-
RP – Is Colin Hill still playing
the part of Brian May?
Craig Pesco –
No. We have a young gentleman named Travis Hair.
He’s been doing the role for the last two and a half
years. He did the last tour and all of the European
tour with us. It’s a funny thing about this shows.
When you play the role of Brian May or Roger Taylor or John
Deacon, they’re all as important as the Freddie role.
They are all very unique individuals and they all produce a
certain sound and the Queen fans that have come to see us
through the years – they all know the personalities of
the original players and how they react on stage – how
they work with each other. There’s a whole
interplay between the characters that is equally as
important to me as the Freddie role.
RP – I was looking at some photos
of you in the show. You
kind of look like Freddie. You’ve got the mustache going .
. .
Craig Pesco –
It’s a funny thing. Officially, we had to do a lot
of work. Before I started this role I had a whole
different look. I was a longhaired sort of rocker.
But we follow the image. Now we are using the
prosthetic teeth and the make up is much more involved than
what it used to be. We’re also interplaying with a
lot of video screens showing actual images of Freddie Mercury and then live cameras on stage with us and we try
to blend the two images together for people to see what’s
Queen and what’s us. That’s the way we want the
production to go.
RP – So all of you actually sing
on stage – it’s live?
Craig Pesco – Oh,
absolutely! All the performances on stage, all the
players –everything you hear is produced by us. You
add on top of that the production assistants, the lighting
designs, the incredible duplicates of Queen’s stage that
the fans are all familiar with and you really start to
build something up. The you add the special effects,
video screens and what not and it’s a really wild two
hours of entertainment. It takes us to a lot of
different places.
RP – How long have you done this?
Craig Pesco –
We’ve been doing it for six years now. Last year we
did ten months in Europe
and it’s still as fresh as ever.
RP – You said you had the
prosthetic teeth – that’s because Freddie had an
overbite, isn’t it? Does
that in any way get in the way of your singing ever?
Craig Pesco –
That’s absolutely right. He had an overbite, but it
actually enhances all the vocal work. It gives a more
authentic Freddie Mercury sound. All the people who
are fans of the group would be familiar with his mannerism
and the way he speaks because of those teeth so to me
that’s an important part of the show, but it’s also an
important part of the illusion. You’re seeing it on
me on stage. After the show we go out and greet the
audience and say hello but that’s without the make up and
that’s a completely different thing. You can’t see the
definitive line between the two.
RP – In your quest for
authenticity, do you go so far as to have a Fender guitar
for the Brian May character?
Craig Pesco – Well,
the Brian May character has authentic Red Special guitar
that Brian Mays designed and he has several copies of those
that he’s picked up from around the world through the
last few years. It’s the outside. We have to
pay attention to the equipment – to the hairstyle and
make sure the costumes match that era. We all loved
Queen, (in the group) and for us it’s really important to
get the details right. I think that’s what the
people appreciate.
RP -
And you’ll be here at the Kodak Theatre on October
5th – one night only?
Craig Pesco –This
is just for one night. We have played in the United
States about 18 months ago, and we just didn’t have
enough time to do as big a tour as we wanted to, and even
this time we don’t. But we intend to come back next
year and do an even longer tour because there’s a lot of
Queen fans, a lot of rock people who love it, a lot of
theatre people who will want to come and see a show like
this. So we’re definitely designating a lot of time
to pay attention to the USA.
RP -
After the Kodak Theatre you’re going to Costa
Mesa, to the Orange County Performing Arts Center –
that’s a fast tour!
Craig Pesco –
It’s quite a quick tour, yes. The show came up
really quickly, but we have to get back to Australia to do
a few more shows before Christmas this year. The show
is very physical and it’s a unique lifestyle and when one
travels with so much production, but it’s a lot of fun
and the payoff is in the faces of the people in the
audience.
RP – Are you planning on
continuing doing the show say, for the next four or five
years?
Craig Pesco – Oh,
definitely, definitely! In fact, I think back now two
or three years when I first met Peter Freestone, who was Freddie
Mercury’s personal assistant. The last
eleven years he was with Freddie every day of his life.
He saw us in Singapore around 2003, and at that point I
thought the show was as good as it could be. But he
embraced it because it reminded him of when he worked with
Queen and quickly became an unpaid ambassador for the
group. He sort of traveled the world and went to Queen
conventions and sang our praises to everyone. It was
amazing and from that point on it’s blossomed – it’s
gone to a whole new other level. I think there’s
enough great Queen songs that one could turn the repertoire
over a few times and definitely enough of the outrageous
images and costumes that you can keep on going for many
years. But I think it’s the momentum that the show
has built up now that keeps it going. We’re already
booked two years in advance.
RP – Two years in advance?
Craig Pesco –Yeah.
Some markets are already booked two years from now.
When you’re doing a world tour like we did last year –
we were in Spain, Portugal and Paris, well then two years
later they demand that you go back to those markets and
once you do enough markets around the world, there is less
and less time to get into the others, so you have to look
ahead.
RP - You were in a rock band
prior to joining this project. Have you been a
musician most of your life?
Craig Pesco –
I grew up loving groups like Kiss and Aerosmith. I
always liked the more theatrical groups and Queen was a
perfect example of a rock group that used a lot of theatre
and a lot of vaudeville – a lot of English influences and
it just made it so interesting for me. Growing up in
the ‘70’s and ‘80’s you’re influenced by all that
and when given the opportunity to do something like this it
seemed like the perfect idea. I had played in a band
here in Australia called Kings of the Sun and quite a few other bands on the
way to getting to this production.
RP – Freddie was famous for his
vocalizing, and was known for having a huge vocal range of
three – maybe four octaves. You probably match that
or maybe surpass it?
Craig Pesco –
That’s the funny thing about a show like this.
It’s a theatrical recreation of Queen and you have to get
to a state where people believe the role that you’re
playing. So I found that just by copying his
posturing and the way he would move on stage would actually
help me to reproduce his vocals as well. As you know
Queen did a lot of harmony and their harmonizing was one of
the trademarks of their sound. So that’s something
that we have all had to refine, even the drummer who plays
Roger Taylor. You have to have that high falsetto
voice when you structure the harmonies because that was
another reason that made Queen so wonderful.
RP - As you work and perfect
the show on the tour, what would say is the most difficult
challenge you face in making this successful?
Craig Pesco – The
most difficult part? I don’t know. With all being
so enthusiastic there’s plenty of ideas and sometimes it
gets a little frustrating when you try to bring things from
your imagination into reality. This year we were
lucky to have about 14 weeks off at the start of the year
to refine the show. Every time we get back home to
Australia which as about every two years, we like to take
it aside – put it in the warehouse and rebuild it.
Add some new songs, make features out of them. For
example, a song like Chili Queen for this upcoming tour
will be linked completely different to every other song in
the repertoire because it’s such a unique sound and such
a unique track. That’s what I like, but I guess the
hardest bit is getting it to happen how you imagined it.
Working it with the cast members and the technicians and
just discussing these things with people like Peter
Freestone who were involved in the original Queen tours.
Its very exciting to start building and remaking these
great rock singers from the past in a theatrical way, so I
think the hardest is trying to get if off the ground and
then actually making it happen.
RP – That sounds like you are
really committed. You said you have bookings for the next
few years, but have you thought ahead at what you might be
doing ten – twenty years from now?
Craig Pesco –
That’s a good question! I have not thought about
that. When this first started it was something I was
enthusiastic about and it was an interesting concept.
At that time I had no idea what the future of it would be
other than the fact that I believed that anybody who had
the slightest interest in popular music, and not
necessarily Queen fans, could come and enjoy the show
because it is so colorful and there are so many different
costumes and different scenarios presented and each one of
them is very powerful in its own way. Thinking how
long it was going to last, well, who knew? Here we are
almost six years later and we’re going stronger than
ever. I’m really glad that people have accepted and
believed in the illusion that takes place in the two hours
we are on stage.
RP – So you have a huge entourage
that travels with you I imagine?
Craig Pesco – Oh
definitely. On the production side we have eight guys
we’re flying over today who work closely with the band.
People like sound engineers, lighting directors, board
operators. Then when we get to the states we pick up
possibly another 20 people and various loaders as well –
it gets to be quite an organization. When you get all
the cogs turning – the publicists going it’s really
quite an experience. You have to make quite a bit of
noise to get people to pay attention these days.
RP – Are you the manager of all
this activity?
Craig Pesco – Oh
no! (laughing) I couldn’t possibly do all that!
I guess I’m like the foreman of the performers on stage
– primarily because I’m the one with the most Queen
knowledge I guess. I usually come in with the basic
ideas – we discuss them, work them out musically and then
hand them over to the various technicians to enhance them.
As far as the business, I’m certainly not the manager.
We have two managers.
RP - I read that you are
considered one of the most knowledgeable authorities on
Queen. You’re the expert, I understand.
Craig Pesco – Well,
yes. I never intended to be, but it sort of happened
because I was so enthusiastic about the band. When I
met Peter Freestone he was amazed at the large amount of
material I had on Queen – bootleg videos, CD’s, rare
recordings. The good thing about that is that it
encouraged him to give us some of his personal shots and
film of Freddie that the general public had never seen, and
we can now use them in the show.
RP - That’s a great
advantage for the band!
Craig Pesco –
Between the four or five minds that are putting ideas on
the table, they all come from reliable and knowledgeable
sources and form people who are enthusiastic about it and I
think it shows. There is a respect there and it’s
evident that it’s not something they go into for money.
You have to be passionate about it.
RP – Queen was very interactive
with their audiences. The people really got into
participating and singing with them sometimes – like We
Will Rock You. Does that happen in your show?
Craig Pesco –
Oh, absolutely! When we designed the show way back at
the start, we said that the number one goal was it had to
be bigger than any other act of its time. We don’t
want this to be thought of as a tribute band – it had to
be a theatrical production and interaction with the
audience was number one. Songs like We Will Rock You,
We Are The Champions, Radio GA GA – these songs were
built with the audience in mind and as much as you can have
Freddie there leading the show and giving the camp touch he
had, we try to duplicate them.
RP - Your reviews are great
from all over the world. However, is there one
country that you found more enthusiastic or receptive to
your show than others?
|
