Queen legend Brian May has revealed he is ‘very taken’ with the idea of a hologram show of the iconic band.
The 78-year-old guitarist currently performs in the band with original drummer Roger Taylor and singer Adam Lambert, but he admitted the thought of getting the full band – including late frontman Freddie Mercury and bassist John Deacon, who retired in 1997 – together again in some form ‘really appeals’ to him.
‘Freddie is still alive through the music that we listen to all the time. In a sense, John is still with us in the same way, but now we have so many other opportunities,’ he said.
‘I mean things that are immersive, like The Sphere in Las Vegas, it will be possible to give people the experience very closely of what things were like for us when we were Freddie, John, Brian, and Roger. And that really appeals to me.’
In an interview with Big Issue, he continued: ‘In our Queen shows for a very long time I’ve been doing Love of My Life. And in the end, Freddie comes in and joins me on video.
‘It was just quite simply done, but it’s a way of involving Freddie, and I think we can basically take that a lot further.’
Of a possible hologram-type show, he added: ‘It wouldn’t be just playing old footage or whatever. It would be creating Queen as if we were creating it today. I’m very taken with the idea that we can be the original Queen again.’
They could follow in the footsteps of pop icons ABBA, who created their hologram Voyage show in 2022 in a purpose-built London venue.
However, Roger didn’t seem quite as taken with the idea, noting that he ‘had a good time’ and ‘enjoyed’ the ABBA Voyage show, but he wasn’t convinced by it, though he believes technology has improved even further since it debuted in 2022.
He said: ‘I didn’t find the actual projections that convincing. I do think technology now has come so much further since the ABBA show started. I think a lot more can be done.’
Brian began thinking about the band’s legacy while looking back over the group’s past work.
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More artists brought to life with hologram shows
Tupac
Coachella attendees in 2012 were left shocked and amazed when Tupac took to the stage nearly 17 years after his death.
He performed alongside the likes of Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre for the occasion, but the show caused some backlash with the hologram asking the crowd, ‘What the f**k is up, Coachella?’, something he could not have said in real life as he died three years before the festival began, sparking conversations about the use of AI.
Michael Jackson
In 2014, Michael Jackson moonwalked across the stage of the Billboard Music Awards, performing a previously unreleased track, Slave to the Rhythm.
Producers of the show reportedly had not seen any part of the hologram show until eight days before the ceremony, with BBMA director and producer Larry Klein telling Billboard: ‘We’ve been talking about it for the last five months, and while we were talking about it, they were still inventing the process. It was really strange talking about something that did not exist.’
Whitney Houston
An Evening with Whitney: The Whitney Houston Hologram Tour launched in 2020, featuring a projected image of the iconic singer, which ended after a Las Vegas residency in 2023.
Speaking about the decision to create the show, president of Houston’s estate, Pat Houston, stated: ‘Whitney is not with us, but her music will live with us forever. We know we made the right decision partnering with BASE because they understand how important it is to produce a phenomenal hologram.
‘They also know that engaging her fans with an authentic Whitney experience would resonate worldwide because of the iconic status that she created over three decades. Her fans deserve nothing less because she gave nothing less than her best.’
Elvis Presley
In 2007, Celine Dion appeared on American Idol to perform a duet of If I Can Dream with the King of Rock’n’Roll himself.
The hologram and performance reportedly cost nearly $100,000 (£76,309), but it’s not the only time a Presley hologram experience has been sold to fans.
Elvis Evolution was announced in 2024 and billed as featuring ‘use AI and feature holographic projections of the star,’ but it drew criticism from fans earlier this year, branding the event ‘misleading’ for allegedly not actually including a hologram of the singer.
He said: ‘It’s just one of the ideas in my head, and I suppose it is fuelled by working on the reissues, as we’ve completely reconstructed Queen I, and we’ve been working on Queen II.
‘It’s just about ready to be re-released, and it’s great to re-experience that joy of creation that we had in those days. It’s immensely complex. Queen II is more complex than Bohemian Rhapsody.’
The We Will Rock You guitarist previously insisted he didn’t want a hologram version of Queen until all original members of the band were ‘gone.’
Appearing on The Graham Norton Radio Show podcast, Brian said: ‘We’ve talked about and looked at holograms of Freddie.
‘We love to be live and dangerous, that’s it, that’s our emphasis.
‘Now, when we’re all gone, yeah sure, make an ABBA thing about us, but while we’re here I want to play live.’
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