SWANSEA: ‘Do people want to see me live?’ Queen’s Roger Taylor ahead of his arena show

Queen drummer Roger Taylor says kindness is what the world is forgetting, as he prepares to end his only UK tour of the year in Swansea.

Taylor plays Swansea Building Society Arena on Tuesday 29 September, the closing night of his six-date Violence Insane in a Beautiful World tour and his only Welsh show of 2026.

He picked the city to close the tour when the dates were announced in June. The show comes 11 days after the album of the same name, his first since 2021’s Outsider, is released on 18 September through Columbia.

Speaking ahead of the tour, the 77-year-old joked: “I mean, do people want to see me live? I would hope some would.

“I thought I’d put a toe in the water, and so we’re going to do this handful of dates in some special venues. You know, I don’t want to play clubs. I certainly won’t be playing arenas.”

The album takes aim at the state of the world, and Taylor is blunt about its message: “It’s in the title really: What a beautiful world we live in, don’t f*** it up!

“There seems to be all this insanity at the moment. The violence in the world seems to be as bad as it ever was at any point, and certainly in my lifetime. It’s just horrific, a lot of insane violence, these awful wars and hatred born of different religions.”

But he insists the tone is hopeful: “It’s a beautiful world, you know, and kindness is very important, but I think it seems to be forgotten quite a lot.”

There was no single spark for the record, he said, just time in his studio with co-producer Josh Macrae until “suddenly it seemed to complete itself”.

One late addition transformed it. The Ndlovu Youth Choir, from Limpopo in South Africa, feature on three tracks including the single Come On Summer (It’s Party Time).

“I became aware of this amazing South African choir, who sing in Zulu, they are just wonderful,” Taylor said. “They did the most incredible cover version of Bohemian Rhapsody, and it’s fabulous. I couldn’t believe it when I heard it.”

Asking them onto the album, he said, “transformed those songs. It gives them a whole new dimension.”

Looking back over five decades of writing, he called songwriting “so hit and miss”, picking out Radio Ga Ga as “quite a breakthrough for me” alongside A Kind of Magic and These Are the Days of Our Lives.

And the drums? “I still love playing the drums. Well, I’m obviously a bit older now, and I couldn’t thrash them like my son Rufus Tiger does; he’s one hell of a drummer!”

Taylor, who has sold more than 300 million albums with Queen, said the band’s perfectionism in the studio was repaid in longevity: “You couldn’t go back and fix stuff like you can now. You had to get the perfect take, and it was tricky; a lot of patience was involved.”

“It’s lovely to think that you might have affected people’s lives in a good way, brought them a little bit of joy or something like that,” he added. “I hope we did and do give a lot of people a lot of pleasure.”

The Swansea date follows shows in Newcastle, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Manchester and London, with remaining tickets and the album available at rogertaylor.live.