Queen, Rodgers Nine Songs Into New Album
Queen + Paul Rodgers
June 22, 2007, 10:50 AM ET
Gary Graff, Detroit
Everybody tie your mothers down. Queen + Paul Rodgers plan to rock you again -- perhaps as soon as 2008. Rodgers tells Billboard.com that he's "recorded some nine songs" with Queen members Brian May and Roger Taylor, and that there are plans to return to the studio in October to do some more work.

Rodgers won't commit to a definite timetable, but he guesses a new album may appear "probably next year the way things are going," with a tour likely to follow.

"With Queen and myself, it's a very organic thing," Rodgers explains. "We're letting it sort of develop itself naturally and not pushing it or giving it any pressure. We go in, just the three of us. Roger gets on the kit, Brian gets on the guitar, I get on the acoustic guitar and piano, either/or, and then we share the bass line afterwards."

Rodgers describes the new material as "interesting" and says he's been particularly fascinated by watching May craft Queen's trademark harmonies. "What happens is he can hear the song line and then he can hear all the harmonies on top of it," Rodgers explains. "We can't hear them, but when we go out in the studio he tells us what line we should sing. He knows exactly what he's doing and we don't know what it's going to sound like, but when we go back into the studio and the engineer puts everything up we all go, 'Holy smokes, listen to that! So that's the genius of the harmonies."

"My own approach, of course, is more of a bluesy thing," he adds. "If you add those two together it makes something else, something brand new."

Queen + Paul Rodgers began touring in 2005 and released a live album and DVD, "Return of the Champions," in 2006 before playing shows in North America. Rodgers says the group hasn't yet recorded a version of the song "Take Love," which he wrote for the North American leg.

Rodgers, who released the CD/DVD "Live in Glasgow" this year, is currently playing solo dates with his own band, while Taylor is boating in the Bahamas. May recently earned his Ph.D in astronomy and co-authored the book "Bang! -- The Complete History of the Universe."



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