Roger Taylor

We are just continually surprised and obviously happy that the interest in Queen and Freddie keeps alive. It's a constant source of pleasure for ourselves.

The sound levels on stage were so loud with all that constant banging and smash, smash, smash; it did untold damage to the fine nerve endings in the inner ear, though it is worse in the left, which is the side of my snare drum and the monitor.

Freddie was the glue that kept us together. He was a very complex man: very shy but also with a forceful side to him.

Freddie obviously knew he was ill long before we did. We knew there was something wrong, but we didn't know what it was. He told us eventually. We didnt want to believe it was true. But we all stuck round him, formed a circle, and gave him support.

What was Freddie like then? Alongside the showman, he was a rather shy introvert. But if the attention was focused on him, he was a natural star, as we all saw after we put Queen together. Week by week, we saw him grow into this character, Freddie Mercury.

I'm not a musical theatre person, and I never will be, especially after seeing the way it operates. It's so incredibly inefficient. It takes three weeks to effect a change. It can be a lighting change, a script change, a musical change - you have to meet with six different departments, and about a month later, it may happen.

My own introduction to music came quite early. My father didn't have much of an education, but he was keen for me to get some qualifications, and I ended up winning a choral scholarship to a cathedral school.

We've been fairly eclectic in our time, and we did branch out. Whenever we got a little bit too far out, people started to moan and groan a bit.

We Are the Champions' is meant to be 'we,' as in 'all of us,' collectively, not us the band. It's a shame that some people understandably had the wrong take on that. 'No time for losers' is not the kindest line, but it's really more of a 'we all of us.' It's a celebration.

I played with a few local bands in the West Country, where I grew up, but when I was 18, I moved to London, which at that time was probably the most exciting musical city in the world. I was supposed to be studying dentistry, but all the time I was looking for a band to join.

I shall think of Freddie Mercury every day - maybe for a moment, maybe for longer.

There is a sense of melancholy attached to seeing images of yourself from a different era, especially when you see a picture.