Queen: The Complete Works

by Georg Purvis

  ‘Keep Passing The Open Windows’ was released as the B-side of the withdrawn ‘Man On The Prowl’ single in November 1984, before those two songs were used as the double B-side to ‘Thank God It’s Christmas’. An extended version, with a running time of just under seven minutes, was issued on 12” editions of that single, adding very little of substance to the original.

  KEEP YOURSELF ALIVE (May)

  • A-side: 7/73 • Album: Queen • Bonus: Queen, Opera • B-side: 10/91 [16] • CD Single: 10/91 [16] • CD Single: 10/95 [2] • Live: Killers, Montreal

  Bearing the distinction of being the first song Brian played to Freddie and Roger in 1970, ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ is a milestone in the formative years of Queen, and a true ‘sleeper’ hit: at the time of its original release it was a flop, but because of increased exposure in the live set, its momentum grew until it became an undeniable powerhouse, an early indicator of the sound that Queen would develop over their next few albums, even if the rest of Queen was unfocused. With its startling use of tape phasing and a mouthful of lyrics about an underachieving, fun-loving fella, ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ is a prime example of the perfectionism that became the trademark of Queen’s future sessions: despite its live, off-the-cuff feeling, every note is considered and deliberately placed, with just enough calculated spontaneity to keep it fresh and exciting.

  The song was first recorded between September and December 1971, along with ‘Great King Rat’, ‘Jesus’, ‘Liar’ and ‘The Night Comes Down’, at De Lane Lea Studios as part of Queen’s first recording session. Initially, the multi-tracked guitar intro was performed on an acoustic guitar, with the main riff overdubbed on electric, mirroring a similar tactic used on The Who’s ‘Pinball Wizard’ from 1969. This rawer version is a revelation, with a more tentative vocal from Freddie and a busier drum arrangement; Brian certainly preferred it over the re-recorded studio version, telling BBC Radio One in 1983, “The first recording of it ever was in De Lane Lea when we did it ourselves and I’ve still got that recording and I think it’s very good and has something which the single never had. But THEY pressurized us very strongly to redo all the tracks and we redid ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ with Roy and it was pretty awful, actually. I thought it was terrible and I was very unhappy about it and I thought the De Lane Lea one was better and I eventually managed to persuade Roy that it was better as well. So, we went back in and did it again in a way that was a bit more true to the original. But there is no way that you can ever really repeat something. I have this great belief that the magic of the moment can never be recaptured and, although we ended up with something that was technically in the playing and perhaps even in the recording a bit better than the De Lane Lea thing. I still think that the De Lane Lea one had that certain sort of magic, so I was never really happy. As it turned out no one else was ever really happy either and we kept remixing it. We thought that it’s the mix that’s wrong, we kept remixing and there must have been, at least, seven or eight different mixes by different groups of people. Eventually we went in and did a mix with Mike Stone, our engineer, and that’s the one that we were in the end happiest with. That’s the one we put out. But, to my mind ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ was never really satisfactory. Never had that magic that it should have had.”

  The song was re-recorded properly in 1972, with a stricter and more conservative arrangement including all the elements that would become trademarks of the band: complex vocal harmonies, intricate guitar arrangements, a sturdy rhythm section and an eccentric lead vocal performance. Brian explained further in 1998, “As far as arranging the guitar harmonies, it wasn’t that difficult – I was always able to hear in my head what was going to work. As a result, my guitar orchestrations were mostly intuitive and worked out on the spot, such as the harmonized solos on ‘Keep Yourself Alive’. It was afterwards that I actually analyzed why a certain arrangement I came up with worked.”

  “That was real tape phasing,” Brian told Guitar Player in 1983. “This was in the days when you took the tape off the synch head, put it through a couple of other tape delays, and then brought it back with the play head. There is no processing whatsoever on the solo in that tune, as far as I remember. I used John Deacon’s small amplifier and the Vox AC-30 to do that little three-part chorus thing behind, as well as the fingerboard pickup on the guitar. There is a bit more tape phasing on the end of that track.”

  The song marks the first and only instance of Brian, Roger and Freddie singing lead vocals together on a Queen song until 1995’s ‘Let Me Live’. While Freddie sings the majority of the song, Roger and Brian engaging in a bit of call-and-response in the bridge, with the drummer asking, “Do you think you’re better every day?”, answered by the guitarist, “No, I just think I’m two steps nearer to my grave.” This would mark the first lead vocal appearance of Brian on a Queen song, though he wouldn’t sing a complete song on the first album, finally tackling ‘Some Day, One Day’ on Queen II. Roger sang ‘Modern Times Rock ‘n’ Roll’, which appeared later on the debut album.

  The final version was released as a predecessor to Queen in July 1973, two weeks before the album hit the shops. With Brian’s suggestive ‘Son And Daughter’ on the B-side, the single was considered too long to get going (with a twenty-second guitar-only intro, and a further fifteen seconds of instrumental jamming before the verse finally starts) and flopped in the charts, becoming the first and only UK Queen single not to reach the charts. The song was rejected by BBC’s Radio One DJs five times, though the song actually achieved ‘hit’ status in parts of New England (Connecticut, Massachusetts, etc.) and Japan.

  For promotional reasons, Trident Productions set up a video shoot for this song and ‘Liar’, which was intended to be hawked to Top of the Pops and other music television programmes. Two versions were shot: the first, on 9 August 1973 at Brewer Street Studios, was directed by Mike Mansfield but was rejected by the band, since they felt it portrayed them falsely and had lighting which wasn’t moody enough. The second version, filmed on 1 October at St John’s Wood Studios, right before the band commenced an extensive British tour supporting Mott the Hoople, was directed by Queen and Barry Sheffield (the manager of Trident Productions) and showed the band in a more dramatic light, earning their approval. Despite all the trouble that went into the videos, they were never shown; instead, BBC TV compiled a collage video in July 1973 for the programme The Old Grey Whistle Test, which contained no Queen involvement whatsoever. In their stead is old black and white footage from television broadcasts over the years, which was originally created for US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s campaigns from the late 1930s. This footage, along with interpolations from the above two video shoots, was recompiled in 1992 by The Torpedo Twins for inclusion on the US video compilation Greatest Hits. The second video version remained unreleased until Greatest Video Hits Volume 1 in 2002.

  ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ would become an oft-performed track in the live setting, where it became a staple of the set list between 1970 and 1981. (It was dropped from the 1982 set list, but was revived in 1984 and 1985.) The song would undergo several tempo and mood changes over the years, and was often the base for extended improvisation. Two versions were recorded for the BBC: both were essentially remixes of the standard album version with re-recorded lead vocal tracks. The first was overdubbed on 5 February 1973 at Langham 1 Studio and was produced by Bernie Andrews (this version later appeared on the 1989 UK compilation, Queen at the Beeb, which was released in America in 1995 as Queen at the BBC), while the second was taped on 25 July, also at Langham 1 but produced by Jeff Griffin.

  In the summer of 1975, Elektra Records approached Queen with the idea of re-releasing ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ as a single. By that point, the band had become more popular in the States, and, with sessions planned to commence on their fourth album shortly, this was met with a surprising amount of positivity. On 2 July, the band entered Trident Studios to record a completely revamped recording of the song, with a fresh, new arrangemen
t more akin to its live renditions than the original. Unfortunately, shortly after the sessions ended, issues that had been building with Trident Productions and Norman and Barry Sheffield came to a head, and a moratorium was placed on all new recordings while the legal squabbles were worked out. ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ was lost in the mire of litigation, and, with Elektra at a loss, the original 1972 recording was released instead, albeit edited slightly. This re-recording would remain unreleased until 1991, when it was unearthed by Hollywood Records’ archivists and included as a bonus track on the CD reissue of Queen. Twenty years later, the song once again appeared as part of a comprehensive archival release, this time being released – chronologically correctly – as a bonus track on deluxe editions of A Night At The Opera.

  THE KEY (Taylor)

  • Album (Roger): Happiness?

  When compact disc took over vinyl as the leading format for album releases, musicians suddenly had the opportunity to fill up seventy-four minutes of space. This meant that a lot of albums were weighed down with songs that would have otherwise been cut, reducing a potentially great album to a decent album with too much filler. While most of Happiness? was strong, there was inevitably going to be a song that was deemed filler, and ‘The Key’ is that song: it’s not necessarily a bad song, with a slinky, funky rhythm and falsetto vocals, but when stacked up against the other material, it pales in comparison. The production places it firmly in the early 1990s, with keyboards closer to a new age musician than a rock drummer, and the overly verbose lyrics don’t say a whole lot, apart from the expected slams against politicians and theology. ‘The Key’ is simply Roger by numbers, and a blemish on his finest solo album to date.

  KHASHOGGI’S SHIP (Queen)

  • Album: Miracle

  Adnan Khashoggi is a Saudi entrepreneur and arms dealer who formed the large Swiss property company Triad and became a multimillionaire virtually overnight. He hit some snags in his long string of successes: in 1975, the US accused him of receiving bribes to secure military contracts in Arab countries, and eleven years later he found his fortune withering away due to the slump in oil prices and political problems in Sudan. But the man was notorious for his parties, with ‘Khashoggi’s Ship’ being an homage to both his parties and his private yacht, the Kingdom 5KR. Though not taking the side of the infamously flamboyant mogul, the song is a defiant cry against party poopers everywhere, and Freddie howls about the good times to be had at his parties over a crunching guitar riff. Freddie’s line “He pulled out a gun / Wanted to arrest me / I said ‘uh-uh-uh, baby!’” is an eerie portent of what would actually happen to Adnan in April 1989, when he was arrested in connection with illegal property deals.

  Bleeding over from the previous track, ‘Party’, the song isn’t exactly a highlight of The Miracle but is a welcome return to hard rock that would, unfortunately, be in a minority on the album. With all of the superior material recorded during sessions for The Miracle, ‘Khashoggi’s Ship’ would have been better suited as a B-side.

  KILLER QUEEN (Mercury)

  • AA-side: 10/74 [2] • Album: SHA • B-side: 9/86 [24] • CD Single: 11/88 • CD Single: 10/95 [2] • Live: Killers, Montreal

  This paean to a high-class call girl combines witty lyrics with a jaunty melody, creating a fusion of sounds unheard of on the radio at the time: with Roxy Music and David Bowie cornering the glam rock market, and Pink Floyd and Yes going off on extended progressive rock journeys, the pure pop charts were in danger of being muddled by flash-in-the-pan, expendable drones like Gary Glitter, David Essex, Disco-Tex and the Sex-O-Lettes, and The Osmonds cluttering up prime real estate. (Essex’s ‘Gonna Make You A Star’ was the No. 1 single in November 1974, keeping ‘Killer Queen’ from achieving an all-important top spot.) Brian was concerned that the song would be too commercial, telling Guitar For The Practicing Musician in 1993, “When we put out ‘Killer Queen’, everybody thought it was the most commercial. I was worried that people would put us in a category where they thought we were doing something light. Sheer Heart Attack was, in my mind, quite heavy and dirty, and ‘Killer Queen’ was the lightest and cleanest track, and I was worried about putting it out. But when I heard it on the radio I thought, ‘It’s a well-made record and I’m proud of it, so it doesn’t really matter.’ Plus, it was a hit, so fuck it. A hit is a hit is a hit.” A few years later, he wasn’t as worried: “‘Killer Queen’ was the turning point. It was the song that best summed up our kind of music, and a big hit, and we desperately needed it as a mark of something successful happening for us.”

  Meanwhile, its songwriter, didn’t even consider it single-worthy: “We’re very proud of that number,” Freddie told Record Mirror in 1976. “It’s done me a lot of proud. It’s just one of the tracks I wrote for the album, to be honest. It wasn’t written as a single. I just wrote a batch of songs for the Sheer Heart Attack album and when I finished writing it, and when we recorded it, we found it was a very, very strong single. It really was. At that time it was very, very unlike Queen. They all said: ‘Awwwwwww.’ It was another risk that we took, you know. Every risk we’ve taken so far has paid off.” Freddie’s modesty of it doing him a lot of proud wasn’t unfounded: in 1975, it was awarded four individual plaudits, with one each from Record Mirror (second best single) and NME (top single), a Belgian Golden Lion Award, and, most prestigiously, an Ivor Novello Award, the first of six the band would receive over the years.

  Freddie told Melody Maker in December 1974, “Well, ‘Killer Queen’ I wrote in one night. I’m not being conceited or anything, but it just fell into place. Certain songs do. Now, ‘The March Of The Black Queen’, that took ages. I had to give it everything, to be self indulgent or whatever. But with ‘Killer Queen’, I scribbled down the words in the dark one Saturday night and the next morning I got them all together and I worked all day Sunday and that was it. I’d got it. It gelled. It was great.”

  Even at an early stage in the sessions, the band knew it was a special song, with Roger recalling that particular attention was paid to it with its excessive takes and tracking. Despite his illness, Brian remembered fondly the recording of his suitable and cheeky solo, though he was more rueful of his indisposition and his inability to contribute to the productive initial sessions. “The first time I heard Freddie playing that song, I was lying in my room in Rockfield [Studios], feeling very sick,” Brian recalled. “After Queen’s first American tour I had hepatitis, and then I had very bad stomach problems and I had to be operated on. So I remember just lying there, hearing Freddie play this really great song and feeling sad, because I thought, ‘I can’t even get out of bed to participate in this. Maybe the group will have to go on without me.’ No one could figure out what was wrong with me. But then I did go into the hospital and I got fixed up, thank God. And when I came out again, we were able to finish off ‘Killer Queen’. They left some space for me and I did the solo. I had strong feelings about one of the harmony bits in the chorus, so we had another go at that too.” The song rightfully gained praise from the band, with Brian telling Guitar For The Practicing Musician, “There’s nothing cluttered about ‘Killer Queen’. There’s a fantastic amount going on, but nothing ever gets in the way of anything else. I was pleased that the solo went along with that. Everything is crystal clear. And when the three voices of guitars are all doing little tunes of their own, it feels almost accidental that they go together. I was pleased with how it came out.”

  “People are used to hard rock, energy music from Queen,” Freddie explained to the NME in 1974, “yet with this single, you almost expect Noël Coward to sing it. It’s one of those bowler hat, black suspender numbers – not that Noël Coward would wear that. It’s about a high-class call girl. I’m trying to say that classy people can be whores as well. That’s what the song is about, though I’d prefer people to put their own interpretation upon it – to read what they like into it.”

  ‘Killer Queen’ was the first single released from Sheer Heart Attack in October 1974, coupl
ed with Freddie’s vicious ‘Flick Of The Wrist’ as a double A-side. However, it was this song that received the most attention, being performed on the Dutch TV show Top Pop on 9 December 1974, a performance broadcast in the UK on Boxing Day (26 December) and now recognized as the song’s ‘default’ performance video. The single peaked at No. 2 in the UK and No. 12 in the US, becoming a mainstay in the medley portion of the band’s show, performed at every concert between 1974 and 1980, and then only on a few dates in 1981 before being dropped for the 1982 tour, but brought back in 1984 and 1985. The song was released as the B-side on the ‘Who Wants To Live Forever’ and ‘Heaven For Everyone’ singles in 1986 and 1995, respectively, and the title has recently been given the honour of being applied to the villain in the We Will Rock You musical.

  KILLING (May)

  • Soundtrack (Brian): Furia

  Another piece lasting just over a minute, ‘Killing’ distinguishes itself from the other pieces on the Furia soundtrack with a pulsating programmed bass drum and ends with a startling snippet of action from the film.

  KILLING TIME (Taylor)

  • B-side (Roger): 6/84 [66] • Album (Roger): Frontier

  Opening the more experimental second side of Strange Frontier is this synthesized confection, envisioning a post-apocalyptic future devoid of the luxuries of the present: with the world bathed in a nuclear soup, and society just getting back on track, all its denizens can do is wait. Songs of boredom are typically uninteresting in themselves, the songwriter’s ennui seeping through in the lyrics and melody, but Roger keeps ‘Killing Time’ engaging, with scores of electronic drums and synthetic blasts of noise punctuating the abstract lyrics. An orchestral interlude has led to the unfounded rumour that Freddie co-wrote the song, perpetuated by Queen websites from the early 1990s, when such gossip was taken as substantiated fact. More plausible is the possibility that Freddie may have contributed backing vocals, and whether Roger was just that good at imitating his friend’s voice, or if Freddie actually is present, is not known, but it certainly sounds like him. To date, nobody has confirmed nor denied the contribution.