Rolling Stone: "Inside Queen's Huge Summer Tour With Adam Lambert"

[Miguel]

By Andy Greene
June 18, 2014 3:00 PM ET

Like a lot of fans under a certain age, Adam Lambert first learned about Queen when he saw the "Bohemian Rhapsody" scene in Wayne’s World in 1992. "I said to my dad, 'Who's that?,'" Lambert says. "He was like, 'You know those songs 'We Will Rock You' and 'We Are the Champions?' That's the same band.' I had no idea."

It took another few years for Lambert to really delve into their catalog. "When I was older I got more into the history of rock," he says. "I fell in love with the 1970s and I discovered more about Queen. The genius about the band is that they're so versatile. There are songs in their catalog that are like beautiful lullabies, and then on the same album they can flip to a hardcore, more aggressive sound."

By the time he auditioned for American Idol in 2009, the 26-year-old was such a huge fan that he performed "Bohemian Rhapsody" for the judges. "What's happened since then is just surreal to me," he says. "It's so crazy that this came out of American Idol. I don't think I would have seen it coming back then."

...Filling Freddie Mercury's shoes is an enormous task, but Lambert feels up to the challenge. "It's not an easy feat," he says. "I think a lot of the apprehension has faded because we've done this a number of times in the past couple of years. That's not to suggest I'm getting cocky at all, because I will never compare to Freddie Mercury. He's one in a million. At this point, I know how to strike a balance between honoring the way these songs were originally meant to be sung and my own instincts, my own choices."

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/i...picks=true