I preferred Earth, Wind and Fire, who also had satiny shirts, I suppose. The whole big hair and satiny shirts of the glam rock world wasn’t for me. At that time, I was hooked into American music over British music. My heroes are Stevie Wonder and Sly and the Family Stone. “How dare they align themselves with The Royal Family?” The first song I heard was “Now I’m Here.” And I’m a soul lover. I was, first of all, outraged by the name. It was reading about them in Melody Maker in the early 1970s. Tell me your first memories of being aware of Queen. How old were you when you realized you wanted to do this as your career? It wasn’t like today’s concerts where you get two and a half hours and everything is high definition. Body language told you what the song was. You knew what song they were doing by whoever stood at the mic and they way they shook their heads. My biggest disappointment was you couldn’t hear a single note of music because of the screaming. When you’re 12 years old and it’s your first concert, it’s all an onslaught to the senses. It was December 3rd, 1963, at Portsmouth Guildhall in my hometown. My mom took me on my 12th birthday to see the Beatles. I want to hear a little about your musical history. Everybody seems to be really, really enjoying it. I think the audience last night was one of the loudest I’d ever heard. The previous two tours have been on an upward curve and has taken it to another level. And so as the group winds down the North American leg of their highly-successful Rhapsody tour, we phoned up Edney to hear about his long tenure in the band, what it was like onstage at Live Aid, how he first spotted Lambert on American Idol, and what the future might hold for the group. Queen hired him a year earlier to contribute keyboards, piano, backing vocals and rhythm guitar and he’s been there ever since, helping out with everything from their 1992 Freddie Mercury Tribute show at Wembley Stadium to their West End musical We Will Rock You, their mid-2000s tours with Paul Rodgers and their ongoing work with Adam Lambert.Įdney has played a vital role in all of these endeavors during the past 35 years, but many fans don’t even know his name. He’s the dark-haired fellow playing guitar next to a wall of keyboards.
It’s almost impossible to spot Spike Edney in the video of Queen’s legendary set at Live Aid, but if you pause the footage near the end of “Hammer to Fall” at the 12:22 mark you can just about see him in the background.