Queen: The Complete Works (43 page)

BATTLE THEME
(May)

• Album:
Flash

This powerful rocker, essentially an instrumental version of ‘The Hero’, chugs along nicely with the rest of
Flash Gordon
and provides an unexpected highlight on the second side of the soundtrack, which was bogged down with reprises of the main theme. With typical guitar orchestrations and a silly synthesizer motif, the song enjoyed exposure in the 1980 European tour (and once in 1981 in Japan), but was dropped permanently after that.

BANANA BLUES

In a June 2002 issue of
Record Collector
, Greg Brooks listed this as the working title of one of Queen’s songs, along with others: ‘Under Dispute’, ‘Don’t Say No’ (which was the title of a Billy Squier album in 1982), ‘Woolly Hat’ (working title of ‘Back Chat’) and ‘You’re Young And You’re Crazy’ (working title ‘Tenement Funster’). As for ‘Banana Blues’? In 2011, at the Stormtroopers In Stilettoes exhibition in celebration of Queen’s fortieth anniversary, tape boxes from sessions for Queen’s first five albums were on display, and ‘Banana Blues’ is actually the appropriate working title of John’s first-ever composition, ‘Misfire’.

BE BOP A LULA
(Vincent/Davis)

Gene Vincent’s 1956 hit single was a live mainstay as part of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Medley between 1973 and 1977, with sporadic performances throughout 1978.

BEAUTIFUL DREAMS
(Taylor)

• Album (Roger):
Frontier

Roger wasn’t known for writing many ballads, preferring to write throwaway rockers about fast cars and pretty women. As his songwriting evolved, he penned a few slower songs, notably ‘Laugh Or Cry’ and ‘Fun In Space’ – though, in typical Roger fashion, these weren’t typical ballads. Combining that latter song’s sparse backing with a few layers of lush synthesizers, Roger created ‘Beautiful Dreams’ for his second solo album,
Strange Frontier
. Speaking with Jim Ladd in 1984, who commented that “what I got out of this was almost a song about going back to the children aspect,” Roger agreed, saying that “it starts off as an innocent dream like you have as children. Just nice, innocent, uncoloured dreams. And then the second verse goes on to growing up a bit and, of course ... personal experience, going through some drug things and finding ... chemical dreams, you know, and then the third verse is back to the nuclear nightmare dreams. I used to have a lot of these. If I used to have a bad dream, it was usually about being involved in a holocaust and trying to grab everybody I cared about.”

Ladd found the reference to chemical dreams particularly interesting, and brought it up later in the interview, to which Roger responded, “It’s just to have a good time now, and it’s a very different idea. I think it’s a good point, actually. I don’t know why, but I think something like the dream, like John Lennon said, ‘The dream is over.’ I mean he was referring to something else with The Beatles, but the dream is over. Everybody was sort of optimistic at that point and I think there was a sort of mass realisation that, ‘Oh, we’re never gonna change the world.’ It’s just not going to change like that, and it didn’t and all the bad things came out of that, like Altamont [The Rolling Stones’ infamous free concert in 1969 with security provided by the San Francisco Hell’s Angels, which resulted in a bloodbath] and all that. Those things like Manson, I suppose. So people realized and rejected that optimistic philosophy. I dunno, that’s what I think anyway.”

Set to a gloomy synthesizer backing with a pulsating drum-machine keeping a steady rhythm, the song creates a nightmarish atmosphere of a nuclear holocaust, which, by the middle of the 1980s, was less a political threat and more a promise. The bridge strikes a particularly emotional nerve, basking in innocent optimism: “We’d like to find a cure for every known disease / There’s no such thing you say / The answer is there to see.” An undisputed highlight of
Strange Frontier
, ‘Beautiful Dreams’ nevertheless remained obscure among the other obvious chart-friendly material from that album, though it was
issued as a Portugal-only single in 1984 with ‘Young Love’ on the B-side.

BEING ON MY OWN
(May)

• Bonus (Brian):
World

The running time for ‘Another World’, an expansive 7’30, is misleading. The song actually ends at 4’08, but after almost a minute of silence Brian re-enters with an interesting piano and keyboard duet, much like ‘Forever’ from 1986. Striking a melancholy, minor key, the instrumental is based on the chords from ‘Business’ and was unofficially titled ‘Being On My Own’, extracted from that song’s concluding line (“It’s a hard business / Being on my own”) and ending with a scrap of mumbled dialogue from Brian: “That’s about all I can do.”

BELIEVE IN YOURSELF
(Taylor)

• Album (Roger):
Electric

In this, one of the first ballads on
Electric Fire
, never before has Roger sounded more like David Bowie than on ‘Believe In Yourself’. The song marks Roger’s first appearance on drums on the album, but is more notable for its inspirational lyrics, imploring the downtrodden to remain positive despite adversity. ‘Believe In Yourself’ may not be a masterpiece, but it’s an integral part of the album and showed maturity in Roger’s songwriting abilities.

In the liner notes for
Electric Fire
, the lyrics are abridged, with the final few repeats of “I mean you” omitted, though each phrase is followed with a barely audible list of people and things to believe in (the liners instead say, “Here follows a rather odd list”). In case you were wondering, the list reads: bus conductors, people on trams, Welshmen and sheep, clamps, lepidopterists, collectors of stamps, leopards with spots on, tramps, space-wasting journalists, people in far-flung posts, unpleasant neighbours, ghosts, Duane Eddy, lawyers with fees, Elvis, deciduous trees, bosses, pets, nurses, vets, people with peepholes, you, Elsie, Stan, mother and Desperate Dan.

BETTER THINGS
(Moss)

• Album
(The Cross)
:
MBADTK

Written and sung by Clayton Moss, ‘Better Things’ is the first instance when Roger doesn’t appear on lead vocals on a song by The Cross, though he does harmonize beautifully with Clayton at certain points during the song. ‘Better Things’ is a delicate, acoustic-driven song, slowing things down between ‘Sister Blue’ (‘Foxy Lady’ on the CD version) and ‘Passion For Trash’ on
Mad: Bad: And Dangerous To Know
. The instrumentation is sparse, with a rattling of maracas and handclaps driving the rhythm along in the bridge, while a mandolin, plucked by Spike Edney, complements the melody. Despite some other questionable material on the album, ‘Better Things’ remains a lovely diversion.

BICYCLE RACE
(Mercury)

• AA-side: 10/78 [11] • Album:
Jazz
• Live:
Killers
• Bonus:
Jazz
• CD Single: 6/96 [9]

How this throwaway paean to bicycle races became a Top Twenty hit in Britain is mystifying; despite a clever arrangement and a complex backing track (made all the more clear on the instrumental mix, released on the 2011 reissue of
Jazz
), Freddie’s ‘Bicycle Race’ makes little sense, especially when placed between the exquisite ‘Jealousy’ and the vicious ‘If You Can’t Beat Them’. Freddie is clearly having a good time, though the call-and-response lyrics are among his most dreadful, at least since ‘Get Down, Make Love’. As with most of Queen’s bigger hits, especially those that created controversy, a legend grew over the genesis of the song, that Freddie wrote it while watching the Tour de France pass by his hotel in the summer of 1978. However, the band were in Montreux that July, with sessions moving to the south of France in September, a far cry from the route the Tour would have taken anyway.

“Freddie wrote in strange keys,” Brian said in 2000. “Most guitar bands play in A or E, and probably D and G, but beyond that there’s not much. Most of our stuff, particularly Freddie’s songs, was in oddball keys that his fingers naturally seemed to go to: E-flat, F, A-flat. They’re the last things you want to be playing on a guitar, so as a guitarist you’re forced to find new chords. Freddie’s songs were so rich in chord-structures, you always found yourself making strange shapes with your fingers. Songs like ‘Bicycle Race’ have a billion chords in them.”

Released as a double A-side with ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’, ‘Bicycle Race’ became a mainstay of the medley between 1978 and 1979, but was dropped for the Saarbrücken Festival in August 1979 and was never performed again. A video was shot in Dallas on 28 October 1978, the same day as the ‘Fat Bottomed
Girls’ video, but remained unreleased in favour of a dodgy cut-and-paste video instead, interpolating still footage of the band throughout the years with obscured footage of the infamous naked bicycle race at Wimbledon Stadium on 17 September 1978. For years, this censored video remained the official version, appearing on Greatest Flix in 1981, but the original, uncensored version was finally released in 2002 on
Greatest Video Hits 1
. An insipid remix was included on the 1991
Jazz
reissue, extending the track to five minutes with an annoying dance-trance backing.

BIG SPENDER
(Coleman/Fields)

• Live:
Wembley

A favourite of Freddie’s was this steamy 1967 Shirley Bassey hit, and it was performed (usually before ‘Jailhouse Rock’) between 1973 and 1977. In addition to a brief recital on the final show of the
Jazz
European tour in 1979, it was also revived for a handful of Magic tour shows, an example of which was released on the
Live At Wembley Stadium
album.

BIJOU
(Queen)

• B-side: 1/91 [1] • Album:
Innuendo

• Live (Q+PR): Ukraine

A lovely guitar and keyboards duet between Brian and Freddie, ‘Bijou’ is a moving love song, its brief lyrics summing up in four lines what other love songs from Queen failed to convey in four verses. Constructed around a soaring and mournful guitar showcase from Brian, the song is a gorgeous introduction to the mournful album closer, ‘The Show Must Go On’. Brian later cited Jeff Beck’s 1989 song ‘Where Were You’ as an influence for ‘Bijou’, and was designed as an ‘inside out’ song: The Red Special ‘sings’ the verses, while Freddie provides a short vocal where the guitar solo would be. Edited for vinyl release from 3’36 to 1’16, the full-length version also appeared as the UK B-side of ‘
Innuendo
’ in January 1991 and then the US B-side of ‘These Are The Days Of Our Lives’ later that September. Most notably, the song received its debut live airing in 2008 on the Queen + Paul Rodgers Rock the Cosmos tour, coming right after Brian’s nightly guitar solo. To add further poignancy to this already heavy moment, images of Freddie and John flashed by on the screens behind the stage, prompting cheers from the audience.

BLAG
(Taylor)

• Compilation (Smile):
Ghost Of A Smile

Recalling Cream’s ‘N.S.U.’ or Led Zeppelin’s mighty ‘Moby Dick’, ‘Blag’ is a powerful semi-instrumental, written by Roger with the drums high in the mix. The song twists through a series of instrumental changes before slowing down to allow Tim Staffell to sing the minimal lyric, which lasts only two verses; apart from the introductory “doo doo doo” vocals, the remainder of the song is made up of a guitar solo that would later be incorporated into ‘Brighton Rock’.

Like the rest of the Smile material, the song was recorded in August 1969 at De Lane Lea Studios, produced by Fritz Freyer, and eventually released on the bootleg
Gettin’ Smile
in 1982 and officially on
Ghost Of A Smile
in 1998.

BLAG-A-BLUES
(Bulsara)

Written by a pre-Mercury Freddie, ‘Blag-A-Blues’ was performed by Wreckage on two known occasions at Ealing College Of Art on 26 and 31 October 1969.

BLUES BREAKER

(May/Van Halen/Gratzer/Chen/Mandel)

• Album (Brian):
Starfleet
• CD single (Brian): 11/92 [19]

An epic improvised jam, ‘Blues Breaker’ is the perfect opportunity for Brian to match guitar wits with axe slinger Eddie Van Halen. The song sees the two of them trading licks like young boys trade baseball cards: the glee is apparent as both guitarists attempt to respectfully one-up each other. Kicking off with a rich piano riff from Fred Mandel, the duelling starts immediately while Phil Chen and Alan Gratzer provide a steady, burbling rhythm, embellishing only when the occasion demands (or when passion strikes). The song comes to a premature conclusion after ten minutes, just before Fred Mandel leads the band in a piano-dominated coda while Brian’s and Eddie’s fingers take a break, and finally finishing up with a stray bit of indecipherable dialogue and a whoop from someone. Overall, a swaggering and staggering conclusion to Brian’s first solo effort.

In the liner notes for
Star Fleet Project
, Brian states that “...in ‘Blues Breaker’, which of course is purely spontaneous, you can hear a much more relaxed set of people, just laying back and enjoying the fresh
inspiration of each other’s playing,” and going on to say that “you can hear us smiling as we search for answering phrases.” Appropriately, the song was dedicated to legendary blues guitarist Eric Clapton. In a contemporary interview, Brian said, “Edward and I took a break from recording and started talking about how it was in the old days when Eric Clapton was doing his thing with John Mayall [and the Bluesbreakers]. We all found ‘The Beano’ album had been a big influence on us – remember, the one with Eric reading the comic on the cover? It was a classic collector’s item for every guitarist. It sounded like they were having so much fun they couldn’t stop ... ‘Blues Breaker’, which takes up all of side two on the album, is my favourite part of the record. It seemed very indulgent putting out a long jam, but, having listened to it, I think it’s worthwhile ... it’s rock blues with all the mistakes left in.”

The “Beano” album to which Brian referred was
Bluesbreakers
with Eric Clapton, released in July 1966 and often considered Clapton’s first fully developed album as a blues guitarist. Having just left The Yardbirds and only months away from forming Cream with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, the guitarist’s stint with The Blues Breakers was short but sweet, and definitely influential. After
Star Fleet Project
was released, a copy of the mini-album was sent off to Clapton, who was reportedly less than impressed with the excessive noodling.