Freddie Mercury Will ‘Appear’ in Queen Show, Guitarist Says

Legendary rock group Queen will have a special surprise for those in attendance at its concert later on today in London: a special appearance from the late Freddie Mercury.

Considering that we just saw this sort of thing when a hologram of Tupac performed at Coachella, it would be easy to think that the band “borrowed” the idea to put Mercury on the stage in a similar way. Not exactly, says Queen guitarist Brian May.

Speaking to the BBC, May said that the band had been looking into how they could get Mercury on stage for some time. At one point the prospect of using a hologram, like with the Tupac performance, was being considered, but the group decided to go with something else–what May describes as being an “optical illusion” of sorts.

“It’s a little unfortunate they did that thing with Tupac as we’ve been trying to make Freddie appear on the stage for quite a while,” he said. “[That technique] is something we’ve looked at ourselves but I think probably for a show that runs eight shows a week it’s not really quite practical.”

May didn’t go into detail on just what sort of technological trickery they’ll be using to make Freddie appear on-stage, but he did promise that attendees at the May 14 show will come out saying, “Did we actually see Freddie?”

Do you think that it’s weird to put Freddie Mercury, or Tupac for that matter, on-stage by way of holograms or “optical illusions”?