Queen tribute band brings ‘Magic Tour’ back to Tucson

It will be the third straight year that the Scottish Queen tribute band Gary Mullen & The Works has performed at the historic downtown venue.

“The crowd seemed to love us, which is a good thing,” frontman Mullen said last week from a concert stop in San Francisco. “It's nice to come back to somewhere and know the venue and know the city … and know that we'll probably see some familiar faces that have seen us before.”

Mullen, who has been keeping the Brit rock band’s memory alive for 26 years and counting, could see some entirely new faces among the familiar on Sunday when his band performs the 40th anniversary of Queen’s “The Magic Tour.”

“It was Queen’s final tour with Freddie (Mercury) and it never came to America,” said Mullen, a former computer salesman who has been imitating the Queen lead singer since he won the British TV talent show “Stars in Their Eyes.” “So we thought, you know what? Let's bring it to America. Let's do that show and give the American audiences a taste of what they would have seen if (Queen) had actually brought it to the U.S.”

Mullen said the band’s show on Sunday will follow the original 1986 tour set list, drawing songs from the band’s 12th studio album “A Kind of Magic” alongside Queen’s greatest hits — “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “We Will Rock You,” “We Are the Champions,” “'Another One Bites the Dust,” “Under Pressure,” “Radio Ga Ga” and deep album cuts arranged as medleys.

“It's something that the only way you could watch was to buy the DVD or go on YouTube and watch the snippets of the concert. Diehard fans totally get it,“ Mullen said. “We've crammed a lot of songs into the show this year. It’s the longest show we’ve every played.”

Queen set out on “The Magic Tour” in early summer 1986, a year after the band’s landmark “Live Aid” set at Wembley Stadium. The 26-show stadium tour crisscrossed Western Europe and included a historical show in Hungary. It was one of the first concerts by a major rock band behind the Iron Curtain.

The tour was the last for Mercury, who was diagnosed with AIDS the following spring. He and Queen recorded two more albums before he died in 1991; the band’s 1995 album “Made In Heaven” featured vocal and piano tracks the band recorded with Mercury in early 1991 in Switzerland.

“A Kind of Magic” served as the soundtrack for the 1986 movie “Highlander,” which became a cult classic despite being a colossal box office failure. The album sold more than 6 million copies.

Gary Mullen & The Works, largely regarded as one of the world’s best Queen tribute acts, launched “The Magic Tour” anniversary show in Europe early this year before bringing it to the U.S. East Coast last spring. The West Coast/Midwest leg runs through early September.

When Mullen and the band return to his native Scotland in the fall, the performer, who with his wig and makeup bears a striking resemblance to Mercury, will flip the switch and return to his everyday life.

“When it comes to the show, I'm the other guy, you know. When I'm standing in the wings, and I've sort of hyped myself up to go on stage, then the other guy takes over; he does the show,” said Mullen, whose singing voice spans midrange baritone to middle and high tenor similar to Mercury’s. “This guy stays in the wings, and then the show finishes, and then I come back out. The other guy is put in the case. … It's like an act in the play. You perform and then you're done and you're back to being you again.”

Sunday’s show starts at 7 p.m. at the Fox, 17 W. Congress St. Tickets are $24-$84 through foxtucson.com.