Queen: The Complete Works

by Georg Purvis

  Roger agreed, saying, “It was quite fun, this, ’cause it was a steam train, but we kept getting smut in our eyes – I just remember it streaming into the eyes. It was a fun video, sort of gimmicky in a way, but just a nice idea: The Miracle Express. Sticky hot day, I remember.” It’s evident that the band are having a good time, especially Brian, who commented on the Greatest Video Hits 2 DVD that his “personal life was starting to go to shit” and to be able to escape to the English countryside was a blessing. The entire affair was finished within two days, much to the relief of Freddie, who was appalled by the local hotel’s lack of air conditioning.

  An extended remix of the track was created and is superior to the standard version since it includes several new segments: the song kicks off with an echoed Freddie chanting the title (the whole ‘A New Life Is Born’ intro is omitted altogether) before leading into an energetic, though brief, instrumental section, featuring some great power-chord work by Brian and with the bass mixed more prominently. This version, coming close to six minutes, was included on the 12” and CD versions of the single, and was released on The 12” Collection in 1992, but was kept off the reissue of The Miracle.

  BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY (Reed)

  This Jimmy Reed tune was played live by 1984.

  BRIGHTON ROCK (May)

  • Album: SHA • Live: Killers, Wembley, On Fire, Montreal

  • CD Single: 11/88 • Live (Brian): Brixton

  • Live (Q+PR): Return, Ukraine

  Though the origin of ‘Brighton Rock’ dates all the way back to the Smile track ‘Blag’ from 1969, that was only the multi-tracked guitar solo which constitutes a majority of the song. With a set of lyrics that highlights a love-torn couple engaging in a holiday affair, the real star of the show here isn’t Freddie or his singing (especially when he takes the role of the female, which makes for a jarring listen) but the excellent performance of the instrumentalists. Roger and John hold together a tremendous rhythm section, with the bass allowing plenty of improvisation and even mirroring sections of Brian’s guitar extravaganza.

  The spotlight is all on Brian, though, who turns in an engaging performance, showing just how versatile his homemade guitar is over any traditional build: employing custom pickups and delay, he is allowed complete freedom to move about his solo. For guitar enthusiasts, it is a real treat; for regular fans, it’s a special bonus since it shows how unique a guitarist Brian is. “I’d gotten away from listening to Hendrix quite a bit by that time,” Brian explained in a 1983 BBC Radio One interview, “and I’d like to think that that was more sort of developing my style really. Particularly the solo bit in the middle, which I’d been doing on the Mott The Hoople tour and sort of gradually expanded and has got more and more ever since. Although I keep trying to throw it out, it keeps creeping back in. That involves the repeat device actually using it in time, which I don’t think, had been done before up to that time. It’s a very nice device to work with because you can build up harmonies or cross rhythms and it’s not a multiple repeat like Hendrix used or even The Shadows used, which is fairly indiscriminate, sort of makes a nice noise. But this is a single repeat, which comes back, and sometimes I’ll add a second one too. So you can actually plan or else experiment and do a sort of ‘phew’ type effect. So that was at its very beginnings on ‘Brighton Rock’, and [it] became more developed after that.”

  As mentioned above, the solo started life five years before its transformation into a real song; when Brian brought the song to Queen, it found its way into ‘Son And Daughter’, an excellent example that can be found on the Queen At The Beeb album, which extends the song well past seven minutes. Originally submitted (but rejected) for the Queen II sessions in August 1973, the song was developed in concert over the following year before it became an actual song recorded for the Sheer Heart Attack album, with several different working titles attributed to it, among them ‘Happy Little Fuck’, ‘Happy Little Day’, ‘Blackpool Rock’, ‘Bognor Ballad’, ‘Southend Sea Scout’, ‘Skiffle Rock’ and ‘Herne Bay’. Obviously, the band – and engineer Mike Stone, the culprit of these titles – were in a playful mood, but the song’s eventual released title is a reference to a type of hard candy that is sold only on the front at Brighton Beach.

  Of the officially released versions, the ultimate display of musical versatility was in 1979 on the Live Killers disc, which find the band blazing through a twelve-minute interpretation, complete with additional, quieter guitar portions and an extended timpani solo from Roger. Though the guitar solo always became a nightly feature of any Queen show, the actual song was dropped from the set list occasionally; an example of this was on the Live At Wembley Stadium CD, which is retitled ‘Brighton Rock Solo’. However, a decent live version is no good without visuals, which often showed Brian running around the stage as the lighting rig would pulsate and swirl, creating a truly awesome spectacle. The song was first officially introduced to the set list during the A Night At The Opera UK tour in 1975 and remained until the final show on 9 August 1986. Never one to drop a good thing, Brian incorporated variations of the solo into the Brian May Band’s set between 1992 and 1998, with the only officially released version on Live At The Brixton Academy in February 1994 under the title ‘Guitar Extravagance’.

  Inexplicably, the studio version was released on the CD single of ‘Killer Queen’ in November 1988; this marked the song’s only release on a single anywhere in the world.

  BRING BACK THAT LEROY BROWN (Mercury)

  • Album: SHA • Bonus: SHA

  Showing Queen’s versatility in all kinds of musical styles, ‘Bring Back That Leroy Brown’ is a throwback to the 1920s music hall style that would be explored more in-depth with ‘Seaside Rendezvous’ on A Night At The Opera. Though this song was a hidden gem on Sheer Heart Attack, it would become a staple of the medley between 1974 and 1976, where an up-tempo version was performed with minimal vocals.

  Freddie’s story of Leroy Brown (which alludes to Jim Croce’s 1972 song ‘Bad, Bad Leroy Brown’) is accompanied by a terrific jangle piano and ukulele backing, and is an energetic performance which also features John’s first attempts on a double bass; Brian even gets in a short but sweet banjo solo. While the results have divided Queen’s fans for years, there’s no denying the song is an excellent slice of Freddie’s eccentricity and musical creativity.

  BROTHER OF MINE

  Reportedly written by Brian and dating from sessions for The Miracle in 1988, ‘Brother Of Mine’ has been a rumoured track for years, recently revealed to be a slow ballad that may have evolved into an officially released track, either by Queen or on Brian’s solo album.

  BUSINESS (May)

  • A-side (Brian): 5/98 [51] • Album (Brian): World

  One of Brian’s hardest rockers, ‘Business’ features a great drum performance by the late Cozy Powell, and as the song chugs along at full throttle it allows Brian ample opportunities for guitar solos. The lyrics aren’t the strongest that Brian ever wrote, but his voice has certainly matured since his first album six years previously and his performance is credible. The song had a rather convoluted birthing process: in 1993, Brian was asked to provide the theme music for Frank Stubbs Promotes, a British TV show about a down-on-his-luck promoter coming to terms with his lot in life. Shown on ITV, the show ran between 1993 and 1994 but was ultimately cancelled due to poor ratings. ‘Business’, or ‘Hard Business’ as it was initially known, was provided as the theme music, and, listening to the original versions, it sounds as if little had changed between the first recorded version and the final version in 1998.

  Released as the first single from Another World in May 1998, ‘Business’ peaked at No. 51 in the UK, despite considerable promotion and a special edition release featuring a pictorial and audio tribute to Cozy Powell, who died in a car accident on 5 April, merely weeks away before rehearsals for the upcoming Another World tour. Retitled ‘The Business (Rock On Cozy Mix)’, the single opened with Cozy’s isolated drum parts before
kicking into the normal version, albeit slightly edited, and concluding with a thirty-second drum solo taken from Live At The Brixton Academy. Also included on the CD single was a track titled ‘Brian Talks’, which was Brian talking about Cozy, concluding with: “Cozy, if you’re listening, you were the best, and we all know it, and God rest you, mate – we love you.”

  A specially enhanced section was also included on the single, which featured the song intercut with Brian talking about the genesis of the song and also Cozy’s death. “‘Business’ started off as the theme for a TV series, and all they wanted was little bits, so I did little bits first, but there was a complete song in my head,” Brian explained. “So eventually we put it all together, and Cozy was a big part of that. [He] would come in at a certain point, after I had programmed it and sorted it all out, you know, bits of arrangement, Cozy would come in and say, ‘Ah, yeah, yeah, I see what you mean’, and he would do his thing, and then suddenly the thing would start to come to life, because that’s a human thing. You can programme until you’re blue in the face, you know, but you never get that sort of thing that comes from real people interacting. Cozy would always be a great energy source, and I’m gonna miss him terribly, you know. He was a big part of most of the tracks on this album. It’s something which stirs your guts in, in a particular way, and you know, to see Cozy hit those things, you felt something, you know, it wasn’t just hitting things in time, it was like everything had a certain menace to it and a certain joy. Cozy was very up, very funny.”

  BUTTERFLY

  During the In The Studio segment of The Magic Years, Brian is seen (and heard) fiddling around on a piano, playing a variation on the chords from ‘Save Me’. When asked later what the name of that song was, he vaguely recalled it was called ‘Butterfly’, but it’s likely that a more complete version does not exist.

  BYE BYE BIRD (Dixon/Williamson)

  This Willie Dixon song, covered by The Moody Blues and Eric Clapton, was played live by 1984.

  C-LEBRITY (Taylor/May/Rodgers)

  • A-side (Q+PR): 9/08 [33] • Album (Q+PR): Cosmos

  • Live (Q+PR): Ukraine

  Queen gained the ire of critics in their formative years, having not only songs that aped the crunch-and-swagger of Led Zeppelin, but also rising quickly through the ranks with what appeared to be a minimum of effort. Instead of slogging around clubs and pubs twelve months a year, building a loyal following, and then finally getting their big break after years of hard work, the band’s early shows were more infrequent, with at least Brian and John still uncertain that they would really “go” anywhere, while Freddie and Roger had more faith in their talents. Still, their collective focus wasn’t on progressing the band but on securing their futures through academics, while occasionally performing a gig or two to test the waters. Once music became the primary focus, however, they had attracted the attentions of record labels and studios alike, and their big break with ‘Seven Seas Of Rhye’ was a fluke: David Bowie dropped out of a Top Of The Pops appearance, and Queen were drafted as a back-up. The rest, of course, is history.

  Fast forward thirty-five years after the release of Queen’s debut album, and the climate had changed drastically. Pop stars were created on television, their advancement determined by a panel of curmudgeonly record moguls and washed-up, drugged-out former musicians, and their success chosen by a call- or text-in campaign. Their fifteen minutes of fame would be drawn out over a few months, with the aftershock lasting only until their first record arrived, by which time, a new series had begun and the world moved on to the next Big Thing.

  Roger, ever the outspoken wag, channelled his disbelief of instant success and media manipulation into ‘C-Lebrity’, a bitter recrimination on these fame-hungered stars. “It’s to do with the phenomenon of celebrity culture,” Roger told Classic Rock, “the desperation to get your face on the telly. The assumption that if somebody becomes famous they’ll also be rich is so naïve. It annoys me that there are so many famous, useless people.” Having once said his biggest fear was to become “old, rich and useless”, ‘C-Lebrity’ is a fitting diatribe from Roger, but his own status as a multi-millionaire who hadn’t created anything of worth (subjectivity notwithstanding) since 1998 – the last time he released an album’s worth of new songs – is more than a little hypocritical. Still, regardless of Queen’s own quick rise to fame, they worked hard to maintain their status and commercial standing, whereas contemporary stars are a one-and-done deal, and that no matter how good their follow-up albums may be, the fickle nature of the general public assures their success is ephemeral. “I think it’s an interesting lyrical idea, which came from Roger,” Brian said on the Bob & Tom Show in 2008. “It was his kind of comment on the ... yeah, the cult of personality, I suppose, and the cult of fame for its own sake, which to us is a very alien concept. I don’t think it really makes people very happy but it’s taken over the world for a little while.”

  With a gritty guitar riff, a thundering drum performance, and a stop-start rhythm, ‘C-Lebrity’ is a welcome return to the rock ‘n’ roll sound so sorely lacking on latter-day Queen albums. Even Brian, who sounds like he’s sleepwalking through a lot of The Cosmos Rocks (and probably didn’t appreciate the less than subtle jab at the We Will Rock You musical), sounds convinced, his vocal harmonies just as prominent as Roger’s, with Taylor Hawkins also helping out – the only outside musician to assist on the album. Paul, meanwhile, is committed enough, but his leonine roar is wasted on the trivial lyrics, which might have been better suited for Roger’s voice. Despite its lyrical drawbacks, though, ‘C-Lebrity’ is a fine rocker, and rightly released as the lead single from the album in September 2008. While it reached No. 1 in the UK Rock Chart, it peaked at a respectable No. 33 in the UK singles charts, though it was inexplicably premiered five months before its release on the series two finale of Al Murray’s Happy Hour. This remained the only heavy promotion the single received, with its TV appearance serving as its promotional video – confirming that either the band had little confidence in the song to waste money on a video no one would watch (a drastic assumption), or that, more realistically, they believed success was a given in name recognition alone. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, and the relative failure of ‘C-Lebrity’ was further ammunition for detractors and critics of the endeavour.

  The song earned a well-deserved spot in the 2008 Rock The Cosmos tour, and, along with ‘Cosmos Rockin” and ‘Say It’s Not True’, was performed at every show.

  CALL ME (Rodgers/May/Taylor)

  • Album (Q+PR): Cosmos

  Harking back to the lighter margins of Sheer Heart Attack and A Night At The Opera, Paul’s ‘Call Me’ was praised by Roger as having a “sort of spontaneous spontaneity about it”. Laid down in one take, with Paul on acoustic guitar and Roger on drums, before Brian overdubbed a suitably over-the-top Red Special solo, the song serves as a refreshing chaser to the weightier ‘We Believe’, but just don’t try to pull it apart for any deeper meanings.

  Stuck for a third single to promote the album, both ‘Call Me’ and ‘We Believe’ were serious contenders, with promotional discs released to radio late in October 2008. Considering the other strong single-worthy material on the album, ‘Call Me’ was a surprising choice, but in the end it didn’t matter; no single was released commercially, hinting at increasing tensions between the three primary musicians while on the 2008 Rock The Cosmos tour, and the world was deprived of a physical release of a song that contains little other than “Call me if you need my love” repeated twenty-one more times.

  CALLING ALL GIRLS (Taylor)

  • Album: Space • Bonus: Space

  The second of Roger’s songs for Hot Space is this energetic new wave rocker about the discovery of love. While ‘Action This Day’ was the sole song on Hot Space to successfully combine funk with rock and not make it sound totally removed from Queen’s sound, ‘Calling All Girls’ proved that Roger had one ear to the current trends, and that new wave, while a
passing fad, had kept his interest in faster songs alight. Not content with having played everything on his debut solo album, Roger played guitar on the song, which Brian confirmed in a 1982 On The Record interview: “I think Roger did the feedback tracks near the end of the break. You never know where things come from. Roger played a lot of guitar. He’s always bursting to play guitar.” Released as a US-only single in July 1982, two days before the band’s North American tour started, the song peaked at an abysmal No. 60, despite being heavily featured in the set list. A live version from a November 1982 performance in Tokyo was released both on Greatest Video Hits 2 in 2003 and again in 2011 on the reissue of Hot Space.

  The song was accompanied by an interesting promotional video, directed by Brian Grant and filmed at the same time as ‘Back Chat’. Taking a cue from George Lucas’ first film, THX-1138, the video shows the band in a robot-dominated society as Freddie cavorts with his lover, an attractive young female, only to be thrown in a cell by the robots. It’s up to Brian, Roger, and John to rescue their friend, and the humans band together to destroy the robots and save civilization. Roger, on viewing the video over twenty years later, was bewildered as to its meaning, wondering why such a complex idea was given to a simple song about love. Despite his criticisms, though, it really is a fine video, and is a welcome departure from the traditional performance videos the band usually filmed.