As part of this year’s celebration of QUEEN's 40th anniversary, Queen drummer/songwriter/singer Roger Taylor is launching a North American talent search that will offer “shitt hot vocalists and musicians” the opportunity to star in the Queen Extravaganza Live Tour.

Taylor will endeavour to assemble the most talented band to perform Queen’s music, outside of Queen themselves, of course, to carry on the celebration. Auditions begin today, September 19th at queenextravaganza.com and the tour, booked by powerhouse agency CAA, launches in 2012.

Auditions are open to vocalists, guitarists, drummers, bass players and keyboard players.

“The Queen Extravaganza will not be a traditional tribute show,” says Taylor. “It’s a brand-new show specially designed to enable fans to celebrate the music of Queen in a heart-stopping event.”

The Queen Extravaganza will bring the glorious music and live experience of Queen to a new generation of fans in cities across the US in 2012.

“It’s going to be spectacular” says Taylor. “It’s going to be very visual, there are going to be some shocks and some tremendous surprises. It will be a rock celebration in the royal tradition.”

Beginning today, Taylor will launch a North American talent search to find players for a 5-piece band and three vocalists who will carry the tour. Taylor is fully hands-on in the creation of The Extravaganza, taking the role of producer and music director.

Coming on board to ensure the touring show will match the design and excitement of Queen at its best will be such rock tour heavyweights as stage designer Mark Fisher (U2, AC/DC, MUSE, THE ROLLING STONES, Cirque de Soleil) and lighting designer Rob Sinclair (ADELE, VAMPIRE WEEKEND, GOLDFRAPP, PETER GABRIEL), and for the auditions, Roger Taylor and a panel of renowned musicians.

The audition process involves two video audition rounds to be judged by both a panel of appointed judges and the public. Taylor will be present to judge the final audition round, which will be held live in Los Angeles in early December. In addition, VEVO, the world’s leading music video and entertainment platform, will unveil exclusive content from each audition round as well as and The Queen Extravaganza finals.

In a special tribute, VEVO will also showcase classic Queen videos including 'Bohemian Rhapsody', 'Another One Bites The Dust', 'We Will Rock You', 'Under Pressure', 'We Are The Champions', 'Fat Bottomed Girls', 'Crazy Little Thing Called Love' and 'You’re My Best Friend' across their platform over the next few weeks.

Taylor, a man whose drum skills and songwriting talents have contributed to over 300 million record sales and over 700 live concerts in every part of the world, says: “There are great musicians everywhere, and this is a really exciting challenge for us to try and unearth some of those musicians from the US.”

In related news, RollingStone.com's Steve Baltin has issued an interview with Roger Taylor, in which he discusses The Queen Extravaganza. An excerpt follows:

Q: It's a very interesting and daring concept for The Queen Extravaganza, which isn't everything Queen did extravagant?

A: "I'm very glad you think that. Also, we thought Extravaganza was the perfect name for something produced by Queen (laughs). Essentially we're producing our own show using our own footage and production values to make a show because let's face it, we're getting a little long in the tooth, but there are an awful lot of tribute bands, some of them good, some of them not good. And we put together something that we felt was purely extraordinary."

Q: You mention being long in the tooth, but you guys have still been active as a band and toured with other vocalists.

A: "Absolutely, even last week Brian [May] and I did a charity thing for Freddie's birthday, we had Jeff Beck, which was fantastic, and a lot of other guys, the guy from Keane, Tom Chaplin. So we can still do it, but I don't really think I want to travel around the world doing it anymore. And, of course, not having Freddie has always made it difficult for the last 20 years. It's a big hurdle, [but] this is a way of keeping our music alive and doing it to our standards."

Read the full interview at this location.