Queen: The Complete Works

by Georg Purvis

  ALL RIGHT NOW (Fraser/Rodgers)

  • Live (Q+PR): Return, Ukraine

  An epic, swaggering blues rocker extolling the virtues of a one-night stand, ‘All Right Now’ became Free’s biggest and best-known song, and still features in regular rotation across radio waves worldwide. Released on the 1970 album Fire And Water, the song was issued as a single in May 1970 and established Free as a top-class act. In fact, The Faces were so enamored with the band that they not only played several Free songs in their live sets, they also recorded their own response to ‘All Right Now’ in 1971, which was titled ‘Stay With Me’.

  The first performance of the song with a Queen-related member came on 19 October 1991, which was also the first time Paul Rodgers worked with a member of the band. Brian had organized the Guitar Legends Concert in Seville and asked several premier artists to contribute to the show. Paul Rodgers was one of those artists, and played a short set of Free and Bad Company songs towards the end of the concert: ‘Can’t Get Enough’, ‘Feel Like Making Love’ and ‘All Right Now’, with Brian contributing guitar on all of them. In 1994, Brian guested on the number on three further occasions, but the first real sparks between guitarist and vocalist wouldn’t ignite until over a decade later.

  On 11 November 2004, Queen were inducted into the UK Hall of Fame. Since neither Brian nor Roger felt up to the challenge of singing the songs themselves, they asked Paul Rodgers to sing on ‘We Will Rock You’ and ‘We Are The Champions’, then decided to incorporate ‘All Right Now’ as the final performance. When the performance aired on television, the general vibe was positive, which Brian commented on shortly thereafter, and the wheels were set in motion for a full-scale tour, announced the following month. ‘All Right Now’ became a mainstay, was performed at every show (allowing Brian to really get into an extended solo) and quickly became a crowd-pleaser.

  ALL THE WAY FROM MEMPHIS (Hunter)

  • Album (Brian): World

  As with his previous solo album, Brian deconstructed a popular track by his peers and transformed it into a full-blown Queen treatment. Whereas before it had been ‘Rollin’ Over’, a track previously written and recorded by the Small Faces (contemporaries of Smile), this time Brian rocked up Mott The Hoople’s 1973 glam single ‘All The Way From Memphis’, based on an arrangement on their Live album. Brian played most of the instruments except for drums – done by Cozy Powell – and the backing vocals, provided by Shelley Preston, Nikki Love and Becci Glover. The stars of the show – Brian’s Red Special and Cozy Powell’s thundering drums – duel with each other magnificently as Brian howls Ian Hunter’s words (Hunter himself shows up in the middle of the song as a guest raconteur), but it’s difficult to imagine the guitarist living the life he was singing about, especially at that stage in his career.

  “The first proper gig we had as Queen,” Brian explained in 1998, “we supported Mott The Hoople, which was a brilliant stroke – the best thing that could possibly have happened to us. We were doing a few small gigs around England, but really not getting incredibly far. I mean, there was a sort of reputation building up, but what we did was go out with [Mott] who had the proper audience already there. You know, they’d worked on their audience, they had it down, and anyone who was into state-of-the-art rock ‘n’ roll at the time would have been there. So they saw us, which was just the best thing that could have happened. I saw Mott The Hoople play this song all round England and all round the States and it was a storm every night. It was something exemplary – to see an audience erupt and react that way to that song. I wish it was still possible to see [them] do that. But I’m gonna do it, which is why I put it on the album, ’cos I damn well wanna play that song live. I just love it so much. It’s got all the right elements. Ian had it taped – you know, it’s got light and shade, changes of pace, it’s got suspense, and you think, ‘When is it coming?’ and he’d milk that for all it was worth, and [now] I’m gonna milk it!”

  Indeed, Brian did just that, and ‘All The Way From Memphis’ – certainly the highlight of the three cover versions on Another World – became a concert favourite on his 1998 Another World tour. The studio version was also included on the cleverly titled Moth Poet Hotel (an anagram of Mott The Hoople) tribute album, on which Brian was by far the most well-known musician.

  ALL THE YOUNG DUDES (Bowie)

  Though Queen had just started out when David Bowie became a star, they took a cue from the artist by experimenting with different sounds, techniques and genres. It came as no surprise, then, that the band approached Bowie in mid-1973, asking him to produce their second album. He respectfully declined since he was tied up with another of Britain’s glam rockers, Mott the Hoople. He provided them with ‘All The Young Dudes’, and it shot them back to the top of the charts.

  In November 1973, Queen were asked to support Mott the Hoople on a countrywide UK tour; the band, eager to gain exposure, agreed, and backed a fast-rising Hoople to great success. On 1 December 1973, when Mott performed the encore of their biggest hit, ‘All The Young Dudes’, Brian, Roger and Freddie were asked to rejoin them and provide backing vocals for the song.

  With Ian Hunter as a performer at the Concert For Life, instead of choosing a Queen song to tackle, he instead grouped with David Bowie and Mick Ronson following Bowie’s performance of ‘Under Pressure’ to provide an electrifying version of ‘All The Young Dudes’. Backed by Roger, Brian, John and Spike Edney, the song featured practically inaudible saxophone from Bowie, additional guitar from Ronson, and rhythm guitar and lead vocals from Hunter. The backing vocals were provided by Miriam Stockley, Maggie Bell, Chris Thompson, Peter Straker, and Gary Cherone and Nuno Bettencourt from Extreme. This version later appeared on Ronson’s posthumous 1994 album, Heaven And Hull.

  THE ALSO RANS (Taylor)

  • Album (The Cross): Blue • Live (The Cross): Germany

  Opening the second side of Blue Rock is this superb composition by Roger, sounding like an update of his own 1974 composition, ‘Tenement Funster’. The focus is on Roger’s voice as he tells a tale of street misfits, struggling to fit into a society that shuns underachievers. There are callbacks aplenty to other artists, with an obvious nod to Bruce Springsteen’s many lyrical woes of growing up as a working class hero. The opening line (“I was born on the 22nd floor of a bird cage”) references two singles by The Rolling Stones: ‘Get Off Of My Cloud’ (“I live on the corner of the 99th floor of my block”) and ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ (“I was born in a crossfire hurricane”), while the outro backing vocals, provided by Candy and Clare Yates, mirror almost exactly Lou Reed’s 1972 single, ‘Walk On The Wild Side’.

  ‘The Also Rans’ was performed live occasionally on the 1991 Blue Rock tour, usually as the penultimate number of the show, with a live version appearing on the 1992 Fan Club-only bootleg, Live In Germany.

  AMANDLA (May/Stewart/Anastacia/Louw/Bonsu)

  • Live: 46664

  Credited as a Queen track, ‘Amandla’ was written and recorded for the 46664 project in 2003. The song started off as a jam between Brian and Dave Stewart and then blossomed into something beyond Brian’s original vision, making its credit as a Queen track all the more dubious. Featuring a prayer by Andrews Bonsu and a harsh vocal performance from Anastacia, the song is about as atypically Queen as a song can get, but Brian contributes the piano and the Red Special even makes an appearance towards the end.

  THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (May)

  • CD single (Brian): 3/95 [37]

  One of the more curious diversions in a Queen solo artist’s history, ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ was a BBC radio series that involved Brian’s wife Anita Dobson in the role of Liz Allan, a high-school classmate of Peter Parker and a minor love interest in the original Spider-Man series. This would explain Brian’s involvement in writing and recording the music for the series, which was titled The Amazing Spider-Man and credited to ‘MC Spy-D + Friends’.

  Following the successful radio series, the best bits of the music
and dialogue were edited into a CD single and released in March 1995, two months after the series had aired. In what can only be described as a ludicrous proliferation, several remixes were released as part of the CD single, with the main theme, the four-minute ‘Mastermix’, technically being the A-side. Additional remixes – including an eight-minute ‘White Trouser Mix’, a two-minute ‘Sad Bit’ and two dance remixes known as ‘Solution Mix’ and ‘Solution Chilled Mix’, as well as a short burst of guitar called ‘The Amazing Spider Person (Brown Trouser Mix)’ and a collection of sound effects titled ‘The Amazing DJ Perk (MC Spy-D’s Favourite Stings)’ – were also issued, each more monotonous and puzzling than the last.

  As it is, the original ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ is a lot of fun, and Brian’s music is well-arranged and performed, though depending far too heavily on the radio show to make any kind of sense on its own. Nevertheless, the success of the radio series translated into the single’s sales, helping it reach No. 37 in the UK charts. Brian, however, had already moved well beyond the song, giving it little promotion and preferring to work on ideas for his next solo album and Queen’s own posthumous Made In Heaven.

  ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST (Deacon)

  • Album: Game • A-side: 8/80 [7] • CD Single: 11/88 • Live: Magic, Wembley, On Fire, Montreal • Compilation: Hits3 • Bonus: Wembley • Live (Q+PR): Return, Ukraine

  Queen were always keen on experimentation and pushing the limits of not only the studio and their creative team, but themselves as artists and musicians, and it was usually either Freddie or Brian who instigated the most memorable and adventurous departures from the norm. In early 1980, John – the quiet one who had been content writing strictly pop songs – opened up a whole new avenue for Queen by successfully introducing them to funk.

  “I listened to a lot of soul music when I was in school, and I’ve always been interested in that sort of music,” John modestly explained shortly after the release of the song. “I’d been wanting to do a track like ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ for a while, but originally all I had was the line and the bass riff. Gradually, I filled it in and the band added ideas. I could hear it as a song for dancing but had no idea it would become as big as it did. The song got picked up off our album and some of the black radio stations in the US started playing it, which we’ve never had before.”

  Brian’s account of the song was a self-deprecatory one: “A lot of people have used ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ as a theme song – the Detroit Lions used it for their games, and they soon began to lose, so they bit the dust soon afterwards [laughs], but it was a help to the record. And, there’s been a few cover versions of various kinds, notably ‘Another One Rides The Bus’, which is an extremely funny record by a bloke called Mad Al [sic – actually Weird Al Yankovic] or something in the States – it’s hilarious. We like people covering our songs in any way, no matter what spirit it’s done in, because it’s great to have anyone use your music as a base, a big compliment.”

  Though the band’s first attempts at funk had come with Freddie’s ‘Get Down, Make Love’ in 1977 and Roger’s ‘Fun It’ in 1978, those songs also contained other elements, rock in the former, disco in the latter. John’s ‘Another One Bites The Dust’, however, was pure funk, and contained very few Queen-like elements: there was no guitar solo, the drums were crisp, tight and dry, and it featured a very prominent bassline. Vocal harmonies were limited to occasional double-tracking on some verses and the choruses, and only Freddie’s voice distinguished the song as being Queen.

  It was this level of anonymity that allowed several US DJs – specifically, in New York, Philadelphia and Detroit – to label the song as a virtually unknown single from an obscure black R&B band. Once the song’s success started to snowball, Elektra and EMI issued it as a single in August 1980, despite protests from Roger, where it reached a modest No. 7 in the UK but became Queen’s second No. 1 single in the US, solidifying the band’s popularity and making 1980 one of their most lucrative years, both in terms of ticket and record sales.

  “This song was written ’cause I always wanted to do something in the direction of black music,” John said in a contemporary interview. “It’s not a typical Queen song and I do not know if we ever will do something similar again. We had disagreements about this song. Our company wanted this song as a single ’cause it was very successful at black radio stations. Roger tried to avoid that, because he said it’s too disco-like and that is not good for the reputation of Queen.”

  As Brian explained in 1993, “John Deacon, being totally in his own world, came up with this thing, which was nothing like what we were doing. We were going for the big drum sound: you know, quite pompous in our usual way. And Deakey says, ‘No, I want this to be totally different: it’s going to be a very tight drum sound.’ It was originally done to a drum loop – this was before the days of drum-machines. Roger did a loop, kind of under protest, because he didn’t like the sound of the drums recorded that way. And then Deakey put this groove down. Immediately Freddie became violently enthusiastic and said, ‘This is big! This is important! I’m going to spend a lot of time on this.’ It was the beginning of something quite big for us, because it was the first time that one of our records crossed over to the black community. We had no control over that; it just happened. Suddenly we were forced to put out this single because so many stations in New York were playing it. It changed that album from being a million-seller to being a three-million seller in a matter of three weeks or so.”

  The song was recorded in the spring of 1980 at Musicland Studios, during the main sessions for The Game, and featured John playing bass, rhythm guitar and backwards piano. Like ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’, though, the band were unsure of the song’s commercial potential and initially opted to keep it as an album track. Though various stories persist, the most commonly known is that Michael Jackson, then hot on the heels of his 1979 Off The Wall album and building a (brief) friendship with Freddie, suggested that the band release the song as a single. Crystal Taylor, Roger’s personal assistant, has said that it wasn’t Michael who suggested it, but the road crew themselves: “The actual very first people to suggest ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ to be released as a single was The Royal Road Crew. We were lurking around at Musicland Studios while the fab ones were mixing, and I think it was Jobby [John’s assistant] who said it would be a huge hit. When we told the band they just glared at us and told us to mix some more cocktails. I suppose Mr Jackson saying it sounds more impressive than ‘Our pissed road crew said...’”

  “I can remember many times when Roger and I would be pulling in absolutely diametrically opposite directions,” Brian said in 1998. “No chance of either of us budging. And Freddie would find a way through. He’d say, ‘Well, you can do this and do this and it will all work.’ That was one of Freddie’s great talents. He was good at finding roads in the mist. But he would certainly fight for things he believed in. Like ‘Another One Bites The Dust’, which was a bit of a departure for Queen. Roger, at the time, certainly felt that it wasn’t rock and roll and was quite angry at the way it was going. And Freddie said, ‘Darling, leave it to me. I believe in this.’ John had written the song. But it took Freddie’s support to make it happen.”

  A video for the single was shot during a soundcheck on 9 August 1980 at The Reunion in Dallas, Texas. Directed by Daniella Green, the video shows the band running through the song as normal, with very few embellishments; only during the middle section, when Freddie prances around the stage with various multicoloured baseball caps with devils’ horns plastered to them, does the video actually get interesting.

  Live, the song received very few airings during the first few performances in 1980. Only after its success in the charts did it finally become a mainstay in the set list, being performed during every tour between 1980 and 1986. The song remained an encore number until 1982, but was moved up earlier in the set list for the Queen Works! tour in 1984.

  Inexplicably, a remix b
y Wyclef Jean was issued on the 1999 barrel-scraping Greatest Hits III album release. The song had been reissued in this format in September 1998 in support of the American film Small Soldiers, but is completely out of place among the other songs on the album.

  ANOTHER WORLD (May)

  • Album (Brian): World

  Bringing Brian’s second full-length solo album to an emotional close, ‘Another World’ is a typical ballad sung with such poignancy that it’s hard not to be touched by the vocal performance. Unfortunately, schmaltzy string keyboards are added to the mix and the song is bathed in echo, reducing it to the level of such treacly MOR crooners like Barry Manilow and others of his ilk. Indeed, even the press release stated that it was a “ballad which would probably work for anyone from Axl Rose to Celine Dion.”

  Released as a Holland-only single after the album was issued, a more well-known version was issued on the Spanish-only album Baladas 99. Retitled as ‘Otro Lugar’, Brian sings the song in Spanish, approximating the phrasing of the English version, and it is indeed a beautiful rendition. The song was performed live with Brian standing at the front of the stage without a guitar (Jamie Moses played the acoustic guitar solo), and in this stripped-back arrangement was more effective than the album version.

  The song took on a more poignant tone after Cozy Powell died in a car accident on 5 April 1998, though it had been completed before then with Ken Taylor on bass and Steve Ferrone on drums and percussion. When asked if Cozy (and, inevitably, Freddie) were in mind when Brian wrote the song, he explained, “As soon as you start working on an idea for a song, then all kinds of things come into your head, and you weave all the threads together. It’s primarily a love song, really, and the first seed of the idea came from a film again, strangely enough. This guy [Peter Howitt] wrote a script for a film called Sliding Doors, which has now come out, as a matter of fact. He was an old friend of mine, and he said, ‘Please write me a song. I’ve always dreamed of asking you to write me a song, Bri.’ So I wrote this ‘Another World’ track and was very pleased with it: took it straight round to him, and he loved it, jumped up and down, said ‘This is it! This is the perfect thing for the film!’ About four months later I’d never heard another word from him and he said, ‘Oh, sorry Brian, politics, y’know, I got involved with a record company who is financing the film and we can’t use your song.’ So I was upset for a couple of days, but then I thought, ‘Well, I have the song’, and I started to weave into it the thoughts which go with my own life and my own feelings and I’m very ... actually, it’s a shock. Every time I hear this song, it’s a shock, because it’s very different for me, and it really is another world in terms of technique and atmosphere in song writing and record making. It’s a record which I didn’t think I would make. I’m much more into excess, y’know (laughs). This is a very grown-up kind of song, and it is another world for me.”