by Georg Purvis
“After [Freddie] died,” Brian told Q in 1998, “my way of dealing with it was to go out on tour. But Roger and John became very impatient with me and started working on the tapes. I didn’t want this stuff to go out without my involvement, so I took the tapes off them, felt that they’d done it wrong and spent months putting it all back together. Doing Made In Heaven was like assembling a jigsaw puzzle. But I wouldn’t have put my seal of approval on it if I hadn’t thought it was up to standard.” He opened up in a 1998 interview with Guitar & Bass Magazine, venting his spleen at the rhythm section: “In fact, when I went on the Back To The Light tour, I heard that the other members of Queen had already taken the decision to go ahead with this last album, without even asking my opinion. I was even more furious than before; I was not convinced that releasing this album was a good idea. As soon as I heard the news, I contacted Roger and John to make my disapproval known to them. To that they answered, that if it didn’t suit me, they would go ahead without me! I was already fuming to have been treated that way, but even that was nothing compared to the anger I had after having listened to what they had put down on tape during my absence: it was truly catastrophic!”
With his mind now set on finishing the album to the standards he believed Queen’s albums were held to, Brian perched himself in front of a computer for the next eighteen months, working furiously on assembling suitable pieces of music comprised of existing vocals. Roger and John cooled off and met up with Brian throughout 1994, with the bassist reporting in the spring of 1995 that “the recording and mixing of Queen material is progressing and I hope we will be able to release the end results this year. I am sure that everybody will have varied and different comments and opinions on the finished work. It has not been easy as even Roger, Brian and myself see things differently and coming to an agreement between us takes time! Anyway, we will do our best as that is all we can do and I hope you feel that it was worth all the work to release a final Queen album!”
In the summer 1995 issue of the Fan Club magazine, Brian revealed, “As I write, we have only a few weeks to deliver all the finished mixed tracks, and all the artwork, if we are to meet the deadline for a Christmas onslaught! It feels a bit like the old days, but of course we’re all very different in our ways now. I remember us working flat out in three studios simultaneously to deliver A Night At The Opera in 1975. At the moment work is going on in London, and at Roger’s Mill, and at my own studio in sunny Surrey ... we may even make it! For me, I can hardly believe that most of the last eighteen months or so of my life have gone into this – ‘What, just for a few four-minute songs??!!!’ Well, they’re pretty precious songs, and I keep remembering this is really the last chance I’ll ever have to work with Freddie’s wonderful voice. Let’s hope you all like this stuff.”
“The time has come to put to bed this last studio album from Queen, a difficult child indeed!” Roger revealed in the autumn. “In content of songs, emotion, and, above all, in power and quality of performance from Freddie, the work is strong indeed. Boy, could that one sing. Some of the songs have never been heard before, including the last lyric and performance of our singer, others you might recognize but in totally different form and hopefully now improved.”
The first signs of renewed Queen activity came in October, when ‘Heaven For Everyone’ was issued as the band’s first true single in nearly four years, and promptly went to No. 2 in the UK charts. Then, on 6 November, almost four years to the day after Freddie’s death, Made In Heaven was issued. What unfolded over the course of the album was a sombre though surprisingly optimistic listening experience, and while the lyrics and subject matter deal mostly with the inevitability of death, the album is still a fine counterpart to Innuendo.
The album is a veritable rollercoaster of emotions ranging from optimism (‘It’s A Beautiful Day’, ‘Heaven For Everyone’, ‘My Life Has Been Saved’) to sorrow (‘Mother Love’) and tranquility (‘A Winter’s Tale’). Upon first listening, it’s difficult to take everything in since the whole album sounds decidedly sombre (only ‘I Was Born To Love You’ and ‘You Don’t Fool Me’ err towards the upbeat), but it’s a strong collection of songs with messages of hope and a celebration of new life.
The presence of solo material – ‘I Was Born To Love You’, ‘Made In Heaven’, ‘Too Much Love Will Kill You’ and ‘Heaven For Everyone’ – and the previously released B-side, ‘My Life Has Been Saved’ are easy to date, but many fans had assumed that the remaining six songs were all recorded during the post-Innuendo sessions. In reality, only three of those tracks – ‘You Don’t Fool Me’, ‘Mother Love’ and ‘A Winter’s Tale’ – were recorded during Freddie’s final sessions, while the other songs – ‘It’s A Beautiful Day’, recorded in April 1980, and ‘Let Me Live’, recorded in September 1983 – were leftovers. However, the mix (supervised by David Richards) is superb, and all the tracks sound fresh, as if they really were recorded during Freddie’s final years.
Unfortunately, there is a decided dearth of rock songs on the album, and the only time that the band really take the opportunity to let loose is on the remake of ‘I Was Born To Love You’ and the reprise of ‘It’s A Beautiful Day’ – otherwise, the album is a sobering collection, full of mid-tempo ballads though offering at least some diversity, specifically the gospel of ‘Let Me Live’ and the dance-floor thumper ‘You Don’t Fool Me’.
“We were trying to make an album up to the same performance and arranging and producing standards of the others, and I think we succeeded,” Brian told Classic Rock in 1998. “It’s definitely a kind of fantasy album. It’s like what if Queen had still existed, because there was no such thing at that point. It had its moments of great joy and discovery, but a lot of hard slog and a lot of hard bits emotionally.” Roger was more diplomatic on the recording process, and name-checked the album in a 1998 Radio Five interview as one of his favourites.
There wasn’t any middle ground with the reviews; critics either loved it or hated it. Only Rolling Stone was mildly complimentary, calling the album “a strange, often discomfiting listening experience”, while Melody Maker was disdainful: “Made In Heaven (I don’t want to think about the nuances of that title) sounds exactly like every Queen record since A Kind Of Magic ... Some have called using the prerecorded voice of the late Mercury on this album necrophilia. Not me. I have no problem with Freddie making records while dead. No greater problem than I had with him making them while he was alive.” NME was even more vicious, letting fly their hatred for the album: “Made In Heaven is consistent with the ongoing programme entitled Freddie: The Remake. He’s now perceived as being warm, selfless and tragic – his physicality quite literally replaced on the cover by a bronze statue giving a straight-arm salute. Lovely ... Just what did the other band members feel they were gaining by bolstering up these fragments of Fred? Was it a satisfying mission – multi-tracking like mad, covering up for the missing lines and layering up a gigantic parody of the Queen sound to cover for the crappy material? At least the grave-robbing principle that launches The Beatles’ latest venture [‘Free As A Bird’] has some kind of historic, sentimental value. You’ll not excuse this record in the same way ... Made In Heaven is vulgar, creepy, sickly, and in dubious taste. Freddie would have loved it.”
The Times also mentioned the recent activity by The Beatles in a complimentary review: “Frankly, the impending battle of the bands with dead singers is not an alluring prospect. But while the regrouped Beatles have, by all accounts, been forced to work with some pretty scant contributions from the late John Lennon, the remaining members of Queen were bequeathed a generous album’s worth of surprisingly full-blooded performances by Freddie Mercury ... Despite its overdue delivery, Made In Heaven stands up remarkably well as the closing chapter in a spectacular pop odyssey.” The Guardian, too, was hesitant with its praise: “As usual with Queen, the lyrics, as opposed to the music, take centre stage. Musically, Made In Heaven simply takes up where Innuendo left off, with a dash of gospeloid
chanting here, a creaky outburst from one-trick guitarist Brian May there ... [Freddie] poured out his heart, and his words have a throat-aching poignance. Even the record’s opening verse, ‘It’s a beautiful day / The sun is shining / I feel good’, which would have seemed banal at another time, assumes a painful significance.”
Entertainment Weekly in the US called it “the perfect theatrical epitaph for a life dedicated to gorgeous artifice” and “a surprisingly organic work with no shortage of highlights.” Vox proudly proclaimed, “Heaven’s great!” and claimed that the album “contains some of the finest material of the band’s career ... Queen have surpassed all expectations with Made In Heaven. This album will break your heart, shake your soul and, at the right volume, undermine the foundations of your house.” The Sunday Times was also pleased with the album: “Aside from the dark, bluesy inflection of ‘Mother Love’ – a track Mercury recorded only weeks before the end – the mood here is upbeat and furiously triumphalist in the way that only Queen albums know how to be ... Vacuous lyrics, novelty effects and sonic bluster have their part to play here, too, of course, but by the rather routine standards of Queen’s output up to and including 1991’s Innuendo, this rates as a superior effort and a more-than-worthy epitaph to the great entertainer himself.”
Indeed, Brian, Roger, and John assembled an album of fine material that not only sounded cohesive, but honored Freddie’s last recordings without deluging them in sickly-sweet poignancy. Made In Heaven exhibits the right amount of humour and sadness, joy and pain, light and shade. While Innuendo was the quintessential conclusion to a varied and wonderful career, Made In Heaven was a fitting and perfect coda.
QUEEN ON FIRE: LIVE AT THE BOWL
Parlophone 863 211 2, October 2004 [20]
Hollywood 2061-62479-2, November 2004
‘Flash’ (1’54), ‘The Hero’ (1’44), ‘We Will Rock You’ (3’17), ‘Action This Day’ (4’52), ‘Play The Game’ (4’30), ‘Staying Power’ (4’03), ‘Somebody To Love’ (7’53), ‘Now I’m Here’ (6’18), ‘Dragon Attack’ (4’16), ‘Now I’m Here (Reprise)’ (2’20), ‘Love Of My Life’ (4’22), ‘Save Me’ (4’00), ‘Back Chat’ (5’00), ‘Get Down Make Love’ (3’39), ‘Guitar Solo’ (6’22), ‘Under Pressure’ (3’47), ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ (5’25), ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ (4’15), ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (5’38), ‘Tie Your Mother Down’ (4’09), ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ (3’49), ‘Sheer Heart Attack’ (3’25), ‘We Will Rock You’ (2’08), ‘We Are The Champions’ (3’28), ‘God Save The Queen’ (1’24)
Musicians: John Deacon (bass guitar, rhythm guitar on ‘Staying Power’), Brian May (guitars, vocals, piano on ‘Save Me’), Freddie Mercury (vocals, piano, acoustic rhythm guitar on ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’), Roger Taylor (drums, vocals, Syn-drums), Morgan Fischer (piano, synthesizer, keyboards)
Recorded: 5 June 1982 at Milton Keynes Bowl, Milton Keynes by Mack and Mick McKenna
Producers: Justin Shirley-Smith, Brian May and Roger Taylor
After the success of the Live At The Wembley Stadium DVD and CD releases in June 2003, rumours regarding the next live simultaneous release abounded. Some sources said the band’s appearance in Budapest from July 1986 would be next, but to release a show from the same tour (the Magic tour) with an identical set list would have been a poor decision. Instead, Greatest Video Hits 2 emerged that October, and the inclusion of ‘Staying Power’ from Milton Keynes set tongues wagging yet again.
The rumours were confirmed via Brian’s website on 27 June 2004. Like the Wembley show before it, Milton Keynes had been filmed by Gavin Taylor and shown on television, albeit in a heavily edited form. Unlike Wembley, though, Milton Keynes remained unreleased to the general public, excepting those who had taped the original broadcast in 1983 (or those Americans who taped it from the showing it received on VH-1 in 1995). For years, it was assumed that the band had played an abbreviated set for television purposes, but when Greg Brooks’ Queen Live: A Concert Documentary appeared in 1995, he enumerated all but ‘Sheer Heart Attack’ as having been performed that night.
Either way, this release would be a treat for casual fans to indulge in, and what emerged in October 2004 did not disappoint. There were only a handful of complaints, as there are with almost every release generated by any band. On the night of the original concert, Freddie’s voice cracked during ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’; for aesthetic reasons, this flaw was redubbed for the final release. Similarly, some of the dialogue between songs was also edited, including the oft-repeated line from Freddie, “It’s only a bloody record! I mean, people get so excited about these things.” But these are only minor quibbles since the overall presentation is spectacular, and to own a virtually complete concert is certainly desirable. Considering that the last true live release was Live At Wembley ’86 in May 1992, Queen On Fire: Live At The Bowl is an excellent documentation of where the band were in their live career during what many have considered their creative nadir.
Reviews were favourable for the most part. The Evening Standard’s Metro Life magazine rated the DVD number four on the list of Top Five recent releases, glossing the title as “A vindaloo trauma, maybe? No, it’s the Milton Keynes Bowl, the year is 1982 and Freddie Mercury and the guys are at the peak of their game. All the hits, done about as well as you could imagine. Even this non-Queen fan was impressed.” The Sun completely missed the point: “Let’s get one thing straight: Queen are one of the best, if not the best, live British bands ever. But do we really need another post-Mercury two-disc greatest hits album? There are some great live performances on here including ‘We Are The Champions’, ‘Play The Game’ and ‘Love Of My Life’, but you get the feeling they flogged something pretty similar last year. The Queen estate continues to coin it in – Freddie must be rolling in it in his grave.”
Music Week said, “This double collection ... captures perfectly one of the world’s biggest rock acts at their performing peak – a full three years before their Live Aid masterstroke.” Mirror Ticket gave the release three stars, saying that “this 1982 Milton Keynes show captures Queen in all their pomp and fury. Yet, despite Mercury’s vaunted showmanship and their elevated reputation in the era of The Darkness, this double set isn’t lost Britrock gold. For every gem they produced, Freddie’s crew churned out an equal amount of padding.” On The Record hit the nail squarely on the head: “Most Queen fans will admit that Hot Space wasn’t one of the group’s better albums. But the tour that followed the release of that album in 1982 was blistering hot. The concert from the Milton Keynes Bowl is released later this month as Queen On Fire: Live At The Bowl on DVD and CD. It’s an incredible 110 minutes of classic Queen live, featuring loads of their biggest hits ... It’s hard to believe that the concert is twenty-two years old. Freddie and the boys sound so fresh.”
The album is memorable for the ferocity with which the band launch into their rarer material. The opening salvo of ‘The Hero’ followed by the accelerated ‘We Will Rock You’ is a direct one-two punch, while more audience-friendly renditions of ‘Staying Power’, ‘Action This Day’ and ‘Back Chat’ completely transform those songs from the bland disco-funk of Hot Space into full-throttle rockers. The segment from ‘Now I’m Here’ until Brian’s guitar solo flags, but it’s redeemed by ‘Under Pressure’ and ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’, a song that was excised from the set list for the 1981 shows but enjoys a resurrection here. Overall, the release is a welcome and refreshing addition to the Queen discography, and a refreshing counterpart to the oversaturated representations of the Magic tour.
QUEEN ROCK MONTREAL
Parlophone 50999 5 04047 2 8, October 2007 [20]
Hollywood 000097302, October 2007
‘Intro’ (1’59), ‘We Will Rock You’ (fast) (3’06), ‘Let Me Entertain You’ (2’48), ‘Play The Game’ (3’57), ‘Somebody To Love’ (7’53), ‘Killer Queen’ (1’59), ‘I’m In Love With My Car’ (2’03), ‘Get Down, Make Love’ (4’45), ‘Save Me’ (4’14), ‘Now I’m Here’
(5’31), ‘Dragon Attack’ (3’11), ‘Now I’m Here’ (1’53), ‘Love Of My Life’ (3’56), ‘Under Pressure’ (3’49), ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ (3’29), Drum Solo (3’00), Guitar Solo (5’11), ‘Flash’ (2’11), ‘The Hero’ (1’51), ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ (4’15), ‘Jailhouse Rock’ (2’32), ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (5’28), ‘Tie Your Mother Down’ (3’52), ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ (4’00), ‘Sheer Heart Attack’ (3’53), ‘We Will Rock You’ (2’09), ‘We Are The Champions’ (3’27), ‘God Save The Queen’ (1’27)
Musicians: John Deacon (bass guitar), Brian May (guitars, vocals, piano on ‘Save Me’), Freddie Mercury (vocals, piano, acoustic rhythm guitar on ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’), Roger Taylor (drums, vocals, lead vocals on ‘I’m In Love With My Car’)
Recorded: 24 and 25 November 1981 at the Forum, Montreal, Quebec by Mack and Kooster McAllister
Producers: Justin Shirley-Smith, Kris Fredriksson, Joshua J. Macrae, Brian May and Roger Taylor
The farcical, endless releases of We Will Rock You, Queen’s first theatrical concert presentation, is well documented (see Part Six), so that makes its release in 2007 as Queen Rock Montreal all the more confounding, considering this marks the fifth time the video was released in some format. But more substantial was the first release of the audio of this concert; while the spectacle of Queen’s live show should be viewed in all its glory on DVD (indeed, despite its familiarity, Queen Rock Montreal is stunning in hi-def), hearing the interplay of the last time that Queen were a four-piece live band is a rare treat. Again, the songs are all familiar, but the performance is white-hot. There are some new treats, too: ‘Flash’ and ‘The Hero’ are performed in full here, with Brian on piano and synthesizer on the former, and a leisurely take on the latter, far different from the Queen On Fire: Live At The Bowl performance. Additionally, ‘Jailhouse Rock’ is released here for the first time; though it was performed as an encore number (just before ‘Sheer Heart Attack’), it was edited to after ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’, due to Freddie’s insistence on deliberately annoying the director, who had demanded that the band wear the same outfits on both nights. For the encores on the first night, Freddie wore white jeans, while on the second night, he wore the shortest shorts ever to have been produced, thus potentially screwing up the continuity of the film.
