Interview: One Vision of Queen
Interview: One Vision of Queen
Marc Martel & One Vision of Queen to Headline Summer Music Festival
The music of Queen will fill the air, slope side, on Saturday, July 6th as “One Vision of Queen” takes the stage at this year’s Ellicottville Summer Music Festival.
Canadian vocalist, Marc Martel, was born in Montreal and formed his own band, Downhere, in 1999, having success for 13 years, winning five Juno Awards - the highest music award in his native Canada. Since then, Martel has become the lead singer for the critically acclaimed Queen Tribute Band, One Vision of Queen, and tours the globe selling out venues full of die hard Queen and Freddie Mercury fans.
His association with the legendary band seemed like his destiny, as people everywhere said he sounded so much like Freddie Mercury that a friend in the industry and his wife prompted him to audition for The Queen Extravaganza, a tribute band formed by the surviving members. Handpicked by Roger Taylor and Brian May after seeing his audition video singing “Somebody To Love”, finally convinced the singer there was something there that everyone else had been saying for years.
The difference with Martel is he doesn’t need to rely on the “staging” of Freddie Mercury to be convincing as the lead singer. “I won’t wear Mercury’s trademark yellow jacket, grow a full mustache or go onstage wielding his favored half microphone stand,” said Martel.
Honestly he doesn’t need any of the obvious props of the late singer to work the audience into a frenzy - he has the voice. Not an imitation of Mercury’s unique, automatically known voice, but his own voice, backed by the words of fans and critics.
I caught up with Martel while he was on tour in the Netherlands and we talked about what we can expect from his show, singing for Celine Dion, performing with the surviving members of Queen on American Idol and recording at the famed Abbey Road Studios in London.
Asking if he has a message for those coming out to see the show, Martel replied, “It's an incredible night of rock and roll with a little bit of a twist. People come out of the show having told themselves over and over again throughout the evening they didn't know that was a Queen song. You know, my mom thought that “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” was an Elvis song until I started performing Queen. Everyone will have a great time!”
For tickets and schedule of events for the Summer Music Festival visit: ellicottvilleny.com.
For information on Marc Martel visit: marcmartelmusic.com.
A CONVERSATION WITH MARC MARTEL
HULICK: Your music career actually started with your band Downhere, which you had for 13 years and was critically acclaimed all over the world. You went on to win five Juno awards in your native country Canada. That had to be an amazing ride.
MARTEL: Yeah, it was really cool to be recognized as Canadian artists in the highest way possible in our country. I remember the second time we got a Juno award, Bryan Adams made an appearance on stage and it was just really cool. It was the only time I'd ever seen him live, and just to be in the same room with him and part of the same event was super awesome! I really cherish my Juno awards.
HULICK: You’ve been compared to Freddie Mercury of Queen. A friend emailed you about a contest spearheaded by the original surviving members of Queen, looking for someone to be the front man of a tribute band called The Queen Extravaganza. After submitting your audition tape you were hand picked by the members. What were the emotions you were feeling when you got the news?
MARTEL: When the decision was posted, I went from around 150 views to like 50,000! By the end of the day, it was like a million or something. It was just absolutely nuts - confirmation that all the people that had been telling me that I sounded like Freddie Mercury for about 10 years. At that point, they were onto something. I never thought that it was anything terribly unique or special, but I was absolutely proven wrong.
HULICK: Were you a fan of Queen before all of this?
MARTEL: Actually, not at all growing up. I didn't even know who they were. It's not because I heard their music and didn't like it... I literally didn't know that there was a band called Queen until probably in my late teens, maybe 20 years old. I do remember hearing “Bohemian Rhapsody” in the movie Wayne's World in the early 90s, which would have been probably less than a year after Freddie Mercury passed away. I do remember that song making a huge impression on me because I'd never heard anything like it before. It was before the internet, so it's not like I went home and googled who that was. I just kind of heard the song and thought, ‘Wow, I didn't know you could do that with music’ - jam a bunch of different genres of music really into one piece. It was really mind blowing, and obviously the singer made an impression on me. Not for the obvious reasons. I mean I couldn't even tell if it was a man or a woman at first because it was such a light, airy voice and I realized ‘hey I can sort of do that with my voice’ and so kind of momentarily, I guess you could say, it opened my understanding of what a man can do with his voice.
HULICK: I want to mention a few of the achievements you’ve had and if you could please give me your thoughts. You’ve performed for multiple sports events and professional teams.
MARTEL: It's always a blast performing for professional teams. The music of Queen just lends itself to stadiums and arenas. It really is the epitome of arena rock, so when I get to play for the occasional NFL game, it's a pretty wild feeling being in the middle of a huge field that is usually occupied by like 30 large dudes. It's just me by myself on the piano and people are singing along. It's pretty crazy
HULICK: In 2016 you performed for Celine Dion.
MARTEL: Yeah, so I got to play at a TV show taping honoring the career of Celine Dion with her present. The way they put the show together is they gave Celine a questionnaire to fill out, like for example, what is your favorite song that you sing, what is your first hit, what is the first song you remember your mom singing to you... it's kind of like a Quebec version of This Is Your Life. The last question on the questionnaire was ‘Is there anyone in this questionnaire that you haven't mentioned that you would like to see perform at the night honoring you and who would it be?’ and she put down my name, which I'm still kind of in shock over. So I got to get up there and be a surprise guest. I don't think she knew I was gonna be there. She may have suspected it, but I got to sing "Somebody to Love" for her. Before I performed, there was an artist that got up on stage and performed her and her late husband's favorite song. So she was already in tears when I stepped onto the stage and I think my performance only augmented and amplified the emotions she was already feeling.
HULICK: Recording at Abbey Road Studios in London.
MARTEL: Yeah, I mean obviously as a musician there's really no higher pedigree of a recording studio that you can possibly imagine. Abbey Road is it. The Beatles and everyone after them, who's worth anything, recorded at Abbey Road. I got to spend a couple weeks there doing my favorite thing, which is singing, and doing my very best to sound as much like Freddie Mercury as I possibly can. It was a blast, and I hope that I get the chance to do something like that again. I mean, that was, for me, my highest calling as a musician.
HULICK: You performed with the surviving members of Queen on American Idol.
MARTEL: Yeah, the American Idol performance in 2012 was the first time that The Queen Extravaganza, the official Queen tribute band, ever performed together. We never performed in front of anyone. So they decided to throw us into the deep end by putting us on the most highly viewed show in America at the time, American Idol. I think the viewership that night was about 20 million. So really high pressure, not to mention that I was singing right in front of one of my other favorite singers of all time, Steven Tyler, who was sitting there as a judge. Obviously we weren't competing on the show, we were guest artists, but that was an absolutely mind blowing experience to do that and share the stage with Brian and Roger as well. I think we knocked it out of the park that night, that was my introduction to performing Queen and it’s going to be a hard one to top.
HULICK: You were involved in the amazing award winning biopic Bohemian Rhapsody starring Rami Malek.
MARTEL: Yes. I think everyone knew that it was a long awaited movie. There's millions and millions of Queen fans all over the world, so I had a feeling it was already going to be a success from the get-go, but I don't think anyone could have predicted just how big and how important of a movie it was gonna be. It once again reignited the world's absolute obsession with Queen and Freddie Mercury, and the enigma that he was and the legacy that he left the world. That's obviously gonna far outlive the members of Queen and it's gonna outlive me but that's really what the best music in the world does.
HULICK: What can you expect from your show?
MARTEL: My show is a different type of tribute show than people typically think of when they think of tribute shows... especially a Queen tribute show, because those tend to be really dress-up shows. You know someone's gonna be up on stage with a yellow jacket at some point, maybe even a fake mustache - you know the drill. That's not what I do, that's not what my band does at all, we come on stage as ourselves. For us, it's really all about the music and making sure that we sound more like Queen than anyone alive today. The fact that I come as myself gives me a chance to tell my real story about how my life intersected with the music of Queen, with Freddie Mercury, and what that means to me as an artist. It's really a bizarre story that I could have never predicted and it's a heck of a lot of fun to tell. So it's a blast. It's all the rock and roll you could wish for.