by Georg Purvis
An edited version of ‘Why Don’t We Try Again’ (reducing the running time from 5’22 to 4’06) was rightly chosen as the second UK single, peaking at No. 44 (seven places better than the lead-off single, ‘Business’). The song was performed on only a few occasions during the 1998 Another World tour, which is probably for the best, since it would be nearly impossible to reach the notes Brian managed in the studio recording during a gruelling live set.
WILDERNESS (May)
• Album (Brian): World
A curious composition, ‘Wilderness’ was completely performed by Brian and is dominated by his pleading vocals. The words were “an outpouring of a confused brain,” according to the liner notes of Another World, as Brian sings of travelling through the “mire in the wilderness.” The song is plodding and dirge-like, with keyboards and a drum-machine supporting Brian’s vocals only minimally, though a touching guitar solo enhances the emotional level. It sounds a bit tinny, and could have benefited from a more organic arrangement, but it’s a welcome experiment and undoubtedly fits the theme of Brian’s never-ending quest to find himself.
“‘Wilderness’ was a fusion of a lot of feelings I had at the time which were (and are) hard to express,” Brian said of the song. “It was one of those songs which more or less wrote themselves. I had no confidence in it at the time, but Justin [Shirley-Smith] encouraged me to finish it. There is a lot of darkness in these songs from this period which I find hard to revisit even now. The upside is that they were part of a path which led me eventually to a good place, though not in a way I was expecting...”
A WINTER’S TALE (Queen)
• Album: Heaven • A-side: 12/95 [6]
After the Innuendo sessions finished in early 1991, Freddie insisted that the band return to Mountain Studios in Montreux to start work on another album. So energized by the rush of recording was Freddie that he already had several songs written that he wanted to get down on tape, among them the atmospheric ‘A Winter’s Tale’. According to Jim Hutton, the song had been written in the winter of 1990 in Montreux during a recording session, as Freddie sat on the porch of his rented home on Lake Geneva.
The words are of the observational type, which was unusual for Freddie but a welcome approach. The listener is placed into Freddie’s lakeside seat as he sings about “smoking chimney tops” and “little girls scream[ing] and cry[ing]”, set to an idyllic, laid-back instrumentation. As Freddie sings the lyrics, one gets a sense of sadness in the performance, as he acknowledges that all that surrounds him is “an extraordinary place”, even referencing an older song (“there’s a kind of magic in the air”), but there’s still an optimistic, blissful bent to the words.
“I love the last song he wrote, ‘A Winter’s Tale’,” Brian told the Daily Mirror in 2002. “It doesn’t philosophize, it’s just about how beautiful life is. He wrote it one morning, beside the lake and looking at the mountains.” Brian later told Classic Rock in 2011, “Freddie mainly used the piano for songwriting, but there were times when he’d get inspiration when he wasn’t around his instrument. It could be any experience; a skate on the pond. One of the last songs he wrote, ‘A Winter’s Tale’, was written purely sat looking out on the mountains from the other side of Lake Geneva. He could obviously hear it all in his head, although he didn’t have any musical instruments with him. I remember him coming into the studio and saying, ‘I’ve got this idea ... just give me a few minutes.’ Then he brought it to life. That’s a beautiful track, actually.”
The song was virtually completed during the post-Innuendo sessions, though it sounds as if Roger rerecorded his drum track and Brian and Roger added the vocal harmonies later. Chosen as the second single from Made In Heaven in December 1995, ‘A Winter’s Tale’ was a perfect holiday choice; the band, too, recognized the opportunity, and coupled the song with their 1984 non-album single, ‘Thank God It’s Christmas’. Two CD singles were issued, the first using three remastered singles from the 1970s (‘Now I’m Here’, ‘You’re My Best Friend’ and ‘Somebody To Love’), while the second offered ‘Thank God It’s Christmas’ along with the previously unissued ‘Rock In Rio Blues’ from 1985.
The single peaked at No. 6 in the charts (though it wasn’t given a US release), and two videos were created for the release. The first was a standard cut-and-paste DoRo affair, though it added a special effect of the lyrics being ‘written’ on the screen in Freddie’s handwriting. The more standard version was commissioned by the British Film Institute for the 1996 release, Made In Heaven: The Films and was directed by Chris Rodley. Retitled ‘Outside-In’, the video shows the ecstasy of landscape as a man dreams his last few images of colour, texture, light and movement in the world. Heavy stuff, yet neither video, apart from the latter’s inclusion on the aforementioned video anthology, has yet been released on any official Queen product; the song was also overlooked for inclusion on the 1999 Greatest Hits III compilation, though it was finally released in 2010 on the final Singles Collection box set.
WISHING WELL (Bundrick/Kirke/Kossoff/Rodgers/Yamauchi)
• Live (Q+PR): Return
Released on Free’s 1973 album Heartbreaker, ‘Wishing Well’ was written for departed guitarist Paul Kossoff, who left the band due to an escalating problem with drug addiction. The song was introduced to the Queen + Paul Rodgers set list on 28 April 2005 in Hamburg. The song remained in the set on the 2008 Rock The Cosmos tour, but, curiously, wasn’t released on Live In Ukraine.
WITHOUT YOU (Bulsara)
This original composition written by Freddie was performed on two occasions by Wreckage: first on 26 October 1969 and five days later, on 31 October, both at Ealing College Of Art.
WOMAN YOU’RE SO BEAUTIFUL
(BUT STILL A PAIN IN THE ASS) (Taylor)
• Download: 8/06
In August 2006, a mystery website appeared on MySpace in the name of Felix + Arty, with a song titled ‘Woman You’re So Beautiful (But Still A Pain In The Ass)’. Fans on the online Queen community were puzzled by the song, pondering the identities of Felix + Arty, though the more resourceful listeners were able to surmise that the curious Arty moniker was a phonetic pronunciation of Roger Taylor’s initials, and that the name itself had been credited on the Electric Fire track, ‘People On Streets’. Felix, of course, is Roger’s son. Born during sessions for The Game on 22 May 1980, he was known in Queendom for shouting “radio ka ka”, thus initiating one of the band’s biggest hits, as well as for appearing on the rear sleeve of Electric Fire.
Felix wrote a message on the website explaining the genesis of the song: “My dad wrote it a few months back and the first mix was cut with himself on vocals. We all thought it was pretty catchy and that he had done a good job all round. But, ever the perfectionist, he wasn’t quite happy with what he had, and started tinkering with it, suggesting that I cut a vocal for it. Not being particularly experienced in this field, I was very chuffed to be asked, and gave it a go in the studio. I was pleased with the result, it sounded pretty good and was dead catchy (almost irritatingly so). My dad was happier with this cut too, so he thought he would try and hawk it to Transistor Project and Parlophone as a summer single. They took the bait and here we are!”
According to Felix, the song was written during the Queen + Paul Rodgers tour of Japan in October 2005 and first recorded in April 2006 at Roger’s home studio, though work continued on the song into the next month, which was when Felix added his vocals. When asked if, like Paul Rodgers’ ‘Take Love’, it was intended for the reported new album, Felix balked at the idea and claimed it was always intended as a solo single. In terms of the lyrical theme, Felix intimated that the song “started off as a sort of statement about how women are, paradoxically, both wonderful and incredibly annoying” and that it’s “just a damn good, reggae-lite summer pop tune, with a killer chorus that stays in your head whether you like it or not.” It’s hard to disagree with him, and ‘Woman You’re So Beautiful’ confirmed that the creative bug had bitten Roger once
again.
WOOLLY HAT: see BACK CHAT
WORKING CLASS HERO (Lennon)
• Album (Roger): Electric
“I am a big John Lennon fan, I could go on about him forever,” Roger gushed in 1998. “I think the Plastic Ono Band album wasn’t a big hit when it was first released ... This song is probably not so well known by a whole generation so we decided to do a different kind of rock band variation on it.”
There’s something vaguely hypocritical about a multi-millionaire rock star like Roger covering John Lennon’s ‘Working Class Hero’; then again, by the time Lennon had written and recorded the song in 1970, he, too, was a multi-millionaire himself, which is just another of the perfect ironies that makes the world go round. Simply said, Roger’s rendition of Lennon’s diatribe against the upper classes at first may be questionable, and the full-band performance of the originally acoustic solo recording muddles the song and makes the power of the lyrics less effective.
However, it should be remembered that Electric Fire is largely autobiographical, and that the song relates to some aspect of Roger’s early life before he made it big as a rock star (this was an angle that contemporary reviews couldn’t grasp). Despite the obvious flaws, the instrumental backing is hypnotic, with Keith Airey’s guitar creating considerable feedback throughout most of the song. While it’s an appreciated nod towards John Lennon, one would have preferred another original number from Roger, especially on such a personal album.
YEAH (Queen)
• Bonus: Heaven
Hardly constituting a track in its own right, ‘Yeah’ is a four-second snippet of Freddie saying exactly that, extracted from ‘Action This Day’. Instead of counting this as the ending of ‘It’s A Beautiful Day (Reprise)’, it is inserted between the former song and a twenty-minute instrumental.
YELLOW BREEZES (Mercury/Moran)
• Compilation (Freddie): Solo Collection
One of the more interesting compositions to be released on The Solo Collection, ‘Yellow Breezes’ was recorded during sessions for Barcelona on 9 March 1987 at Townhouse Studios in London, but is the polar opposite of the sound Freddie was trying to achieve on that album. Largely improvised with Mike Moran on keyboards, David Richards providing the drum programming and Erdal Kizilkay on bass, the song is a showcase for Kizilkay, who features prominently. The song has a slight Caribbean tone (with Freddie making a reference to John Deacon’s 1977 composition, ‘Who Needs You’, with the line “Oh muchachos!”). Lasting over five minutes, the song is interesting though inconsequential, but is definitely worth a listen.
YOU AND I (Deacon)
• Album: Races • B-side: 3/77 [31]
John had a knack for writing deliberately chart-friendly pop songs but the best example of his pop sensibility comes in ‘You And I’, a superb song that strays from the bubblegum he was nearing on ‘You’re My Best Friend’. Another song written for his wife Veronica, the bassist’s contribution to A Day At The Races is a highlight of the album, thanks to the perfect balance between piano, guitars and a tight rhythm section.
“That was a track by John Deacon, his contribution to this album,” Freddie told Kenny Everett in 1976. “His songs are good and are getting better every time, actually. I’m getting a bit worried, actually. He’s sort of quiet, loads of people think that. Don’t underestimate him, he’s got a fiery streak underneath all that. I talk so much anyway, he likes to let me do all the talking. But once people crack that thin ice, then he’s alright.”
“It’s very John Deacon, with more raucous guitars,” Freddie told Circus in 1977. “After I’d done the vocals, John put all these guitars in, and the mood has changed. I think it’s his strongest song to date.” No argument there, and there’s no doubting ‘You And I’ would have been a far better choice for single release than ‘Tie Your Mother Down’ or ‘Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy’. However, John’s song was featured only as the B-side of that single (and on the US release of ‘Long Away’ in June 1977), and was disregarded as a choice in the live setting.
YOU DON’T FOOL ME (Queen)
• Album: Heaven • A-side: 11/96 [17]
A sleek and sexy rocker tucked away on the Made In Heaven album, the origins of ‘You Don’t Fool Me’ have been forever cast into doubt due to an ambiguous description on the Greatest Hits III sleeve notes: “Harking back to the early 80s and their disco-flavoured Hot Space album, Queen wrote and recorded ‘You Don’t Fool Me’ as a latter-day foray into dance music.” Thus, fans have been under the impression that the song was an outtake from the Hot Space sessions, but it’s easy to hear that the song is 1990s in sound and approach.
‘You Don’t Fool Me’ started off as a jam during the post-Innuendo sessions, and with only ninety seconds of usable material recorded, the onus fell onto producer David Richards to create a song. Brian recalled in 2004, “As I remember, the bare bones of this song (and they were VERY bare!) were put down in the last sessions we did with Freddie in Montreux. When it came to piecing together Made In Heaven, David Richards was keen to make the fragments into a finished song. I wasn’t sure there was enough to work on! He got a long way with weaving textures around the vocal sections we had, stretching things out a little. I think both Roger and John, who had had a lot to do with those original fragments in the beginning, went in and added some ideas. There came a point where finally I got enthusiastic, and I spent a day or so, with Dave, putting down a lot of different riffy ideas that came to me while listening to the rough so far. Dave then moved a lot of things around, and worked his magic ... and then we all sat around and said, ‘Didn’t we just play that perfectly!’” Not an easy song to love upon first listening, it eventually grows in interest with repeated listens, and while it may bring back horrible memories of ‘Body Language’ and ‘Staying Power’, the song is redeemed by real instrumentation and a stunning guitar solo from Brian. Released as a single in November 1996, the song may not have been the most ideal choice for the singles chart – certainly, ‘Made In Heaven’ or ‘I Was Born To Love You’ were far superior choices – though it did make it to No. 17.
Unfortunately, here’s where the story gets a bit ludicrous. In an attempt to foster the belief that ‘You Don’t Fool Me’ was a decent club single, the band commissioned various DJs to remix the song for various worldwide markets. The resulting fifteen remixes are less than stellar – while there are a few diamonds in the rough, the majority of the releases are truly the nadir of Queen’s singles output. Forget the bastardized ‘Liar’ in 1974 or ‘It’s Late’ in 1978: the ‘You Don’t Fool Me’ remixes transform Queen from a respectable rock band to an anonymous dance club act. When compiling a running order for The Singles Collection in the late 2000s, Greg Brooks admitted that his intent was to have every single variation on there, but that Brian and Roger had vetoed inclusion of any remix of ‘You Don’t Fool Me’. While some fans would cry foul at this attempt at revisionism, in this instance, the right decision was made, and only the four-minute single edit was released, along with the standard album version.
A video was commissioned by the British Multimedia Institute in 1996, directed by Mark Szaszy. The video is based on the concept of androgyny and the sexual code of appearance and identity separation between the sexes. This video was issued on the video compilations Made In Heaven – The Films and on the more commercially geared Greatest Flix III.
‘YOU HAD TO BE THERE’ (Taylor)
• Album (Roger): Happiness? • B-side (Roger): 9/94 [26]
Nestled away on the second side of Happiness? is this minor-key ballad, written about Freddie and Roger’s relationship with him. The most touching verse is the second one, in which Roger briefly details the darker years following his friend’s death, when “the night was hell”, though he attempts to remain optimistic about “happy days that might come again”, remaining optimistic that they will meet again. Roger plays all the instruments except for the soaring guitar solo, in which Jason Falloon extracts sounds from his guitar that
resemble David Gilmour’s style, and the whole song, all three minutes of it, is a poignant tribute to Freddie.
“You Had To Be There” was released as the B-side of ‘Foreign Sand’ in September 1994 and was also performed on the resulting world tour, and was one of the highlights of the show. As with most of Happiness?, the song was kept out of the set for subsequent tours.
YOU KEEP ME HANGING ON
(Holland/Dozier/Holland)
Originally performed by Diana Ross and the Supremes, ‘You Keep Me Hanging On’ was performed live by 1984.
YOU TAKE MY BREATH AWAY (Mercury)
• Album: Races • Bonus: Races
After the raucous opening of ‘Tie Your Mother Down’, the next song was designed to slow down the mood of A Day at the Races, and ‘You Take My Breath Away’ was the perfect choice. Written for Freddie’s then-lover David Minns (not Mary Austin, as has long been rumoured), the result is an unabashed love song that finds the vocalist wearing his heart on his sleeve. With Freddie only on multi-tracked vocals and piano, and an understated guitar solo from Brian, the song clocks in at over five minutes yet achieves so much. The song was written after Queen’s spring 1976 tour in Japan, where Freddie was inspired by both their culture and their music, and based the melody on the Japanese Pentatonic scale.
“This one I did myself, I multi-tracked myself,” Freddie told Kenny Everett in 1976. “So the others weren’t used on this for the voices. I played piano and basically, I don’t know how we managed to stay this simple, you know, with all our overdubs and things. People seem to think that we’re over-complex, and it’s not true. It depends on the individual track really, if it needs it – we do it. So this is pretty sparse actually by Queen and our standards.”
