Queen: The Complete Works

by Georg Purvis

  Even the band weren’t entirely pleased with the album. In 1984, John succinctly stated “This is an album that I dislike,” while in 1982 Brian told International Musician & Recording World, “Jazz was a European-flavoured thing. It was a strange mixture and didn’t click very well in America.” As the guitarist explained in a 1983 BBC Radio One interview, “We thought it would be nice to try again with a producer [Baker] on whom we could put some of the responsibility. We’d found a few of our own methods, and so had he, and on top of what we’d collectively learned before, we thought that coming back together would mean that there would be some new stuff going on, and it worked pretty well.”

  The diversity of the tracks, even more so than on News Of The World the previous year, is engaging, notably the New Orleans sound on ‘Dreamers Ball’ and the Arabic undertones of ‘Mustapha’. And when Queen rock, they certainly rock: ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’, ‘If You Can’t Beat Them’, ‘Let Me Entertain You’, ‘Dead On Time’ and ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ are reminiscent of the Queen from past years, and all, except ‘Dead On Time’, would enjoy continual exposure in the live set list over the next few years.

  As in previous years, the band went on tour after the album’s release. The autumn of 1978 included lengthy stays in America, Europe and Japan, but curiously, involved no UK dates, and finally concluded in May 1979. The band had reached a level of musical tightness and many regarded the tour as their finest. Despite the rigours of the tour, they still had energy enough to host a lavish party: the launch premiere for Jazz was held on Hallowe’en night 1978 in a worthy city – New Orleans. Following that night’s show, the band were chauffeured to the New Dreams Fairmount Hotel, where the festivities began. This night has gone down in Queen annals as being an evening of unprecedented decadence, perhaps the model for all Queen parties to follow.

  The band personally paid for the entire evening (as opposed to sending the bill to the record companies) and they certainly spared no expense: 400 guests were invited, including executives from EMI and Elektra Records, and press reporters from England, South America and Japan as well as the US. At midnight, a local brass band marched into the hall to launch the party; from that point the diversions intensified. Naked female mud wrestlers, fire-eaters, jazz bands, steel bands, Zulu dancers, voodoo dancers, unicyclists, strippers and drag artists provided the main entertainment, while trays of cocaine were placed on the heads of dwarves and served to all who wished to partake. Record company executives were ushered into a back room, where groupies pleasured them individually throughout the evening.

  The party was so eventful that the album was never even played. The next day, the band held a more restrained press conference at Brennan’s Restaurant, where the press finally took the opportunity to ask the questions they’d been meaning to ask the night before (and, one would assume, finally heard the album they had been invited to hear). The band were criticized for the excess, to which Freddie quipped, “I guess some people don’t like to look at nude ladies. It’s naughty, but not lewd.”

  Thirty years later, Roger recalled the excess with amusement and pride. “I have to say that the stories from that night are not that exaggerated,” he told Mojo. “What memories would I be willing to share? How extraordinarily ill I felt the next day. Most of the stories you heard are true. The one about the dwarves and the bald heads and cocaine is not true. Or, if it was, I never saw it.” After a pause and a think, he relented: “Actually, it could have been true...” Brian, meanwhile, missed out on the festivities; despite becoming a father earlier that summer, he spent the night searching for the mystical Peaches, a girl he’d met and fallen for in New Orleans back in 1974. “I didn’t find her,” he recalled sadly, “but she found me later on.”

  Jazz could be considered the final Queen album that displays a degree of diversity, although some coherence is surrendered as a result. From this point on, Queen’s albums would be more polished and planned, unfortunately resulting in songs that would sound similar to one another. There is no way the band could have recaptured the freshness of their first three albums, or the grandiose studio trickery on the ‘Marx Brothers’ albums, or even the hodgepodge assortment of songs on News Of The World. With that in mind, Jazz is the odd man out as it manifests a band trying to achieve new sounds and falling just short of success. It was time for a new and exciting approach, and after bidding a final farewell to Roy Thomas Baker, the band eagerly packed their bags for Munich.

  LIVE KILLERS

  EMI EMSP 330, June 1979 [3]

  Elektra BB-702, June 1979 [16]

  EMI CDS 7 46211 8, December 1986

  Hollywood HR-62017-2, November 1991

  ‘We Will Rock You’ (3’16), ‘Let Me Entertain You’ (3’16), ‘Death On Two Legs (Dedicated to ......’ (3’33), ‘Killer Queen’ (1’57), ‘Bicycle Race’ (1’29), ‘I’m In Love With My Car’ (2’01), ‘Get Down, Make Love’ (4’31), ‘You’re My Best Friend’ (2’10), ‘Now I’m Here’ (8’42), ‘Dreamers Ball’ (3’42), ‘Love Of My Life’ (4’59), ‘’39’ (3’26), ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ (4’00), ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ (4’28), ‘Spread Your Wings’ (5’15), ‘Brighton Rock’ (12’16), ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (6’01), ‘Tie Your Mother Down’ (3’41), ‘Sheer Heart Attack’ (3’35), ‘We Will Rock You’ (2’48), ‘We Are The Champions’ (3’27), ‘God Save The Queen’ (1’32)

  Musicians: John Deacon (bass guitar), Brian May (guitars, backing vocals), Freddie Mercury (vocals, piano, maracas), Roger Taylor (drums, percussion, backing vocals, lead vocals on ‘I’m In Love With My Car’)

  Recorded: January–March 1979 at various European dates

  Producers: Queen and John Etchells

  1979 was considered a year of temporarily suspended activity for Queen. They had been working virtually non-stop since 1970, and they had weathered quite a lot together: financial woes, managerial disagreements and harsh words slung by the press. As Brian would later admit, there were times when the band thought about packing it all in, but by this time, they had established themselves as canny businessmen with a keen eye on the music industry market.

  They still believed that they were a studio band more than anything else, and found the prospect of releasing a live album tedious. Queen’s live shows were more about presentation and theatrics than actual performances; they weren’t masters of improvisation like The Who, The Grateful Dead or Little Feat, and their live performances were best seen in person or, at the very least, on a cinema screen. No wonder, then, that the band were less than thrilled about releasing a live album. “Live albums are inescapable, really,” Brian lamented not long after Live Killers came out. “Everyone tells you you have to do them, and when you do, you find that they’re very often not of mass appeal, and in the absence of a fluke condition you sell your live album to the converted, the people who already know your stuff and come to the concerts. So, if you add up the number of people who have seen you over the last few years, that’s very roughly the number who will buy your live album unless you have a hit single on it, which we didn’t.”

  Previous plans to release live albums had been abandoned: both the November 1974 shows at The Rainbow in London were filmed and recorded, and while a thirty-minute edited version was shown as an opener for Led Zeppelin’s The Song Remains The Same in 1976, the band decided not to proceed with it further. The June 1977 shows at Earl’s Court Arena were both recorded with the intention of releasing them as the band’s first live album, but, for whatever reason, these plans were scuttled too.

  The band had already decided that 1979 would be an off-year from the studio, consisting almost entirely of live shows. While they had recorded a few sessions in June and July, those were only preliminary and a studio album was not planned, nor was there enough material yet to release one. However, they had journeyed over much of the world (excluding North America) during the year, and it would have been foolish to not release something. Live albums (as well as compilations) are generally issued as an attempt to buy a b
and some time while they finish their next studio release, and this was no exception.

  Live Killers, as it was eventually titled in June 1979, was culled from their three-month odyssey across Europe, though they never documented which songs derived from which shows. Recently, it’s been speculated that most of the recorded material came from the Frankfurt (2 February) and Lyon (17 February) performances, and that the segments from those shows were selected and spliced to create the perfect end-product. As a result, though there may not be many overdubs (Brian vehemently claims that there are absolutely none), most of the errors – and, let’s face it, there isn’t a single band that can perform perfectly night after night – were patched up with superior segments to the point that any one song may have originated from more than one show.

  Strictly speaking, the Jazz tour between October 1978 and May 1979 was not Queen’s best; not only was Freddie’s voice becoming unpredictable as a result of his excesses, but also the band had adopted a more structured set list containing very few surprises. Unfortunately, those rare surprises (‘Somebody To Love’, ‘If You Can’t Beat Them’, ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ and ‘It’s Late’) didn’t make the final cut. Though Live Killers features the first officially released version of the newly structured medley (‘Death On Two Legs (Dedicated to ......’, ‘Killer Queen’, ‘Bicycle Race’, ‘I’m In Love With My Car’, ‘Get Down, Make Love’ and ‘You’re My Best Friend’), by 1979 it had been so drastically reduced that only ‘Killer Queen’ and ‘You’re My Best Friend’ were retained from the original set. It’s a shame that Queen didn’t include anything from 1977 or early 1978, which featured medley performances of ‘The Millionaire Waltz’, ‘Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy’ and ‘Bring Back That Leroy Brown’. Some fans even found fault in the mixing (which was implemented at Mountain Studios by David Richards): the band sounds muddled, some of the instruments are poorly mixed, and the audience levels are inconsistent.

  However, considering that it is Queen’s first live album, there is much on Live Killers to applaud. The opening salvo of ‘We Will Rock You’ (the recorded debut of the fast version) and ‘Let Me Entertain You’ is unparalleled, while the emotive performances of ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ and ‘Spread Your Wings’ are exemplary. Additionally, Roger provides a fine vocal delivery on his own ‘I’m In Love With My Car’, and the band’s natural rhythmic feel – and Freddie’s impressive showmanship – shines through on ‘Now I’m Here’ and ‘Brighton Rock’. A pleasant surprise, too, is the raucous ‘Sheer Heart Attack’, which is executed at an even faster pace than on the album version.

  “I’ve never been completely satisfied,” Brian lamented during an interview in 1981 in Mar del Plata. “I’ll be a nonconformist forever. I think Live Killers was a kind of evidence of what we were doing live late in the 1970s. In some ways, I’m unsatisfied. We had to work hard in every concert and there were serious sound problems. There were concerts when we had sounded great, but when we listened to the tapes, they sounded awful. We recorded ten or fifteen shows, but we could only use three or four of them to work on. Anyway, live albums never sound good because there are noises and shouts that affect it. As it stands, Live Killers isn’t my favourite album.” Brian wasn’t the only one who was dissatisfied with the record: Roger expressed displeasure about the album, saying it wasn’t representative of a Queen live show (later quipping that the only instrument retained from the actual live shows was the bass drum), while Freddie and Brian were disappointed by both the mix and the inclusion of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, convinced that the song lost its power without the accompanying visuals and that adding the pre-taped operatic portion could be considered cheating.

  The album was released just as Queen were entering Mountain Studios to record some new tracks for their next studio album. A single, ‘Love Of My Life’ backed with ‘Now I’m Here’, was released soon after the album but failed to garner any attention and stalled at a disappointing No. 63. (America received the fast live version of ‘We Will Rock You’ and ‘Let Me Entertain You’ in August, and this didn’t even break the Top 100.) The reviews were surprisingly positive; apart from yet another slandering by Rolling Stone: “Anyone who already owns a substantial Queen collection will find Live Killers a redundant exercise anyway. Half of the double LP’s twenty-two tracks come from Night At The Opera and News Of The World, and four more were on last year’s Jazz. There are also two versions of their Aryan command, ‘We Will Rock You’ ... If Live Killers serves any purpose at all, it’s to show that, stripped of their dazzling studio sound and Freddie Mercury’s shimmering vocal harmonies, Queen is just another ersatz Led Zeppelin, combining cheap classical parody with heavy-metal bollocks.” Sounds reluctantly stated, “I don’t find the obligatory post-’77 groan rising to my lips at the mention of their name, and this package is a perfectly adequate retrospective on most of their best songs,” while Record Mirror gushed, “Bring out the champagne and the roses, this is a triumph. This album enhances Queen’s songs and isn’t a mere fill-in until the next studio project [though of course it was]. Listen and you’ll not be disappointed.”

  THE GAME

  EMI EMA 795, June 1980 [1]

  Elektra 5E-513, June 1980 [1]

  EMI CDP 7 46213 2, December 1986

  Hollywood HR 61063 2, June 1991

  Parlophone CDPCSD 134, 1994

  Hollywood HR 9286-01110-9 7, October 2003

  ‘Play The Game’ (3’32), ‘Dragon Attack’ (4’18), ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ (3’37), ‘Need Your Loving Tonight’ (2’49), ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ (2’44), ‘Rock It (Prime Jive)’ (4’32), ‘Don’t Try Suicide’ (3’52), ‘Sail Away Sweet Sister’ (3’32), ‘Coming Soon’ (2’50), ‘Save Me’ (3’48)

  Bonus track on 1991 Hollywood Records reissue: ‘Dragon Attack’ (remix by RAK and Jack Benson) (4’20)

  Bonus tracks on 2011 Universal Records deluxe reissue: ‘Save Me’ (live version, Montreal Forum, November 1981) (4’16), ‘A Human Body’ (non-album B-side, May 1980) (3’42), ‘Sail Away Sweet Sister’ (take 1 with guide vocal, February 1980) (2’32), ‘It’s A Beautiful Day’ (original spontaneous idea, April 1980) (1’29), ‘Dragon Attack’ (live version, Milton Keynes Bowl, June 1982) (5’14)

  Bonus videos, 2011 iTunes-only editions: ‘Dragon Attack’ (live version, Morumbi Stadium, March 1981), ‘Save Me’ (live version, Seibu Lions Stadium, November 1982), ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ (Saturday Night Live version, September 1982)

  Musicians: John Deacon (bass guitar, rhythm guitar and piano on ‘Another One Bites The Dust’, acoustic rhythm guitar on ‘Need Your Loving Tonight’), Brian May (guitars, vocals, synthesizer and lead vocals on ‘Sail Away Sweet Sister’, piano and synthesizer on ‘Save Me’), Freddie Mercury (vocals, piano, synthesizer on ‘Play The Game’ and ‘Coming Soon’, acoustic rhythm guitar on ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’), Roger Taylor (drums, percussion, vocals, co-lead vocals, synthesizer and guitar on ‘Rock It (Prime Jive)’ and ‘Coming Soon’), Mack (synthesizer)

  Recorded: Musicland Studios, Munich, February– May 1980 (‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’, ‘Sail Away Sweet Sister’, ‘Coming Soon’ and ‘Save Me’ recorded at Musicland Studios, Munich, June–July 1979)

  Producers: Queen and Mack

  The time between November 1978, when Jazz was released, and June 1980, when The Game finally emerged, was wisely spent. Queen had decided to take a break from the studios and focus instead on their live work. While the North American leg of the Jazz tour in 1978 was marred by Freddie’s excesses, the European and Japanese shows in 1979 are regarded as Queen’s shining moments on the tour. They surpassed even themselves with the aptly titled Crazy Tour in late 1979, climaxing with a thrilling appearance at the Paul McCartney-organized Concerts for the People of Kampuchea. If there had been even a hint that Queen were starting to lose their staying power, it quickly vanished.

  However, there was still the necessity for the all-important hit record. The band had ente
red Musicland Studios in June 1979, their first session at the studios in Munich, to record some preliminary ideas for songs. Unlike previous sessions, they had no complete songs prepared, a deliberate choice designed to exercise their spontaneous creativity; the result was three surprisingly good songs (‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’, ‘Save Me’ and ‘Sail Away Sweet Sister’), one mediocre track (‘Coming Soon’) and several additional song sketches. As yet, there was no pressure to come up with any product for general release.

  Part of this change in attitude occurred when Queen were introduced to Musicland’s resident producer, Reinhold Mack (known only by his surname to his friends). He had recorded with ELO in previous years and brought some of his best techniques from those sessions, one of which focused on using minimal microphones to achieve a larger drum sound. Though Brian later admitted the band virtually produced themselves, Mack’s expertise was useful to the band, particularly in allowing them the freedom to splice together various portions to create a complete, cohesive-sounding take. Previously, the band would painstakingly record the backing track in one attempt, and if this broke down they would be forced to start over from the beginning. Mack’s new method saved the band substantial time, as well as their sanity.

  “That was when we started trying to get outside what was normal for us,” Brian explained to On The Record in 1982. “Plus, we had a new engineer in Mack and a new environment in Munich. Everything was different. We turned our whole studio technique around in a sense, because Mack had come from a different background from us. We thought there was only one way of doing things, like doing a backing track; we would just do it until we got it right. If there were some bits where it speeded up or slowed down, then we would do it again until it was right. We had done some of our old backing tracks so many times, they were too stiff. Mack’s first contribution was to say, ‘Well, you don’t have to do that. I can drop the whole thing in. If it breaks down after half a minute, then we can edit in and carry on if you just play along with the tempo.’ We laughed and said, ‘Don’t be silly! You can’t do that!’ But in fact, you can. What you gain is the freshness, because often a lot of the backing tracks are first time through. It really helped a lot.”