Now 76, Taylor has no qualms sharing his blunt views about the current occupier of the White House. “I’m just a musician, but you’ve got to say what you think sometimes,” he continues. “I just find it incredible that we're in the position of this man being the most powerful, deluded person in the entire world. It's weird, so I just wanted to say it. It just sort of came out. It was very quick. I can't even remember doing it, actually!” His disdain for the 45th and 47th US president dates back as far as the 1980s when he was known simply as a brash businessman. Did the Queen ever meet Trump back then? Roger baulks. “No, I always thought he was an awful, creepy man. He was horrible, even before he was a TV host [Trump hosted the US version of The Apprentice reality show]. He’s just full of bile, really, isn’t he? Avaricious, so full of his self-regard. Yeah, what a monster, incredible what he gets away with, I can't believe it.” So disliked is Trump by some artists that he has faced multiple cease-and-decease orders for using famous pop songs at his rallies over the past decade, Queen included. At the 2016 Republican National Convention, the future president entered the stage to Freddie Mercury’s We Are The Champions. “He came poncing on to it,” recalls the drummer, “I saw it on the news and was horrified. I thought people might think we actually support him. The last thing you want is to be seen as supporting this pig of a man. Shameless!”

As a band, Queen hasn’t been quite as blunt politically as Roger with his new single, or Sir Brian May with his animal rights campaigning. But over their 21 years together with Freddie Mercury and John Deacon as a quartet, they applied the same bold, audacious attitude in their creative endeavours. Most famous of all their tracks is Freddie’s Bohemian Rhapsody, a six-minute suite, mixing genres full of made-up words – met with bemusement from their record label, and bafflement by their critics. Yet, the incredibly ambitious track topped the UK Singles’ Chart for nine weeks and became Britain’s third best-selling single of all time. But the risks Queen took with Bohemian Rhapsody and their 1975 album A Night at the Opera found their roots, with their signature harmonies and varied musical styles, a couple of albums earlier, in one of the band's lesser-known records, Queen II. The band today launches a remixed, remastered and expanded version of their second studio album, which – although widely praised decades on – likewise suffered the same fate as Bohemian Rhapsody in the initial reviews. “We got so lacerated,” sighs Sir Brian May, on Zoom from his home that’s "not too far from Roger" these days. “We were pulled to pieces by the critics for this album. You try not to let it affect you, but it does… That was always very uncomfortable, but we felt like it was us against the world.”

Asked if it was make or break for the band at this stage in their career, the 78-year-old responds: “We get lost in the music. We don't do it because we want to make money or we want to be superstars. We do it because we somehow have to do it. So there is a sort of settlement in that. But at the same time, yeah, you're aware that outside the door, there's people [on the business side of things] waiting to bite your heels off.” Nevertheless, unlike their self-titled debut, which they’ve previously remixed and remastered, Queen were much more in control of their own destiny when recording their follow-up, once again at Soho’s Trident Studios. Freddie once said of Queen II, “I wanted to give it everything – to be self-indulgent. But the whole band in particular, we don't go in for half-measures and I'm pretty hard with myself. There are no compromises… My God, we were such impatient boys… ” For the guitarist, Queen II was the single biggest leap the band ever made. “The first album was really difficult and we couldn’t really get what we wanted because of being forced into this kind of template of the Trident Studios sounds. We were still fighting some battles, but we were starting to win. We were precocious but quite consistent.” Considered by many fans to be Queen’s heaviest record, the original LP was split into Side White and Side Black with a general theme running throughout. Kicking off with Side White dominated by Brian’s more emotional tracks like Father to Son and White Queen, to Side Black with Freddie’s dark fantasy-themed songs from Ogre Battle and The March of the Black Queen (which Brian sees as a forerunner to Bohemian Rhapsody) to Seven Seas of Rhye, which would become Queen’s first hit. “We were much more in control”, recalls Roger, “It was a big step from Queen I in terms of complexity and studio technique, which we were learning quite quickly. We were much more confident having done the debut. We knew what we wanted it to sound like, especially with the drums.”

Unlike later Queen albums, Freddie didn't sing lead vocals on every track, with Brian and Roger doing so on a couple of their own songs, including the drummer’s groovy finale of Side White, The Loser in the End. Reflecting on their frontman's development as a singer, Roger admitted, “Freddie was great, but hadn’t really developed that amazing technique that he had yet. There was a lot of competition there [when it came to lyrics]. Strange thing is, in the 80s Freddie sort of slackened off on his songwriting.” Brian remembers the Queen singer was usually the first person to say if someone else’s vocals suited the track better. “In some cases, we argued and talked about and tried things out, and all sorts of different results happened. Usually, I felt, after trying it myself and trying it with Freddie, I would say, ‘Look, Freddie, you've made this into something greater than it was. So off you go, do it.’ And of course, as the years went on, we all got better at writing for Freddie. "So by the time I'm writing Fat Bottomed Girls, I'm writing it specifically for Freddie, with some experience behind me, and I know what he can do. I know what he can bring to it, so I'm encouraging it. So I think you'll find I sing less on the later Queen albums. And Roger too, because we had this wonderful singer in Freddie. Why wouldn't you use him the whole time? You just have to learn to give him the right stuff.” Of course, for over a decade now, Adam Lambert has been belting out Freddie’s vocals for Queen’s live performances. But the band haven’t performed since closing their Rhapsody Tour in Tokyo over two years ago.