single one of those 40 years was alive in the room with us.

This was that feeling. The purest version of it I have ever experienced.

Everything I Had to Know

I walked out of The Roundhouse and the Camden night air hit me like a wall. My ears were ringing. My eyes were red. My voice was wrecked from singing. 

Whatever I thought about the individual parts of the evening, the new songs that did not quite land, the political detour, the moments where the energy dipped, none of it mattered by the time those two men stood side by side. Roger Taylor, in his late seventies, still throwing punches, still writing songs, still climbing behind the kit with the same fire he had in 1973. Brian May, the greatest guitarist of his generation, walking out unannounced to remind a room of people what magic sounds like.

We are running out of nights like these. The generation that gave us Queen, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, they are in their twilight now. Every gig is a gift. Every encore could be the last. And if you are lucky enough to be in the room when it happens, you owe it to yourself to feel every second of it. I felt every second of this.

Thank you, Roger, for all the music, the memories and the endless joy. With Queen in Budapest soon to be released in IMAX, the machine is not slowing down. And I, for one, am thrilled.

Forty two years after he wrote it, everything I had to know, I heard it at The Roundhouse.

Review by CeeJay Bonner for THE SONGBIRD HQ