by Georg Purvis
The years following Brian’s 1992 Back To The Light album, his first proper solo release pulling together songs written between 1988 and 1991, were spent touring that album as well as writing new songs. When rumours surfaced in 1997 that he was working on a follow-up, fans started to get excited, since it was the first new material from any Queen member since Made In Heaven in 1995. Even more exciting for fans was the one-off performance of Brian, Roger and John with Elton John at the Théâtre National de Chaillot at the premiere of the Béjart Ballet Lausanne (see Part Three), which was the first integration of Queen’s music with ballet since Freddie’s 1979 excursion with the Royal Dancers. The press predictably covered the appearance, which saw the pianist/vocalist performing ‘The Show Must Go On’, and rumours started to circulate that Elton would front Queen on a world tour.
Brian wasn’t interested in any reunion at this point, despite Elton’s assertion that the band should re-form: “It must be like keeping a fabulous Ferrari in the garage and not being able to drive,” Elton later quipped. However, shortly after the performance in Paris, Brian was so moved by the celebration of Queen’s music and Freddie’s life that he wrote ‘No-One But You (Only The Good Die Young)’ as a tribute to the late vocalist.
Originally, he intended to release the song on his solo album, which ultimately surfaced in June 1998 as Another World, but he sensed that it needed something that session musicians couldn’t recreate. “It was written as a sort of tribute to Freddie and before long I became aware I was trying to make it sound very Queen-like,” Brian told Guitarist in 1998. “There are some musical and verbal quotes in there and I thought, ‘If it’s going to sound like Queen, maybe it ought to be Queen.’ I sent the track to Roger and he loved it and said we had to do it. Although I lost that track from my album, it worked out alright in the end; it was the final thing that made me realize I was on the wrong track for my album anyway.” With Roger on board (“He put it away in a drawer somewhere,” Brian explained in 1998, “‘cause he was busy or whatever, and it was months later when Roger phoned up suddenly, excited and said, ‘I just listened to the track and it’s amazing, and we have to do it as a Queen song!’”), the duo asked John to help them out with it. Sessions took place in the spring of 1997 at Allerton Studios, Brian’s home studio, and the song was completed in time for inclusion on a future compilation. The initial intent was for it to appear on a simultaneous compilation of ballads and love songs, but when this fell by the wayside, it secured a position as the final track on Queen Rocks.
Lyrically, the song draws inspiration from the unveiling of Freddie’s statue, which overlooks Lake Geneva in Montreux (“A hand above the water/ An angel reaching for the sky”) and is majestically featured on the sleeve of Made In Heaven. The theme of the song comes from the subtitle, and is unofficially dedicated to those who die too soon. This became more sentimental in August 1997, when Lady Diana Spencer was killed in a car crash after a flock of French paparazzi gave chase to her car. It was an indirect yet appreciated tribute, and it became appropriate to dedicate the song not only to Freddie but to everyone who lives on in spirit and memory.
Set to a melancholy piano backing (played by Brian in the style of Freddie), the song is a typical Brian ballad, sung emotionally by its author, with an occasional duet with Roger. Featuring only Brian, Roger and John, the song’s success is due to its simplicity; with a basic arrangement, the song isn’t bogged down with excessive instrumentation or backing vocalists. ‘No-One But You (Only The Good Die Young)’ wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Made In Heaven, though it certainly doesn’t belong on Queen Rocks, especially following the raucous ‘It’s Late’. The best plan for the song would have been to issue it is a non-album single, which was originally intended in November 1997, to coincide with its sister compilation; Parlophone pulled out at the last minute and were besieged by complaints from fans worldwide. Thanks to an internet petition (proving that, sometimes, petitions on the web can make a difference), the record company released the single in January 1998 as a double-A single with ‘Tie Your Mother Down’. Housed in a gorgeous yellow slipcase, with a rendering of Icarus on the front (“They’re only flying too close to the sun”), the single brought Queen back into the UK Top Twenty, where it peaked at a respectable No. 13, closing the final chapter in the band’s career almost indefinitely.
A video for the song was filmed on 29 November 1997 at Bray Studios by The Torpedo Twins, and is arguably the duo’s finest. A tasteful black and white presentation of the three remaining members performing the song, three versions were constructed: the original, which was used as a promo only; a new edit interspersed, in traditional DoRo fashion, with shots of Freddie; and a making-of version that goes behind the scenes. The last two versions were issued on the Queen Rocks video in 1998, while the original has yet to be released on an official compilation.
Brian included the song in his 1998 Another World tour, where it sadly earned another dedication: Cozy Powell, former drummer of 1970s rock group Rainbow and a dear friend of Brian’s who recorded with the guitarist on his two solo albums, died in a car accident on 5 April 1998, right before The Brian May Band was due to go on the road in support of Another World. Brian and Roger also performed the song in several shows of the Queen reincarnation, most notably at the pre-We Will Rock You: The Musical gig in Amsterdam.
NO TURNING BACK (Deacon/Ahwai)
• Soundtrack (The Immortals): Biggles • A-side (The Immortals): 5/86
Though it may not be an exceptional track, ‘No Turning Back’ is notable for being the only solo venture by John Deacon. Shortly after Live Aid in 1985, John was asked by director John Hough to provide a theme song for the movie Biggles, from the pre-war stories about true-blue air ace Major James Bigglesworth. With nothing better to do while waiting for the sessions for the next Queen album to start, John agreed, and promptly formed a new band with friends Robert Awhai and Lenny Zakatek on drums, called The Immortals.
An infectiously bouncy track that relates more to the plot of Biggles than as a stand-alone song, it features some unmistakable Deacon bass featured prominently as the undoubted highlight of the song. For those yearning to hear John make his vocal debut, forget it: Robert provided lead vocals and has a silky and soulful voice, though it would have been interesting to hear how Freddie might have handled the song. The song was recorded before sessions for A Kind Of Magic at Townhouse Studios in London, and was produced by John and Robert, and mixed by Bert Bevans.
Released as a single to promote the film in May 1986, ‘No Turning Back’ came in three versions: the standard version running nearly four minutes, a semi-instrumental mix dubbed the ‘Chocks Away Mix’, and an extended version dubbed the ‘Joystick Mix’, with neither of the new mixes offering anything revelatory – if you’ve heard one, you’ve heard them all. A video was filmed shortly before the single’s release, with the three musicians wearing the famous Biggles headgear and goggles plus a guest appearance from the film’s septuagenarian star Peter Cushing.
NO VIOLINS (Taylor)
• Album (Roger): Fun
This paean to nostalgia served as a fine introduction to Fun In Space, with a deceptively slow intro kicking into high gear with a thundering roll around the drum set and chugging guitar riffs. There are the requisite sci-fi references (“security complex” and “monochrome duplex” lend it a futuristic bent, though these could just as easily be a call-back to the Cold War conception of the future) but otherwise the song is a touching rememberance of the past. Coming from the typically sex and drugs and rock‘n’roll attitude of the drummer, this is a superficially surprising subject matter, but when viewed in the context of earlier songs like ‘Tenement Funster’ or ‘Drowse’, which have a guarded wistfulness to them, ‘No Violins’ is in good company.
NOT FADE AWAY (Holly/Allison)
Buddy Holly’s terrific 1957 single, covered by The Rolling Stones in 1964, was performed as an acoustic guitar intro to ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ on just two occasion
s: in Stockholm on 10 April 1982 and, in more complete form, on 4 September 1984 at Wembley Arena.
NOTHIN’ BUT BLUE (May/Powell/Nicholls/Makin)
• Album (Brian): BTTL • B-side (Brian): 11/92 [19]
Blues wasn’t a style that Brian often explored, despite the obvious influence of Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton (indeed, his 1983 composition, ‘Blues Breaker’, was dedicated to the latter). The early 1990s, however, saw a rush of blues compositions from Brian. ‘Lost Opportunity’, which was released on the CD single of ‘I’m Going Slightly Mad’ and was recorded just after sessions for Innuendo, was essentially a solo track from Brian with accompaniment by Roger and John. More sublime was ‘Nothin’ But Blue’, a track initially recorded as ‘Somewhere In Time’ on Cozy Powell’s 1992 solo album, The Drums Are Back, and with John on bass. For his own solo album, Brian took the instrumental backing from that session and added his own lyrics to create a new version.
Surprisingly, Brian strayed from his trusty guitar on this song. “Ninety-five percent of [the guitar tracks were done on The Red Special],” Brian told Guitar World in 1993. “On a couple of tracks, I also used this wonderful guitar that Joe Satriani gave me, which was a big departure for me. He gave it to me after we did the Guitar Legends concert in Seville, which I was lucky enough to be asked to put together. We all had a great time and I developed an even greater admiration for Satriani than I already had. He’s such an amazingly dexterous player, you expect him to be technical and nothing else. But the fact is that he’s got so much soul and feeling in what he does. He’s really a guitarist’s guitarist. Plus, he’s a nice guy. Anyway, he sent me this guitar and I picked it up and was inspired. So I kicked in with it ... It’s his special model, and he had one made for me. It’s wonderful. I’ll be taking that out on tour with me, I hope.” With a set of lyrics about the breakup of a relationship and the sadness of its aftermath, the song took on a deeper meaning when Brian told The Orange County Register in 1993 that it was written “the night before Freddie died. I had this strong feeling that it was going to happen. It flowed out very quickly. I could just hear the song in my head.”
NOW I’M HERE (May)
• Album: SHA • A-side: 1/75 [11] • CD Single: 10/91 [16] • CD Single: 12/95 [6] • Live: Killers, Wembley, On Fire, Montreal • Live (Brian): Brixton • Bonus: SHA
One of the contenders for the most performed Queen song in their career, ‘Now I’m Here’, in its original recorded form, is a slow, Stones-like rocker chronicling a rock band touring the moonlight mile: America. Inspired by Queen’s own journeys on the road, the song was actually started during their first North American tour in support of Mott the Hoople (March–May 1974), but the words came later that year, before being the last song recorded for the album that September. One of the few Queen songs written about the road, it was also unusual in that it was written on the road. The words take on a different meaning in the context of the events that transpired while on tour with Mott the Hoople (see Parts Two and Four for more information).
Because of Brian’s illnesses during the year (gangrene in January, hepatitis in May, and a duodenal ulcer during the summer), he fell into a deep depression and constantly worried whether the band would replace him. Instead, their support of the guitarist grew stronger, and they worked on recording new songs for their third album in his absence. Brian, too, would feverishly write when he felt well enough, and all his songs from Sheer Heart Attack indirectly relate to his time away from the group. None more so than ‘Now I’m Here’ (originally titled ‘Peaches’, itself an oblique reference to an American girl Brian fell for and would subsequently lust after), the title of which can be seen as a reassurance to the others, or maybe as a sarcastic twist.
Mainly, the song’s rhythmic and lyrical inspiration is drawn from America: “We’d done a few things before I was ill,” Brian said of the sessions, “but when I came back they’d done a load more, including a couple of backing tracks of songs by Freddie which I hadn’t heard, like ‘Flick Of The Wrist’, which excited me and gave me a lot of inspiration to get back in there and do some writing – ‘Now I’m Here’ was done in that period. That song’s about experiences on the American tour, which really blew me away. I was bowled over by the amazing aura rock music has in America.”
The riff recalls any number of classics recorded by The Rolling Stones, with a guitar solo similar to many Chuck Berry songs; during the outro, Freddie shouts, “Go, go, go little Queenie!”, a clever reference to Berry’s 1959 song, as well as the band’s namesake. But the performance is unmistakably Queen. The star here is clearly Brian, who has not only found his voice as a songwriter but has also grown far more confident in guitar arrangements. The song is cleverly written and designed, and starts off with a raw guitar riff over Freddie’s echo-laden vocals. It then explodes into life, and is chock full of vocal harmonies, crunching guitars and a steady rhythm section. The subtle use of piano and organ, played by Brian and Freddie respectively, adds texture to the song and leads into the guitar solo nicely.
The song was selected as the second and final single from Sheer Heart Attack. Released only in the UK, the single, with a stand-alone version of ‘Lily Of The Valley’ as the B-side, reached a respectable No. 11 in the charts, but was too weighty to be considered a serious chart blockbuster.. The song received a television performance on Christmas Day 1974, when the band appeared on Granada TV’s programme 45; unfortunately, this tape has not yet surfaced.
A promotional video wasn’t made for the single (‘Killer Queen’ didn’t receive one either, but its ‘official’ video has become the one shot for Top Of The Pops), but the song did receive further BBC treatment on 16 October 1974, when the band nipped into Maida Vale 4 Studios to record a session with Jeff Griffins producing, to be used on Bob Harris’ show on 4 November. Because the band were preparing for the upcoming British tour, they didn’t have enough time to record new versions of the songs (‘Now I’m Here’, ‘Stone Cold Crazy’, ‘Flick Of The Wrist’ and ‘Tenement Funster’), so the backing tracks from the Sheer Heart Attack sessions were used instead, with new lead vocals on each track by Freddie (and Roger, in the case of the final song).
Understandably, the song found a welcome home in the live setting, where it debuted as the stage opener on 31 October 1974 in Manchester (after the prerecorded ‘Procession’ concluded); it was then shuffled throughout the live set until 9 August 1986, but was played at every concert in that almost twelve-year span with the exception of Hyde Park in 1976 and Live Aid in 1985. The song took on a different shape starting in 1978, when Freddie would inject a vocal improvisation that incorporated the crowd (a good example of this is on Live Killers). Between 1980 and 1982, the band would often divide the song into several sections: the main part of the song, followed by Freddie’s improvisation, went into an instrumental improvisation, followed by the introduction of a new song (‘Dragon Attack’ normally, though ‘Put Out The Fire’ would also be performed on the 1982 Japanese tour), and then a short reprise of the main ‘Now I’m Here’ riff. The song could last anywhere up to fifteen minutes, though it reverted back to its original structure, albeit taken at a faster pace, for the 1984, 1985 and 1986 tours.
The song was performed at the Concert for Life by Def Leppard, but with Brian providing lead guitar; he had also appeared at a Def Leppard concert on 9 September 1987, where he jammed with them on the song. The guitarist also incorporated the song into his 1992 and 1993 Back To The Light tours, but did not include it on his 1998 Another World tours. During Brian’s self-organized Expo ’92 Guitar Festival in Seville, the song was performed with Gary Cherone and Paul Rodgers on lead vocals, and with additional guitar from Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Nuno Bettencourt and Joe Walsh. It was also performed on 25 November 1999 with Foo Fighters, during a concert in which Brian and Roger both guested; this was the final performance of the song to date.
OGRE BATTLE (Mercury)
• Album: Queen2 • Compilation: BBC, Deep Cuts 1 • Bo
nus: Queen2
Opening the ‘black side’ of Queen II is ‘Ogre Battle’, a suitably dark and foreboding track set to a frenetic guitar riff. Despite fitting in almost perfectly with the themes on the second album, ‘Ogre Battle’ was actually written as early as 1972 and was originally destined for the first album, but remained unrecorded since it was considered too heavy lyrically. Granted, it would be difficult to imagine this song on the first album among Freddie’s other contributions, but it adds a sense of mysticism to Queen II that makes the song a standout.
It was written and arranged entirely by Freddie, even the guitar riff, as Brian explained to Guitar World in 1998: “Freddie also wrote ‘Ogre Battle’ which is a very heavy metal guitar riff. It’s strange that he should have done that. But when Freddie used to pick up a guitar, he’d have a great frenetic energy. It was kind of like a very nervy animal playing the guitar. He was a very impatient person and was very impatient with his own technique. He didn’t have a great technical ability on the guitar but had it in his head. And you could feel this stuff bursting to get out. His right hand would move incredibly fast. He wrote a lot of good stuff for the guitar, a lot of it was stuff which I would not have thought of, because it would be in weird keys. He had this penchant for playing in E flat and A flat and F, and these are not places that your hand naturally falls on when playing the guitar, so he forced me into finding ways of doing things which made unusual sounds. It was really good.”
The “unusual sounds” Brian mentioned are present within the first sixty seconds of the song. A whooshing sound effect is used to fade into distorted (and backwards) guitars and drums, an early sign of Queen’s desire to experiment in the studio. “That was a bit of a miracle, actually,” Brian told Guitar Player in 2008. “They had this massive gong in the studio that Roger hit. When we turned the tape over, the gong sounded great backwards and that sound was going to be at the beginning of the track. That got us wondering what the rest of the track would sound like backwards. Well, it sounded very similar. The riff is palindromic; it sounds the same forwards and backwards. So we decided to run the entire track backwards in the intro and then we seamlessly crossfaded it with the forwards track. I don’t think it’s even a crossfade; I think it’s a butt edit and you can’t even tell. I used my fingerboard pickup and bridge pickup out of phase for that tone.”
