Still rocking you at 40

It is 40 years since the rock band Queen was formed, but their influence is as pervasive as ever.

Queen in 1977. Left to right, John Deacon, Freddie Mercury, Brian May and Roger Talyor.

When, 40 years after they became part of one of the most famous rock bands in the world, Brian May and Roger Taylor stepped out to help launchan exhibition held in London in February to mark the anniversary, the pair hit the red carpet alongside The Foo Fighters, the rising pop chanteuse Jessie J and the comedian and Fast Show star Paul Whitehouse. One could not fail to be reminded of the breadth and longevity of Queen's appeal.

Even before you get to the preposterous brilliance of Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen's vivid, rollicking story is of the "you couldn't make it up" variety, and even after Freddy Mercury - born Faroukh Bulsara in Zanzibar - died in 1991 aged 45, Queen - or Queen the brand, at least - has refused to leave the spotlight. When the bassist John Deacon retired from duty after 1992's Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, he effectively left the upkeep of the band's legacy to May and Taylor. He was, however, involved in 1995's mawkishly titled Made in Heaven, a final Queen studio album that made posthumous use of unreleased Mercury vocals.

Unsurprisingly, reviews were mixed, and it would be almost a decade before May and Taylor tried anything quite so bold. In 2004 they formed the self-explanatory Queen + Paul Rodgers. Alas, many critics thought The Cosmos Rocks, their 2008 album with the former Free singer, more distasteful than Made in Heaven, and even today, musical life without Mercury continues to have its trials. "People say, 'You're mistreating the legacy'," Taylor told The Sunday Times recently. "I think, thanks for your concern, but it's my [expletive] legacy."

At 63 and 61 respectively, May and Taylor seem more at ease with a future that will probably see more gongs for past glories than it will new musical ventures. The 40th anniversary of Queen's formation has legitimised a lingering look back, and it has been years since the band seemed quite so visible. The Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins has helped May and Taylor to compile Deep Cuts Volume One, 1973-1976, a newly released compilation, and the pair recently helped in the launching of a set of Royal Mail stamps, one of which celebrates the ongoing success of the Queen musical We Will Rock You, a production that has been seen by some 11 million people over the past nine years.

Impressive as such achievements are, 2012 will probably see Queen's story reach an even bigger audience. Hollywood has staked a claim in the band's legacy, and the filming of an as-yet-untitled Freddie Mercury biopic is under way with the comedian Sacha Baron Cohen playing the Queen singer. Cohen, no stranger to the bushy moustache, should be an excellent fit visually, but how the film will go about reproducing Mercury's Rolls Royce of a voice is anybody's guess. If Cohen is to sing the parts himself he'll need an alchemist, not a vocal coach.

We read that the biopic's script is by Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon; The Damned United) and focuses on events leading up to Queen's performance at Live Aid in 1985, so it will be interesting to see if it touches upon the band's gigs in Sun City, South Africa, in October of 1984. Much deplored at the time and since, these concerts blatantly defied a United Nations cultural boycott, and resulted in Queen being accused of supporting apartheid. Writing about the matter in The Guardian in 2005, John Harris called the band "cloth headed, deluded and impossibly arrogant".

Still, it's for the triumph that was their Live Aid performance that Queen will be remembered most. True, Mercury was by that point a less exotic and more comedic-looking figure than in his heyday, but he was still the consummate showman.

Queen had rehearsed at London's Shaw Theatre for a week before taking Live Aid's Wembley Stadium stage on Saturday, July 13, 1985 for the Ethiopian famine relief mega-event. Mercury held the 80,000 strong crowd - plus a television audience of around 1.5 billion - in the palm of his hand. Opening with Bohemian Rhapsody - always a tricky beast to reproduce live - proved a risky masterstroke, and soon came Radio Ga Ga, We Will Rock You and WeAre the Champions, three stadium anthems that played out rather well on Live Aid's global jukebox.

One of those watching was a 16-year-old Dave Grohl, then six years away from joining Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic in Nirvana, and some 16 years away from inviting Brian May and Roger Taylor up on stage to play with his band, The Foo Fighters. "Everybody played that gig and Queen smoked 'em all," Grohl later recalled of Live Aid. "They walked away being the greatest band you'd ever seen in your life." Punk and the Sun City debacle had threatened to topple Queen, but in the end, only Mercury's death could dethrone them.