Queen: The Complete Works

by Georg Purvis

  FOREIGN SAND (Taylor/Yoshiki)

  • Album (Roger): Happiness? • A-side (Roger): 9/94 [26]

  Just to show that Freddie and Brian weren’t the only ones who could produce mini-masterpieces, Roger outdid himself with ‘Foreign Sand’, clocking in just under seven minutes while trying to redefine the term ‘magnum opus’. This also marked one of the more successful collaborations that Roger would undertake over the course of his vast solo career, this time recording with Japanese musician Yoshiki. Born Yoshiki Hayashi on 20 November 1965, he started playing piano at the age of four but later switched to the drums after his father bought him a set; it was this very instrument on which he released his anger and pain when his father committed suicide in 1975. In high school, he and some of his friends formed the band X, which later enjoyed success in the late 1980s with the singles ‘Orgasm’ and ‘I’ll Kill You’. “I was contacted by a man called Yoshiki,” Roger explained in 1994. “We met, and we got on very well and we decided that we would do an ‘east/west’ collaboration. In the end, he wrote simply the music – this guy’s an amazing concert pianist – and also an incredibly able rock drummer. So he sent me the music and I thought the music was great, and we talked about that a little bit, then we changed it a little, and I sent him some lyrics and the top nine back.” Yoshiki explained, “When I was in London, Roger invited me to his house and we were talking about racial problems, discrimination, segregation ... I just told Roger, ‘Can we do something about that?’ and we decided to make some songs for singing about segregation.”

  With Yoshiki performing drums, piano, synthesizer and arrangements, Jim Cregan on guitars, Phil Chen (who had previously worked with Brian in 1983 on Star Fleet Project) on bass, Dick Marx on strings arrangement, and Brad Buxer and Geoff Grace on programming, the instrumental arrangement is a triumph: with tremendous degrees of light and shade, building up to glorious crescendoes and falling silent to barely perceptible whispers of piano. But an epic ballad is only as good as its words, and, tackling the futility and pointlessness of racial inequality, the song urges the world to be more accepting and loving of each other. In the post-Live Aid musical climate, and at a time when grunge rock was seen as the antithesis of pacifism and harmony, the message of ‘Foreign Sand’ is naïve yet simple, and, given the subject matter of ‘Nazis 1994’, a much-needed message.

  The song was issued as the second single from Happiness? in September 1994, with ‘You Had To Be There’ as the B-side (12” and CD versions added the re-recording of ‘Final Destination’ with Yoshiki). Understandably, the song’s running time was an issue, though Roger was willing to make a concession and edit the track to a more managable four and a half minutes, dropping and creating new musical sections. While the result isn’t quite as dramatic, it’s more digestible, and reached a well-earned No. 26 in the UK charts, becoming Roger’s final Top Thirty single as a solo artist. Because of Roger’s involvement with Yoshiki, the song was a hit in Japan, peaking at No. 13, with its success a catalyst for Roger’s first solo dates there.

  A video for the single, also featuring Yoshiki, was filmed in July 1994 in Los Angeles, but has rarely been seen outside of promotional viewings and an electronic press kit. Directed by Jeff Richter, the video portrays Roger standing with hands folded on a beach, as images of gruesome race riots and IRA car bombings pass by behind him, superimposed on screens within picture frames, with grand, sweeping shots Yoshiki either behind a drum set or looking like a mad professor at a concert piano at sunset.

  FOREVER (May)

  • 12” B-side: 9/86 [24] • Bonus: AKOM

  Though no match for the superior ‘Who Wants To Live Forever’, Brian’s melancholy ‘Forever’ is a gorgeous, instrumental piano version of the aforementioned epic. Performed exclusively by Brian, it shows his proficiency on piano, an instrument that, by 1986, was only rarely used for composition by the band. Included on the 12” issue of ‘Who Wants To Live Forever’ in September 1986, the song was also included as a bonus cut on the CD version of A Kind Of Magic.

  46664 (THE CALL) (Queen)

  • Live: 46664

  Credited to Queen but written by Brian, ‘46664 (The Call)’ was submitted for Nelson Mandela’s 46664 campaign, and recorded during the March 2003 Cape Town sessions. Imploring listeners to “make the call” to support AIDS research and charities, the message of the song is heartfelt and well-intentioned but is lost in approach: the arrangement is abrasive and confrontational, but in all the wrong ways, with Brian’s voice, normally well-suited for ballads, completely at odds with its heavy arrangement. It’s hard to fault Brian for this song and his message, but ‘46664 (The Call)’ is plain dire, and the nadir of the Cape Town sessions. The song was premiered on Capitol Radio in 2003, but, as with the rest of the original recordings from those sessions, rightly remains unreleased. In 2007, in anticipation of Queen + Paul Rodgers’ first studio album, a fan wrote to Brian’s website and asked him of the fate of ‘46664 (The Call)’, and if it would be on the new album; Brian responded that it would be something for him to consider, but, thankfully, the only 46664 song on The Cosmos Rocks was a rearranged ‘Say It’s Not True’.

  FOXY LADY (Hendrix)

  • CD (The Cross): MBADTK • Live (The Cross): Bootleg

  A perfunctory run-through of Jimi Hendrix’s 1967 classic, The Cross’ version of ‘Foxy Lady’ hardly improves on the original, adding very little except for appropriate Hendrix-inspired guitar solos by Clayton Moss. The song was included only on CD versions of the album, as well as on a rare UK promo CD, but would have been fine as a non-album B-side if it meant including far superior original material like ‘In Charge Of My Heart’.

  Not surprisingly, given its live-sound approach, ‘Foxy Lady’ was included in the set lists around this time, with a live version cropping up on the 1991 Fan Club-only release The Official Bootleg, recorded on 7 December 1990 at the Astoria Theatre. Roger would later revive the song for his 1994 Happiness? tour. Nearly thirty years previously, Brian’s band 1984 had played the song shortly before they dissolved.

  FREEDOM TRAIN (Taylor)

  • Album (Roger): Happiness?

  Backed by a pulsating drum beat, deliberately designed to resemble the chugging of a train, Roger’s terse ‘Freedom Train’ is an obvious highlight of the Happiness? album. Assisted by Jason Falloon on guitars and Mike Crossley on keyboards (Roger plays all the other instruments), the lyrics are delivered in a barely audible whisper as Roger sings of “troubled lands” and a “golden thread of circumstance”, his voice raised only for the chorus. Coming after the lyrically heavy ‘Foreign Sand’, ‘Freedom Train’ follows in a similar vein, with the pleas of racial harmony on the previous track being attacked more viciously. Concluding dramatically with with some impressive snare drum work, ‘Freedom Train’ is truly a magnificent composition.

  Interestingly, the song was attempted by Queen either during the Innuendo sessions or shortly following those sessions for what would be released as Made In Heaven. Unfortunately, little else is known about Queen’s version except that Greg Brooks name-checked the song at the 2003 Fan Club Convention. If it indeed exists, it would undoubtedly be a gem and well worth the price of the anthologies no matter what form, embryonic or complete, it takes.

  FRIENDS IN PAIN

  Nothing is known of this unreleased track from the A Kind Of Magic sessions, except that it may be a John Deacon demo of either ‘Friends Will Be Friends’ or, less likely, ‘Pain Is So Close To Pleasure’ (or even a completely new song altogether).

  FRIENDS WILL BE FRIENDS (Mercury/Deacon)

  • Album: AKOM • A-side: 6/86 [14]

  • Live: Magic, Wembley

  Starting with a soaring guitar riff and melting into a poignant set of lyrics about friendship in tough times, this collaborative effort between John and Freddie produced an unforgettable anthem much in the style of ‘We Are The Champions’. According to Peter ‘Phoebe’ Freestone, ‘Friends Will Be Friends’ was actually written
by John but, with considerable input from Freddie, was co-credited as a Mercury/Deacon collaboration because of John’s generous demeanour and the vocalist’s final contribution – much like Roger’s ‘Radio Ga Ga’ and ‘A Kind Of Magic’, both of which were changed drastically from their original visions.

  “Freddie’s written a song called ‘Friends Will be Friends’, and I think Freddie and John worked on it together,” Brian said in a 1986 Capitol Radio interview. “It’s something which I took to heart very much as well because it’s kind of [a] traditional Queen sound. It has this ... if you can remember ‘We Are The Champions’ or ‘Play The Game’, it’s in that kind of mould, it has all the Queen trademarks. And yet it’s a new song and a new idea, and that’s something I instantly related to. Very nice, very good track. It sounds very complete.”

  Released as the second single proper from A Kind Of Magic, ‘Friends Will Be Friends’, backed with ‘Seven Seas Of Rhye’ because of its upcoming inclusion in the Magic tour set list, peaked at a modest No. 14 in June 1986. The song was extended for the 12” release, opening with the chorus instead of the guitar introduction and lengthening the song well past six minutes. According to Roger, it wasn’t the summer hit the band had hoped it would be, but the video, filmed on 15 May 1986 at JVC Studios in Wembley (during rehearsals for the Magic tour) and directed by David Mallet, is pleasant enough, showing the band on stage with legions of Fan Club members as an assembled audience. While it’s clear from the expressions on the band members’ faces that they’re all having a good time, as a video, it’s perfunctory, with the intent of getting something out there while the band is working on perfecting their live show.

  The song was performed live between ‘We Will Rock You’ and ‘We Are The Champions’ on the Magic tour (though it wasn’t performed on the first show in Stockholm), albeit in an abridged version; only on the first two dates in Leiden did the band perform full versions.

  FRIENDS WILL BE FRIENDS WILL BE FRIENDS

  (Mercury/Deacon)

  • Bonus: AKOM

  A pointless edit of the extended mix of ‘Friends Will Be Friends’, this was included on the European CD version of A Kind Of Magic; any fan would be well advised to stick to the original or the extended versions.

  FUN IN SPACE (Taylor)

  • Album (Roger): Fun • B-side (Roger): 6/81

  A sparse and fitting conclusion to Roger’s debut solo album, ‘Fun In Space’ is dominated by a relentless bass drum, representing the blips on a radar indicating signs of life, while a synthesizer swirls away (occasionally interrupted by drum beats and some twangy guitar licks) and Roger’s disembodied, echoed voice unfolds what is, on the surface, a lament of a failed space mission, but is actually a celebratory tale (“Our structure is battered, but the corridors ring / With little green stories, of this and these things”) and a plea for spacial jollification.

  A rough mix of the song was premiered during a spring 1980 ‘Innerview’ with Jim Ladd; even at that early stage, Roger had already decided that the album was to be titled Fun In Space. Clocking in at a lengthy 6’20, making it the second-longest track on the album, it ended up as the B-side of ‘My Country’ (the other epic from Fun In Space, though it was edited down for radio consumption; ‘Fun In Space’ remained unscathed as the single’s flipside), but, like most of Fun In Space, received no live airing in any of Roger’s solo tours.

  FUN IT (Taylor)

  • Album: Jazz

  Roger’s first of two songs for Jazz is this disappointing, funk-disco amalgamation. With a dodgy backing, complete with tinny drums, a fat bass and crunching rhythm guitars, the song is brought down by poor production and the inclusion of pointless Syn-drums. Roger’s use of such an instrument may have been inspired by The Cars, produced by none other than Roy Thomas Baker. The message is simple: when life’s problems get you down, just dance them away. (If only it were that easy.) For once, Roger was unimpressed, telling Mojo magazine in 2008, “My songs were very patchy. In fact, if you want my honest opinion, Jazz never thrilled me. It was an ambitious album that didn’t live up to its ambition.” For what little it might be worth, ‘Fun It’ has the distinction of being the first fully-fledged disco song to grace a Queen album, thus shattering the urban legend of John and Freddie being the heaviest into disco and funk.

  Issued as the B-side of the US release of ‘Jealousy’ in April 1979, the “Don’t shun it / Fun it” line would occasionally be used as an intro to ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ on several of the 1978 Jazz North American and 1979 Jazz European and Japanese dates.

  FUN VISION: see ONE VISION

  FUNNY HOW LOVE IS (Mercury)

  • Album: Queen2 • CD Single: 11/88

  Serving as a light, refreshing dessert to the heavier main course of ‘The March Of The Black Queen’ (a tactic Freddie explored frequently, for example ‘Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon’ following ‘Death On Two Legs (Dedicated to......’, ‘Funny How Love Is’ is a gleeful paean to free love striking in unexpected places and at unexpected times. Set to a bed of acoustic guitars played by Brian (not John, as previously believed; live group backing tracks were played at Fan Club conventions, with John on bass and Brian on acoustic guitar) and ringing percussion and drums from Roger, a youthful-sounding and double-tracked Freddie strains in the higher regions of his range, exuberantly extolling the virtues of love. It may have been a filler track compared to the other songs on Side Black, but it was at least a good filler track.

  When sessions for the second album started in August 1973, a few of Freddie’s newest songs needed Robin Geoffrey Cable’s Phil Spector-inspired ‘wall of sound’ technique, and he was asked to assist with that approach. Cable had asked Freddie to contribute lead vocals to his reworkings of ‘I Can Hear Music’ and ‘Goin’ Back’ (see separate entries); this time, it was Freddie who asked Cable to help him out by adding his distinctive touch to this song, ‘Nevermore’ and ‘The March Of The Black Queen’.

  Because of its complexity and dependence on atmosphere, ‘Funny How Love Is’ was never performed live. It was inexplicably included on the 1988 CD single version of ‘Seven Seas Of Rhye’ in a true stand-alone fashion: whereas the album version segues from ‘The March Of The Black Queen’, this version features a clean intro with strident acoustic guitar and piano chords.

  FURIA THEME (OPENING TITLES) (May)

  • Soundtrack (Brian): Furia

  The first track on the soundtrack album to the French film Furia, ‘Furia Theme’ starts with a scrap of dialogue before an ominous keyboard and orchestra sequence leads into the beautifully performed main theme. The Red Special makes a welcome appearance midway through the song, though the programmed drums and upbeat sequence are awkwardly out of place. Regardless, it’s a fine overture, and serves as a fitting introduction to the little-seen film.

  FUTURE MANAGEMENT (Taylor)

  • A-side (Roger): 3/81 [49] • Album (Roger): Fun

  A conspicuously jaunty reggae track sounding like a selection from the albums by new wave rockers The Police, Roger’s ambiguous ‘Future Management’ alludes to an Orwellian future (“Recycle your thoughts / I’ll rewire your mind”) with offers of mind control and thought reprogramming. Conformity was an issue that Roger disliked, even going as far as protesting the working title of Play The Game for their eighth studio album, insisting it be abridged so as not to promote following convention. ‘Future Management’ addresses this in a mechanical manner, the lobotomized chant of “You won’t need nobody else but me” as the song fades out chilling and spooky.

  Released as the lead-off single from Fun In Space, ‘Future Management’ peaked at a disappointing No. 49 in the UK, but did mark Roger’s first appearance on Top Of The Pops which featured him playing a guitar next to a soft sculpture of the alien from the album sleeve. Reviews for the single were mixed; Sounds said, “It’s a reggaeish song which is bearable enough. A laudable attempt to step out of the shadow of the tooty one,” while NME panned it: “Roger does a [Todd] Rund
gren and plays everything apart from Scrabble. A plodding regatta de blanc that drags rather than just lays back.”

  THE GAME OF LOVE (Ballard)

  Originally performed by Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, ‘The Game Of Love’ was played live by The Reaction.

  GAZELLE (Mercury)

  • Compilation (Freddie): Solo Collection

  A short and strange drum-machine experimentation, featuring multi-tracked Freddies engaging in nonsensical vocalizations and repeated cries of the title, ‘Gazelle’ was recorded on 19 April 1984 at Musicland Studios, and was never a serious contender for inclusion on Mr Bad Guy. It was ultimately issued on The Solo Collection.

  GET DOWN, MAKE LOVE (Mercury)

  • Album: World • Live: Killers, On Fire, Montreal

  By 1977, Freddie had become a self-proclaimed sex addict. Gone were the days of the vocalist timidly singing of faeries, ogres and other mythical creatures: this was a changed man, revelling in his leather phase. As he once said, “I quite like leather. I fancy myself as a black panther.” However, he became more promiscuous in his sex life, as his 1977 proto-funk composition, ‘Get Down, Make Love’, celebrates. Set to a sleazy bass backing, Freddie moans and groans his way through the suggestive lyrics, crying “You say you’re hungry / I give you meat!” and “I suck your mind / You blow my head” with unrestrained glee. Freddie’s sexuality by this time was still a closely-guarded secret, though he was frank in interviews and all but confirmed his leanings with deliberately coy one-liners as “I’m as gay as a daffodil, darling!” It just didn’t seem to matter much at the time, considering his early involvement in the blossoming glam-rock scene, where sexual ambiguity wasn’t just promoted but embraced freely. Freddie simply evolved, and channelled his championing of carnal desires into song.