Queen: The Complete Works

by Georg Purvis

  “I seem to participate more on John’s or Roger’s tracks,” Freddie said in 1984. “They let me help them and suggest more things. Brian’s got his own sort of writing ideas and they are very strong to start with anyway. I don’t seem to be able to get into his ideas so much. But in a way that’s quite good. I’d rather leave it to him, and it doesn’t mean I just stay out of it altogether. I let him sort of do a lot of it. Whereas with John’s songs or Roger’s songs, I’m sort of getting there at the early stage. They don’t mind me sort of tearing it apart and then piecing it back together again. Every way. Sometimes I’ll take the whole song over. Like ‘Radio Ga Ga’. I just instantly felt that there was something, there was going to be something in there. You could build that into a really good, strong, saleable commodity. And I think Roger was just thinking about it as just another track. And I just said, ‘No, I think it needs...’ So I virtually took it over. And he went on a holiday skiing for about a week ... and he said ‘Okay, you do what you want’.”

  Roger was adamant that the song become a single, and the others agreed with him. Released as a forerunner to The Works in January 1984, ‘Radio Ga Ga’, backed with the non-album ‘I Go Crazy’, brought Queen back to the upper strata of the UK charts, and became their first Top Ten hit since ‘Under Pressure’ in October 1981, ultimately reaching No. 2. An extended remix, clocking in at 6’54, surfaced on the 12” issues of the single, but offered nothing revelatory except for the extension of some of the instrumental and vocal a cappella sections. The US issue, which also featured an edited promo version (chopped from 5’48 to 4’23), came a month later and was also fairly successful, reaching a modest No. 16 in the charts; unfortunately, this made it their last Top Twenty single in Freddie’s lifetime.

  The press weren’t enthusiastic about the single. NME said, “Displays a lack of substance, intention, cohesion or spirit. Arrogant nonsense, it quite upset my afternoon,” while Record Mirror was slightly less caustic: “After a long absence, Queen come bouncing back. All we’re going to hear from our radios for the next few weeks is ‘Radio ga ga, radio goo goo’.”

  It’s ironic that a song criticising the emphasis placed on music videos should receive one of its own; even more ironic is that it turned out to be Queen’s finest video. The year before, Freddie had been approached by Giorgio Moroder, who asked if Freddie would be interested in contributing some music to his restructure of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. ‘Love Kills’ was that song, and when it came time to shoot a video for ‘Radio Ga Ga’ in November 1983, the band asked Moroder if they could obtain a few clips from the original film to use in their video. They had to go through the German government first, but were ultimately able to purchase the necessary clips.

  Filming for the video took place on 23 and 24 November 1983, showing black and white footage of the band flying around in a futuristic car, with scenes of Metropolis in the background, while Roger navigates and Freddie sings. (Roger revealed, “I seem to remember that we had a vodka and tonic hidden somewhere in that car,” while Brian said, “I don’t think we look particularly comfortable in this car – I know I don’t, I don’t think John does. Roger’s got a job to do, driving the thing, so he was lucky, and Freddie had a job to do, and that was singing.”) The video then cuts to a view of the band, now in full colour, raising their arms in salute as their legions of followers (in actuality, lucky members of the Fan Club), dressed in suits and bowler hats, imitate their heroes.

  “In my mind, this was the best video we were ever responsible for,” Brian said in 2003. “It shows the fact that there was a lot of thought put into it before we even opened the coffers to pay for the thing and get going on it. It was great that we were able to lay our hands on this original footage from Fritz Lang’s fantastic Metropolis movie ... David Mallet filmed this really beautiful period footage, and also some lovely black and white stuff which dovetailed quite well into the original Fritz Lang stuff. And here we have us in a car which is zooming around in the original Metropolis landscape ... It always staggers me that some people either don’t get it,” he continued, “or pretend not to get it: when we get to the part where it’s totalitarian and everyone’s got their arms in the air, people think that we didn’t know that was the case, but obviously this song is about the kind of recognition that things are getting very mechanized and meaningless and people are becoming robots. So obviously, there’s a sort of irony to the whole thing which is built in, and people didn’t get it, and I’m still shocked! People thought we were really trying to be dictators.”

  Roger was impressed with the end result, saying, “Beautifully done by David Mallet, one of his best pieces of work, and really one of our best videos, although I must admit that I find the polystyrene car a little comical.” He continued, saying, “It was fun: we had three days and it was a monumental effort. A lot of time splicing it together afterwards. Even in those days this was one of our over-the-top ones. I think it worked. Of course, the song was a hit, which was sort of gratifying, especially for me, I suppose, being the writer.”

  Brian held similar opinions about the video: “One of Mallet’s great contributions is – when the chorus comes, you get a handclap. It was repeated electronically on the record, and so it sounds like a double handclap, and Mallet seized upon it and made it a double handclap done by the audience ... I think it became the first great proof of the power of television. The first time we played this to a non-Queen audience at Live Aid, everybody knew what to do at that point. Astonishing, really. It just had to be the power of the video; there was no other way they would have known to put their hands in the air and do this double handclap thing!”

  The song became an instant live favourite: first performed in Brussels on 24 August 1984, it remained in the set list until the last Queen performance on 9 August 1986. Queen had also ‘performed’ the song during two mimed festivals in 1984: the first at the San Remo Festival on 3 February and the second on 12 May at the Montreux Golden Rose Festival, which saw Brian and John both miming along to the synthesizer parts. (Incidentally, they were the only two members not to play synth on the actual recording.) Roger later incorporated it into his solo gigs, including the September 1993 performance at Cowdray Park, and it was performed in most post-Queen events, notably at the Concert For Life on 20 April 1992, with Paul Young on lead vocals. The song was later incorporated into the 2005 Queen + Paul Rodgers tour, with Roger running to the front of the stage to sing the opening verses while a drum-machine played the intro; the subsequent verses would be sung by Paul, while Roger would resume his more familiar place behind the drums.

  RAIN (Lennon/McCartney)

  • Compilation (Freddie): Solo Collection

  Originally released as the B-side of The Beatles’ 1966 ‘Paperback Writer’ single, ‘Rain’ was a perennial favourite of Freddie’s and was performed regularly by Ibex in the live setting. It remained the only officially released track from the 9 September 1969 show at The Sink Club in Liverpool, appearing in 2000 on The Solo Collection; why the other eight tracks from this concert weren’t included is anyone’s guess, though the official reason was that the quality was too poor. Having listened to the full concert, I can assure you that the quality remains constant throughout, and if they were able to clean up this version for release, the other songs would have been no problem either.

  RAIN MUST FALL (Queen)

  • Album: Miracle

  One of the slighter tracks from The Miracle, ‘Rain Must Fall’ pairs a sickly set of optimistic lyrics and a vaguely Caribbean backbeat, with mixed results. The message is clear – no matter how good things are going, something bad will always happen, but that doesn’t mean things will stay bad forever – but the tinny programmed drums leave much to be desired. The song is salvaged by a scorching guitar solo from Brian and a peppy bassline from John, who wrote the song. This was confirmed offhandedly by the guitarist in 2004, when a fan asked if the band were aware of similarities between ‘Rain Must Fall’ and Candi Staton’s �
�Young Hearts Run Free’; he responded that he was unfamiliar with the song, but that John would know better.

  REACHING OUT (Hill/Black)

  • Live (Q+PR): Return

  Recorded by a makeshift band called Rock Therapy in April 1996, ‘Reaching Out’ was donated to the Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy Centre, another charity event that Brian involved himself in. The song featured several star contributions, including Charlie Watts (drums), Jeff Beck and Andy Fairweather-Low (guitars), Lulu and Shara Nelson (backing vocals), Sam Brown (keyboards), Pure Strings (orchestrations) and Paul Rodgers on lead vocals.

  Produced by Andy Hill, who co-wrote the song with Don Black, and recorded at Comfort’s Place Studio in Surrey, the track was released as a single in June 1996 yet failed to chart, despite its strength as a song. It became one of the few recorded musical collaborations between Brian and Paul Rodgers, and was therefore performed as the opening song on the 2005 Queen + Paul Rodgers tour.

  RED HOUSE (Hendrix)

  Despite the US leg of the 2006 Queen + Paul Rodgers tour boasting only a few surprises (and not being the “rolling set list” that Roger had promised fans), Jimi Hendrix’s blues extravaganza ‘Red House’ was performed live on the final night in Vancouver.

  REGGAE: ‘BIRD IN HAND’ (Perry)

  • Soundtrack (Brian): Furia

  Written by Lee Perry and performed by The Upsetters, ‘Reggae: ‘Bird In Hand” features no involvement whatsoever from Brian, other than the fact that it was included on the Furia soundtrack.

  RESPECT (Redding)

  Otis Redding’s well-known single, best covered by Aretha Franklin, was a surprising choice for 1984 to perform live; not all that surprising was the fact that The Reaction covered it, too.

  RESURRECTION (May/Powell/Page)

  • Album (Brian): BTTL • A-side (Brian): 6/93 [33] • Live (Brian): Brixton

  In the late 1980s, Cozy Powell was starting to work on a new album, his fourth as a solo artist. The long and prestigious career of this influential drummer started in 1965, when he joined a band called The Sorcerers, though success didn’t come until 1971 when he hooked up with the Jeff Beck group, replacing Mickey Waller. The group recorded two albums and promptly folded, with Beck forging his own musical career in jazz-fusion. Powell also went solo, releasing ‘Dance With The Devil’ as a single in 1973, before joining forces with former Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore – thus, Rainbow was born. When that group dissolved, Powell spent most of the 1980s working with such luminaries as Keith Emerson and Greg Lake, Black Sabbath, and Whitesnake.

  It was inevitable that, at some point, Cozy and Brian would start working together. The two met in the early 1970s, with Brian often in the audience at Jeff Beck’s gigs and Cozy turning up to Queen’s concerts. The two became friendly over the years, and developed a musical kinship when Brian would occasionally jam with Black Sabbath. In 1991, after a horse he was riding suffered from a heart attack and collapsed on top of him, shattering his pelvis, Cozy spent six months rehabilitating himself and writing material for a solo album, The Drums Are Back. ‘Ride To Win’, written by Powell and Jamie Page, was a relentless performance, sounding like the apocalypse with Cozy’s thunderous drums. “Brian heard some of [the tracks I wrote], liked what he heard, and said, ‘Could I use a couple for my album? We’ll rearrange ’em, and I’ll write some lyrics.’” Cozy told Rip magazine in 1993. “We ended up working on a couple of those tracks, which then ended up on Back To The Light.”

  With Brian on guitars, bass and keyboards and Cozy on drums (Don Airey, who had been in Cozy Powell’s Hammer in 1974, later laid down additional keyboards), the duo put together an even terser version, as close to heavy metal as Brian would ever get on a solo album. The lyrics feature few references to organized religion, being of a more personal nature: as elsewhere on Back To The Light, Brian channels his confusion of life without Freddie into song, cheerleading himself to break through his depression and “rise”. The strength of the track is in the instrumentation, and it’s essentially a showcase for Cozy. Brian was so impressed with his performance that the track was billed as ‘Featuring Cozy Powell’, and joined Brian on his 1992/1993 Back To The Light world tour.

  ‘Resurrection’ was chosen as the fourth single from Back To The Light. A bold move, the song was edited from its lengthy 5’24 running time to a more palatable 4’38, with a five-minute promo edit also appearing. The single, accompanied by an absurd promotional video featuring Brian mugging for the camera in front of a green-screened equivalent of Hell, reached No. 33 in the charts, and became a regular in the live set list at the time, allowing Cozy to show off his talents with an extended drum solo. Also featured was the ‘1812 Overture’, performed by Spike Edney on keyboards with accompaniment from Cozy, leading into the concluding, hard rock finale of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. The song was included in the 1998 set list, with a drum solo performed by Eric Singer, and was performed out of respect for Cozy, who died in a car accident on 5 April 1998, right before the Another World tour was due to start.

  REVELATIONS (Taylor)

  • Album (Roger): Happiness?

  Sandwiched nicely between ‘Happiness?’ and ‘Touch The Sky’, ‘Revelations’ is an up-tempo rocker, the like of which was in the minority on Happiness? but certainly most welcome. Starting off with programmed percussion and a funky bass line from Phil Spalding, the song kicks into high gear with some of Roger’s most propulsive drumming and some choppy guitar work from Jason Falloon. The song is a minor triumph; while not one of the highlights of the album, it is enjoyable thanks to some vocal harmonies reminiscent of Queen.

  Lyrically, Roger again sings of the problems affecting the world, and it’s at times such as these that one appreciates Freddie’s talent for editing the written word. While the lyrics to ‘Revelations’ aren’t the worst Roger has ever written, they certainly do border on cringe-inducing, especially the first verse. In a bizarre twist of foreshadowing, Roger predicted the criticism of his shortcomings as a lyricist: “Now you can label me stupid or naïve with this song / But when children are starving / I know what’s right and what’s wrong.”

  The song, like the rest of the Happiness? album (except for ‘Freedom Train’), was performed live on the 1994–1995 tour, but wasn’t revisited for Roger’s next solo outing. To some, this might come as a relief, since ‘Revelations’ didn’t translate well into the live setting, losing the power and magic of the original studio rendition.

  REVOLUTION (Lennon/McCartney)

  Originally issued as the B-side to The Beatles’ ‘Hey Jude’ in 1968, ‘Revolution’ was performed live by The Cross at the Gosport Festival on 30 July 1992.

  RIDE THE WILD WIND (Queen)

  • Album: Innuendo • B-side (Roger): 11/94 [32]

  Closing the first side of Innuendo is this up-tempo rocker, whose lyrics beg the main character’s girl to throw caution to the wind and “live life on the razor’s edge.” The words are sung in a hushed tone by Freddie, with prominent backing and secondary vocals from Roger (suggesting it was his song, confirmed when it became a regular in his solo concert set lists). A powerful rhythm section is built up, with John’s bassline complementing the song well and Roger overlaying a combination of programmed and real drums.

  Brian, as usual, contributes a wonderful guitar solo, which was often the saving grace on many of Queen’s dodgier recordings. However, ‘Ride The Wild Wind’ is an ace song, with the lyrics recalling images of Roger’s video for his 1984 single, ‘Strange Frontier’ (the video was a throwback to the James Dean film, Rebel Without A Cause), and it would have been an ideal single if not for the other, more obviously chart-friendly, songs presented on Innuendo.

  THE RING (HYPNOTIC SEDUCTION OF DALE) (Mercury)

  • Album: Flash

  Lasting only fifty-seven seconds, ‘The Ring (Hypnotic Seduction Of Dale)’ leads in from Freddie’s prior track, ‘Ming’s Theme (In The Court Of Ming The Merciless)’ and consists of a piercing synthesizer
riff underscoring suggestive moaning from Dale Arden.

  RIP IT UP (Blackwell/Marascaico)

  Little Richard’s 1956 No. 17 hit single was performed live by The Cross during their inaugural 1988 German tour as the final number of the concert, just before the encore performance of ‘Stand Up For Love’.

  ROBBERY

  From the same batch of demos as ‘Self-Made Man’ and ‘My Secret Fantasy’, ‘Robbery’ is a fast-paced rocker similar to ‘Headlong’ or ‘The Hitman’, and it’s likely that, due to such a comparison, the song wasn’t completed. The lyrics are largely improvised, and authorship claims for the song vary between Roger and Brian.

  ROCK-A-BYE DIXIE:

  see EXTRACTS FROM GARDEN LODGE

  ROCK AND ROLL FANTASY (Rodgers)

  Written by Paul Rodgers and taken from Bad Company’s 1979 album Desolation Angels, ‘Rock And Roll Fantasy’ was a suitable choice to be played live by the Queen + Paul Rodgers band, though it only appeared three times in the set list. It made its debut in Aruba, and was included in the two stateside shows in 2005. It’s a surprising omission, since the song was a hit single in 1979, reaching No. 13, and also earned a rightful place on US album rock radio, helping Bad Company to remain in the limelight for many years.

  ROCK IN RIO BLUES (Queen)

  • CD Single: 12/95 [6]

  For years, Queen’s live sets often included well-rehearsed impromptu pieces (that terminology is an oxymoron; however, given the tight structure of a typical Queen show, complete improvisation was generally kept to a minimum) which would often be based on a sole piano line, turning into a tour de force by the song’s conclusion with nonsensical vocalizations from Freddie (a good example of this is on the Live At Wembley Stadium CD).

  When the band appeared at the Rock In Rio Festival in January 1985, they rehearsed a special version of the improvisation which featured a unique set of ‘lyrics’ to the already customary backing. This presentation, officially titled ‘Rock In Rio Blues’, was released on the CD single of ‘A Winter’s Tale’ in December 1995 and as the B-side of the US issue of ‘Too Much Love Will Kill You’ in January 1996, but the song is largely superfluous next to any other live improvisation and should be considered for completists only.