- Born
- Birth nameRoger Meddows Taylor
- Height1.79 m
- Roger Meddows Taylor (born 26 July 1949) is an English musician who performs as a multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter. He is best known as the drummer of the rock band Queen, but has also served as songwriter and occasional lead vocalist.
As a songwriter, Taylor contributed songs to Queen's albums from the very beginning, composing at least one track on every album, and often singing lead vocals on his own compositions. He wrote or co-wrote three UK number 1s ("These Are the Days of Our Lives", "Innuendo" and "Under Pressure") and contributed a further major hits ("Radio Ga Ga", "A Kind of Magic","One Vision", "Heaven for Everyone", "Breakthru", and "The Invisible Man"). In addition to his drum work, Taylor routinely played keyboards, guitars and bass on his own songs. During the 1980s, in addition to his work with Queen, he formed a parallel band known as The Cross, in which he was the lead singer and rhythm guitarist. Taylor is also well-known for his falsetto vocal range.
By the time Queen's album 'News of the World' was released in 1977, Taylor had met his future girlfriend, Dominique Beyrand, who was working for Richard Branson at the time, who was at the helm of Queen's free concert at Hyde Park. They lived together from 1980 to 1987, raising their two children: actor Felix Taylor and doctor Rory Eleanor Taylor. They decided to get married for reasons relating to his estate, to protect his children's interests in the future. At the time, Taylor was seeing another girl, model/actress Deborah Leng, the Cadbury's Flake girl also seen in Queen's "Breakthru" video; he moved in with her a month after his marriage of convenience to Beyrand. Before Freddie Mercury's death, Taylor and Leng had their first child, drummer Rufus Taylor, who was born in March 1991. He ended up having two more children with Leng: models Tigerlily Taylor (1994) and Lola Leng-Taylor (2000). In late 2002, they decided to break up.
Taylor remarried on 26 August 2010, to Sarina Taylor. He resides in Guildford, Surrey, but also has a home in Helford, Cornwall. Her younger half-sister is fashion model Genevieve Potgieter.- IMDb mini biography by: Marie Christine Taylor
- SpousesSarina Taylor(October 3, 2010 - present)Dominique Beyrand(January 3, 1988 - ?) (divorced, 2 children)
- Children
- He sang lead vocals with Brian May on Queen's tribute song to Freddie Mercury "No-One but you (Only the Good Die Young)This Was written By Brian May".
- Appeared in drag in two music videos : Queen's "I Want To Break Free" and Freddie Mercury's "The Great Pretender".
- He started studying dentistry but got his degree in biology
- Drummer for the rock group Queen.
- Owns an extensive collection of classic automobiles. One of these cars, an Alfa Romeo, and the Triumph TR4 owned by a friend are the co-inspirations for the Queen song "I'm In Love With My Car".
- We (pop stars) are people, not androids. We've got views. I've got opinions and I don't see why I shouldn't use a bit of my art to put them over. I think music is one of the most powerful media forces in the world today.
- [on performing without the late Freddie Mercury] We're not going out there with somebody pretending to be Freddie Mercury. We are what we are now; we're not what we were then, we're just going out, playing our songs.
- There are stereotypes and it is quite amazing how often members of bands seem to follow those stereotypes. Singers are all vain. Guitarists are all vain but won't admit it. Bass players are quiet people, and drummers are very exciting people to be with.
- [on drumming] There's something rather nice about spending the evening hitting things.
- [on drum machines] Fantastic to write with. They have their place, they're terribly useful to the musician, but they're just another tool. They never will replace a good drummer. A lot of the bands that use them, I call them typewriter bands because basically they program the sample sounds with no real dynamics, and that dynamics is very important. And the records come out sounding very flat and very 2-dimensional whereas something with real dynamics and a good drummer can add another dimension, depth, to the band and that's why bands that play together when they're actually making the record will always sound better.
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