Lights Down, Volume Up
Gary Mullen & The Works Return to Columbus This Sunday For One Night of Queen
By Monica Jones
When Gary Mullen answers the phone, he doesn’t sound like a man easing his way to the finish line of a long tour. He sounds wired. Focused. Laughing, he jokes that his recovery playlist has basically been “Eye of the Tiger on repeat,” all in preparation for finally making it to Columbus. After illness forced the postponement of September’s highly anticipated kickoff performance at RiverCenter for the Performing Arts, Mullen and his band, The Works, are officially on their way back. This Sunday, December 7, they’ll bring their worldwide touring production One Night of Queen to the RiverCenter stage—and this time, it’s not just another date on the calendar. It’s the last night of their tour, and Columbus is getting them “all guns blazing.”
For fans, it’s more than a rescheduled date. It’s a second chance to see one of the world’s most acclaimed Freddie Mercury interpreters at full strength. Mullen laughed as he talked about recovering, calling getting sick “the most un-Freddie thing” he’s ever done. But he made it clear that nothing—not even a setback—dampens the thrill of stepping on stage. “When you’ve done this as long as we have, you don’t take any audience for granted,” he said. “This is it, here’s the finish line. We’re going to give you everything we’ve got. You guys are going to get all the energy we have left.”
That energy has been honed on the road across the U.S. and Europe as the band wraps its Works 40th Anniversary Tour, celebrating the 1984–85 era of Queen. Columbus will see that show at its most polished—the version that’s been tightened, tuned, and teased into peak form after dozens and dozens of performances. “This is the show you should have seen in September,” he said. “You’re getting the very best we can give. If someone leaves and doesn’t enjoy it, sorry—we can’t give you anything else. We’ve left everything on the stage.”
Onstage, Mullen leads guitarist David “Davey” Brockett, bassist Alan McGeoch, drummer Jon Halliwell, and keyboardist Malcolm Gentles through a two-hour rock spectacle of hits, deep cuts, lights, smoke, and pure theater in the spirit of Queen’s most iconic tours. Offstage, he’s quick to credit the crew as “the unsung heroes,” the people who quietly assemble and dismantle the rig every night. “Average Joe walks into a venue, sits down, watches a concert and goes home thinking it’s all just there,” he said. “But it takes a team to put all that equipment together, build the lighting rig, the stage set, put all the instruments out, and then load it all into a truck at the end. We always make a point of thanking them.”
If there’s one thing Mullen is determined to break in a theater like the RiverCenter, it’s the idea that a seated venue means a seated audience. Southern crowds, he says, rarely need much convincing. “Southern audiences get rockin’ in a big way,” he said. “You walk out and say, ‘Thanks for coming,’ and you get, ‘Yeah, man, rock and roll,’ usually with an expletive before it.” What he doesn’t want is for anyone to treat One Night of Queen like a quiet evening at the symphony. “If they’re sitting down, I tell them, this isn’t Hamilton,” he said, laughing. “It’s not a musical. It’s rock and roll. If you want to dance, dance. If you want to sing, sing. Clap your hands till they fall off. Get involved in the show, because it’s your show.”
For all the modern habits of concert-going, Mullen still believes the best nights are the ones people actually live, not record. He jokes that he’s a bit old-school about it—grab a quick clip if you want, then tuck the phone away and get lost in the music—except when “Bohemian Rhapsody” turns the room into a sea of lights and everyone becomes part of the show.
That sense of shared ownership extends to the way he talks about Freddie Mercury and Queen’s legacy. Mullen has spent decades studying the man behind the myth, even befriending Freddie’s former personal assistant, Peter Freestone, and collecting stories about the real person behind the legend. He’s still genuinely moved by Freddie’s devotion to his fans—staying after dinners, crossing rooms to sign autographs, and greeting people who waited for him. “To be a star of that calibre and to really care about your fans like that blew me away,” Mullen said. He’s equally struck by Mercury’s final chapter: still recording in the studio just weeks before his death, choosing to stop treatment on his own terms. “That’s superhuman,” Mullen said. “Heartbreaking, but incredibly brave.”
It’s that honesty he thinks Freddie would appreciate most about what One Night of Queen tries to do. “You can’t dial in a performance,” he said. “The audience would see through that. With Queen, there was an honesty to the music and the performance—it was all or nothing. Blind and deafen them by song four, leave them crying for more. That’s our mission.” As lifelong fans themselves, the band sees familiar emotions ripple through the crowd when certain songs begin. A ballad like “Save Me” can hit someone’s old heartbreak; a younger fan might be discovering “Somebody to Love” for the first time from their parents’ vinyl collection. “New kids come to the show and tell me their favorite album or song,” Mullen said. “They’ve just discovered it, and they’re singing along, and I’m thinking, brilliant—you’ve found something special.”
In our call, Mullen lit up when asked what he hopes Columbus takes from Sunday’s performance. “These songs belong to everyone,” he said. “They meant something when Freddie sang them, and they still mean something now. If we can bring even a piece of that spirit back to life for a night… that’s the magic.”
Life on the road, he admits, isn’t the nonstop party people imagine. Most days are a cycle of hotels, buses, and the strange whiplash of playing to thousands at night and waking up alone in a quiet room. “It’s a weird way to make a living,” he said. “Brilliant, but weird. You’ve got to be a bit mad to be a performer.” There are favorite tour stops—San Antonio’s riverwalk, New England’s coastal towns, history-rich corners of Massachusetts—but on this leg, the focus is finishing strong. After Columbus, it’s back to Atlanta, then long-haul flights home to the U.K. “People think it’s sex, drugs, and rock and roll,” he joked. “It is—without the sex and the drugs. It’s just the rock and roll.”
Through it all, he remains genuinely grateful that people still show up night after night, especially when a show has been rescheduled. “Thank you for waiting,” he said when asked what he’d like to tell Columbus fans who held onto their tickets. “We really, really appreciate people coming to the show, and if they’ve kept their tickets and are coming back, they deserve everything we’ve got. It’s going to be five guys on stage, all guns blazing, and a crew who’ve worked their absolute butts off. We just hope everyone feels the energy, loses themselves in the concert, and has a damn good time.”
This Sunday, December 7, at RiverCenter for the Performing Arts, Columbus finally gets the night it’s been waiting for—only now, it’s not just the kickoff of a season; it’s the farewell roar of a tour. Mullen says he’ll probably step to the mic and lead with the obvious: “Sorry we’re late. Better late than never.” From there, the mission is simple: lights down, volume up, and no chance to sit back and relax.
And for anyone who loves Queen—even a little—this is the show you don’t want to miss.
One night. One stage. One band honoring one of the greatest voices in rock history.