by Georg Purvis
PRINCES OF THE UNIVERSE (Mercury)
• Album: AKOM
Coming at the end of Queen’s most uneven album to date, ‘Princes Of The Universe’ is a bit of a reward (especially after tolerating the likes of ‘Don’t Lose Your Head’). Finally, Freddie had written a hard rock track reminiscent of ‘Ogre Battle’ and ‘Let Me Entertain You’ but, significantly, this is one of the few songs written by the vocalist in this period not to centre around love.
When viewed in context with the Highlander movie (which the song was written for, being promoted to the status of main theme because of its anthemic sound), ‘Princes Of The Universe’ is a celebration of immortality and of defending one’s honour to the death. In conjunction with Queen’s history, it’s a cry of defiance, and it wouldn’t be far-fetched to suggest that Freddie was subconsciously insinuating that the band were the princes. Indeed, 1986 was a red-letter year for the band: they would prove that, for the brief two months they were on the road, they could still sell out packed stadia across Europe and the UK, and it’s not surprising that, with all the extra exposure that Live Aid, Highlander and ‘A Kind Of Magic’ – both single and album – afforded them, they were regarded as the hottest ticket of the year.
It’s understandable that Freddie was gloating, especially if it meant that more songs would be written and recorded in this style. Unfortunately, hard rock would be the exception rather than the rule: after this, the band rarely ventured down this path again, revisiting it only slightly in 1989 and, to a lesser extent, on the final studio album. However, a lot is crammed into the song and several phases of Queen’s career are revisited; the heavy drum beat and vocal harmonies of ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ forms the basis of the song, with a guitar riff that sounds like a variant of the earlier album track ‘Gimme The Prize (Kurgan’s Theme)’. This is no ordinary rock song – ‘Princes Of The Universe’ twists and turns through many tricky passages and time signatures similar to ‘Bicycle Race’, with the pomp and bombast turned up to eleven.
It was perhaps for this reason that the song was not aired in the live setting, which may be one of Queen’s most erroneous omissions, but, when viewed in this light, is entirely understandable. Perhaps because it was released as a single only in America and Japan, the song remains virtually unknown, although a video was filmed in New York in April 1986, which shows the band on the set of Highlander amid explosions, wind machines, and a walk-on cameo from Christophe “Connor MacLeod” Lambert. This would be one of the few instances when any other country besides Britain received a promotional video for a single, but unfortunately it did little to boost sales. ‘Princes Of The Universe’ failed to chart in America, but enjoyed a new life when it was used as the theme song for the long-running television adaptation of Highlander.
PROCESSION (May)
• Album: Queen2
Opening Queen II in a dirge-like manner, Brian’s guitar extraordinaire ‘Procession’ is an exquisite orchestration, with the Red Special seamlessly leading into the opening arpeggios of ‘Father To Son’.
Brian explained in 1998, “That’s this Deakey amp. It’s a little one-watt amp that John Deacon built and brought into the studio one day. I had done ‘Procession’ with [Vox] AC30s and it sounded just a little bit too smooth. I wanted it to sound more violin-like and orchestral. So I double-tracked some of the layers using that little amp. Incredible. I’ve used it ever since on anything where there’s a real orchestral-type sound. And depending where you put the microphone in front of the amp, you can really tune the sound. It’s very directional. It’s a germanium transistor amp, which is a transformer coupled – unlike things these days; that isn’t really done any more – with silicon transistors. There’s this guy Dave Peters, who is one of the designers of the AC30 and a real expert on valve electronics and the early days of transistors. I’m working with him trying to reproduce the Deakey amp. Maybe we’ll put it on the market. I have to talk to John about it, as it happens. Because John made the thing. And he’s very kindly allowed me to use it ever since. It’s pretty magical.”
‘Procession’ was played over the PA system as the opening number every night between September 1973 and May 1975 (reprised for the band’s Earl’s Court Arena concerts in June 1977), serving as a perfect, atmospheric introduction to Queen’s shows.
THE PROPHETS SONG (May)
• Album: Opera
While Freddie was spending most of his time labouring over ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, taking the band into uncharted waters, Brian was pouring all his energy into ‘The Prophets Song’ (originally titled ‘People Of The Earth’ and divided into four parts), certainly Queen’s most epic number to date and about as adventurous as Freddie’s excursion into opera. Starting off the second side of A Night At The Opera in an ominous fashion, a gust of wind washes through the speakers, revealing the faint strains of a toy koto, an instrument which Brian had picked up during the band’s tour of Japan in April 1975. Eventually giving way to a full band performance, ‘The Prophets Song’ (sans possessive apostrophe) is a raging rocker which starts and ends slowly but, somewhere in the middle, builds to proportions far greater than anything the band had anticipated.
Lyrically, the song contains slightly religious overtones, though not overbearingly so (and certainly not as much as Freddie’s early compositions). Brian paints an atmospheric picture of a prophet in a dream “on a moonlight stair”, predicting the end of the world to shocked listeners “summoned by [their] own hand.” The seer concludes by preaching that “love is still the answer”, though Brian revealed that the song was not meant to give answers, only ask questions.
In an uncharacteristic move, he explained the song fairly in-depth, justifiably proud of what may be his finest set of lyrics: “I had a dream about what seemed like revenge on people, and I couldn’t really work out in the dream what it was that people had done wrong. It was something like a flood. Things had gone much too far and, as a kind of reparation, the whole thing had to start again. In the dream, people were walking on the streets trying to touch each other’s hands, desperate to try to make some sign that they were caring about other people. I felt that the trouble must be – and this is one of my obsessions, anyway – that people don’t make enough contact with each other.
“A feeling that runs through a lot of the songs I write is, that if there is a direction to mankind, it ought to be a coming together, and at the moment, it doesn’t seem to be happening very well. I worry about it a lot. I worry about not doing anything about it. Things seem to be getting worse. But I wasn’t trying to preach in the song at all. I was just trying to put across the questions which are in my mind, rather than the answers, which I don’t believe I have. The only answer I can see is to be aware of things like that and to sort of try to put yourself to rights. There is an overseer in the song, though, whose cry to the multitudes is to ‘listen to the warning of the seer’. In the song is this guy who also appeared in the dream. I don’t really know whether he was a prophet or an impostor, but anyway, he’s standing up there and saying, ‘Look, you’ve got to mend your ways.’ I still don’t know whether he’s the man who thinks he’s sent from God or whether he isn’t.”
Freddie was equally vocal about the track, telling Kenny Everett shortly before A Night At The Opera’s release, “Brian has an outrageous mammoth epic track which is one of our heaviest numbers to date. He’s got his guitar extravaganza on it. You see, Brian has acquired a new guitar specially built so he can almost make it speak. It will talk on this track.” Funny that Freddie failed to mention his two and a half minute vocal showcase inserted in the middle of the song. Consisting mainly of “la la” overdubbed numerous times, the sequence is a relentless yet fascinating interplay in stereo and studio techniques, which can only fully be appreciated on the 2002 DVD-A release of A Night At The Opera. Freddie’s voice bounces from speaker to speaker, creating a dizzying yet breathtaking effect that is still impressive over thirty years on.
Unfortunately, ‘The P
rophets Song’ has been unfairly overshadowed by ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. Brian’s composition is arguably the superior cut, which may be blasphemy to some, but ‘The Prophets Song’ deserves accolades for pushing the boundaries that Queen had been tiptoeing around on their first three albums. There’s no doubt that, had ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ not been written, ‘The Prophets Song’ would be considered Queen’s biggest groundbreaker. Unusually, Brian later mentioned that ‘The Prophets Song’ was briefly mooted as the single release instead of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, but considering EMI baulked at a six-minute cod-opera track being released without any editing, it’s difficult to imagine them okaying the release of this eight-minute epic without considerable editing.
The song was performed live between 1975 and 1978, usually in its own right, until 1977, when the vocal segment was interpolated into ‘White Man’. Once Queen started to steer their music away from progressive rock, ‘The Prophets Song’ was dropped from the set list, never to return.
PSYCHO LEGS: see DEATH ON TWO
LEGS (DEDICATED TO......
PURSUIT (May)
• Soundtrack (Brian): Furia
The first upbeat original piece of music on the Furia soundtrack, ‘Pursuit’ is a lengthy composition, running just over three minutes, and consists mostly of programmed drums and keyboard blasts, ending with the sound of a gunshot and disposed shell.
PUT IT ALL DOWN TO LOVE (Edney)
• Album (The Cross): Blue
• German CD single (The Cross): 10/91
Written by Spike Edney, ‘Put It All Down To Love’ is an energetic rocker from Blue Rock, one of three tracks the keyboardist would submit for the album. With a snarling guitar line and strangely Queen-like vocal harmonies, the song is lyrically inconsequential; its strength lies in the musical performance, unsurprisingly strong, especially by Blue Rock standards. The song was released as part of the ‘Life Changes’ CD single in a slightly edited form, with the concluding guitar solo from the previous track, ‘Millionaire’, serving as the introduction to ‘Put It All Down To Love’.
PUT OUT THE FIRE (May)
• Album: Space
Politically, Queen weren’t outspoken, satisified with spreading the message of love, peace and understanding instead of preaching to the masses. However, there were times when a band member felt so moved by an event that he would channel his feelings into a song, and the results were generally mixed. ‘Put Out The Fire’ was Brian’s indirect tribute to John Lennon, who had been slain by a deranged ‘fan’ on 8 December 1980.
The song is one of the few rock tracks presented on Hot Space, opening up the second side with a deliberately crunchy guitar riff and a powerful vocal from Freddie. The guitar solo was recorded one drunken night in Munich; Brian always intended to re-record it, but maintained it sounded good enough on its own account, complementing the anger and rage in the lyrics.
“That wasn’t a first take,” Brian told On The Record in 1983. “I had done a lot of solos for that – hated every one of them. And then we came back from a club where we used to go to have some drinks. I think I was well on the way – you know, we were all plucked out and slightly inebriated – and we had a ridiculous echo effect which Mack was putting back through the cans. I said, ‘That sounds unbelievable! I want to put it on every track.’ He said, ‘Okay, try ‘Put Out The Fire’.’ So we put it on the machine, and I just played through it. That was what we used. It was inspiring, like these huge stereo echo sounds coming from all over the place. I could hardly hear what I was doing, but it was sounding so good and I was so drunk. To be honest, I don’t think it’s that good a solo. It’s got a sort of plodding thing going behind it; I never felt totally happy with it.”
Released as the B-side of the US issue of ‘Calling All Girls’ in July 1982, the song was performed during the Rock ‘n’ America and Hot Space Japanese tours as an interpolation during ‘Now I’m Here’, leading into ‘Dragon Attack’. ‘Put Out The Fire’ was never performed in its entirety, and was dropped from the set list by the time of the 1984 Queen Works! tours.
QUEEN TALKS
• CD Single: 10/91 [16]
A curious inclusion in a database of Queen songs is this short extract from an interview, running less than two minutes and featuring a multitude of common snippets from interviews conducted through the years. Released on the 12” and CD single versions of ‘The Show Must Go On’ in October 1991, ‘Queen Talks’ is utterly pointless.
QUE SERA, SERA: see EXTRACTS
FROM GARDEN LODGE
RACHMANINOV’S REVENGE: see THE FALLEN PRIEST
RACING IN THE STREET (Springsteen)
• Album (Roger): Frontier
Unusually for Roger, Strange Frontier contained two cover songs: an electronic update of Bob Dylan’s ‘Masters Of War’ and a strong rendition of Bruce Springsteen’s 1978 track ‘Racing In The Street’. “I’ve always loved that song,” Roger told Modern Drummer in 1984. “I did it kind of mid-tempo, hopefully the way he would have done it if he would have decided to do it mid-tempo. His version, of course, is very slow.” Roger’s arrangement is reminiscent of The Boss’ style, with an uplifting piano melody and ringing acoustic guitar chords (one of the few tracks on the album to feature the instrument so prominently), and Roger delivers the words and sentiments convincingly, but it’s a fairly unspectacular and out-of-place addition to an album rife with threats of nuclear holocaust.
RADIO GA GA (Taylor)
• A-side: 1/84 [2] • Album: Works • CD Single: 11/88 • Live: Magic, Wembley, 46664 • Bonus: Works • Live (Q+PR): Return
It had taken Queen nearly four years to create some new sounds that were not only memorable but also innovative and creative. Hot Space had been a misstep, and the band paid dearly for it: the resulting lack of success in the charts reinforced the idea that the world was not ready for disco courtesy of Queen. It was time to rethink their strategy and work on creating something more in their style.
During recording sessions for the follow-up to Hot Space in August 1983, which saw the band recording for the first (and only) time in North America – Los Angeles, specifically The Record Plant, the same studio in which Brian had recorded his mini-EP Star Fleet Project earlier in the year – a chord sequence came to Roger while he was fooling around with a synthesizer: “The song came after I’d locked myself in a studio for three days with a synthesizer and a drum-machine.” By the end of those three days, he had produced a fairly complex demo of what may be Queen’s finest single of the 1980s.
‘Radio Ga Ga’ is a carefully constructed excursion into pop-rock, combining elements of disco and funk without being overbearing about it. With a bubbling synthesizer backing and a cracking drum-machine pattern, the song chugs along at a medium pace as the funky bassline percolates in the background, and is doubled by a synth bass part courtesy of Fred Mandel. As a matter of fact, synthesizers largely dominate the song – no wonder, since Mandel is augmented by Freddie and Roger on keyboards – and Brian’s parts are limited to a soaring slide guitar solo before the final chorus.
If that is the song’s only downfall, then it’s a minor quibble; by 1984, programming and synthesizers had advanced far beyond the primitive squeaks and honks that artists such as Stevie Wonder and Pete Townshend had pioneered back in the 1970s. The band weren’t willing to revisit the ill-advised noises on ‘Play The Game’, nor were they ever again going to feature synthesizers as a main instrument. Keep in mind that many of the hottest bands released synthesizer-dominated albums in 1984: The Cars’ Heartbeat City, for example, was constructed entirely of programmed instruments.
“I’m an instinctive musician,” Roger explained in 1984. “I can play keyboards, guitar and drums, and I can write songs. I have a facility for writing music, but I don’t want to know anything particularly technical – like what the chords are called. Even in ‘Radio Ga Ga’ there are some very difficult chords. I don’t know what they’re called, but it doesn’t matter. I’m a much better guit
arist than I am a keyboard player, but now I find melodically it’s much easier to write on [a] keyboard. ‘Radio Ga Ga’ was a completely keyboard-written song. I defy anyone to write that on the guitar because you wouldn’t find the chords, they wouldn’t come naturally to any guitar player I know.”
Lyrically, the song is similar to the 1980 Buggles single ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ in addressing the decline of radio as a medium and bemoaning the overnight sensation of video. A bit surprising perhaps, coming from the band who had popularized the advent of music videos with ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. “I was desperate for inspiration!” he told Sounds in 1984. “One day the radio came on in our house, and my three-year-old son Felix came out with ‘Radio Poo Poo’! I thought that sounded good, so I changed it around a bit and came up with ‘Radio Ga Ga’.” Originally, the song was titled ‘Radio Ka Ka’ (it remained this way even during the recording of the track: according to Roger, if you listen carefully to the chorus, the band are actually singing “All we hear is radio ka ka”), but the others were nervous about the reception a song with that title would receive from DJs worldwide and chose the safe way instead.
“I liked the title, and I wrote the lyric afterwards,” Roger explained in a contemporary interview. “It happened in that order, which is a bit strange. The song is a bit mixed up as far as what I wanted to say. It deals with how important radio used to be, historically speaking, before television, and how important it was to me as a kid. It was the first place I heard rock ‘n’ roll. I used to hear a lot of Doris Day, but a few times each day I’d also hear a Bill Haley record or an Elvis Presley song. Today it seems that video, the visual side of rock ‘n’ roll, has become more important than the music itself – too much so, really. I mean, music is supposed to be an experience for the ears more than the eyes.”
