Marc Martel

“I ended up taking piano lessons at a really young age, I took, like, years of piano lessons, and I always loved to sing.”

“The stuff that's good is the stuff that lives on.”

“It sure is cool that I was mentioned in 'Rolling Stone.'”

“I always loved music - it was always in the house - and my younger brother is musical, too.”

“Rock n' roll is the music where you can get away with pretty much saying everything, and it's OK. You can say truths in really interesting and good ways and really express yourself through it.”

“Everyone has their own tastes. Some people want to feel like it's Queen onstage, including the dress-up thing, but that's not my style. I do know some people love that and wish I would do it, but I have no interest in that.”

“Everyone has needs, but Food for the Hungry is something that people can grasp onto as a practical way to step outside of themselves, take a risk, and give.”

“I'm a huge mimic. That's how I learned to sing. I listened to a lot of Freddy Mercury, obviously.”

“'Bohemian Rhapsody' is my all-time favorite.”

“The name Downhere comes from a song I wrote after a friend of mine died in college, and it was kind of the first time I was dealing with loss and, you know, real mortality, and it was a song of how down here on Earth, we don't have the big picture.”

“When I was in my former band Downhere, I did everything I could not to remind people of Freddie Mercury, but it became almost hilarious how many people compared me to him to the point where it felt like it was working against the band when we tested singles at radio.”

“It's not like I'm pretending to be Freddie Mercury.”

“My biggest influences when I was a kid - I listened to a lot of top 40 radio, so whatever the big artists were, so, like, the mid-'80s.”

“My favorite thing about the Ultimate Queen Celebration is that we're not afraid to explore a non-traditional Queen set list.”

“If the Christian community responds to our music better because maybe we gained a little more credibility in the mainstream, then it's not ideal, it's not fun, it's not sexy, but I'll take it.”

“I grew up on a lot of gospel music.”

“Being compared to Freddie Mercury is something I've come to terms with. I don't know that I'll ever successfully avoid the comparisons, as much as I might want to. Why bother, though? People hear what they want to hear because it makes them feel good and gives them a momentary pause from a loss rock and roll has felt for years.”

“My favorite song to perform is 'Love of my Life.'”

“Rock and roll reaches people because it's honest and doesn't shy away from the issues.”

“Honestly, 198,9 I was 12 or 13 years old and primed for the new boy band thing. This guy Jordan Knight sounded like a chick, and I wanted to figure out how to do it, and I did.”