He will, he will rock you

PAUL RODGERS in tights?

Don’t worry. The quintessential blue-collar rock singer isn’t going that far as he slips behind the wheel of one of pop music’s most supercharged vehicles: Queen, the English band whose classic songs from the ‘70s and ‘80s are indelibly linked with Freddie Mercury, the flamboyant and flashy-dressing frontman who died of AIDS complications in 1991.

“Obviously I’m not trying to replace Freddie. He’s one of a kind,” says Rodgers, setting up a fine rhetorical distinction. After all, he is on the road with Queen’s guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor, singing Queen songs and a few of his own hits. They’ll be at the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday.

“The way I approached this was on a musical level,” he adds. “I thought, I’ll just be myself. I’ve got great musicians here, they’re great songs, just sing them the way I do, and that’s really been my approach. Very simple.”

Simple has always been Rodgers’ style, ever since he asserted himself in the early ‘70s with the blues-rooted rock bands Free and Bad Company. His expressive, sinewy voice had power, range and a grainy emotional directness. Though he’s far from household-name status in the U.S., Rodgers, 55, is widely ranked as one of British rock’s great pure singers.

Queen? Not so simple. The quartet became one of the most popular, influential and enduring bands of its era, with a dizzyingly diverse body of work that ranged from faux-opera to funk, rockabilly to progressive-rock, metal to music hall. Its anthems “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions” became part of the vernacular, crossing over from rock arenas to sports stadiums.

So it seems like an odd fit -- the stolid, earthy singer from Yorkshire and the aristocratic Londoners. But here they are, with May and Taylor bashing out “Tie Your Mother Down” and “Another One Bites the Dust” on the road for the first time since 1986.

Pointedly billed as Queen + Paul Rodgers to reinforce the notion that the singer isn’t “replacing” Mercury, the enterprise (which is rounded out by support musicians, but without retired Queen bassist John Deacon) stems from an impromptu song swap at a London awards event last November, when May and Taylor backed Rodgers on Free’s hit “All Right Now.”

“In return, they said, ‘Well, can you sing a couple of Queen songs?’ ” Rodgers recalls. “And I thought, well, that sounds like fun.”

After finishing “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions,” the singer says, everybody was immediately ready to take it on the road.

Rodgers says that concert promoters “went nuts” when the group proposed a couple of dates in London just for fun. It developed into a globetrotting itinerary that started with a sold-out 32-date tour of Europe and includes an upcoming foray into Japan, with two U.S. dates, in New Jersey and at the Bowl, squeezed in.

So what’s it like at the eye of the storm?

“There was a Wembley [live] DVD that they have which is quite incredible,” Rodgers says. “You see everybody going, ‘All we hear is

“I’d had to learn some 18 songs very, very quickly, and the audiences actually knew every nuance of every song. They knew on the original where Freddie breathed even.... And they were actually louder than me. They were teaching me, so it was very interesting.”

RODGERS says that plans are open-ended, and that as long as audiences are enjoying it he’ll keep doing it -- up to a point.

“This is not something I really want to spend the rest of my life doing anyway.... The audiences have accepted it totally, which has been great,” he says. “But I have solo commitments and there are a lot of things that I want to do quite apart from this. But this is definitely a great musical experience.”

Maybe, it’s also one more in an endless string of stations in a 3 1/2 -decade career whose constant fluctuations have kept Rodgers’ profile low, despite the millions of records he’s sold. Other stops have included the Firm, his collaboration with Jimmy Page, and several solo albums.

“It’s pretty much by choice,” he says. “I think my problem, if I have a problem, is that I’m a little bit averse to corporations, and I don’t like being controlled. All of the success that has perhaps eluded me is because I’ve walked away from it; it hasn’t walked away from me.

“With Free, I left at the height of its fame because I didn’t like the corporate nature of the way it was going. A similar thing with Bad Company, actually. I like to feel that I’m my own boss and that I’m free, and corporations like to own you, I’m afraid,” he adds. “I measure success in terms of personal happiness, and I am extremely happy.”

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Queen + Paul Rodgers

Where: Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., Hollywood

When: 8 p.m. Saturday

Price: $30 to $200

Info: (213) 480-3232