Queen: The Complete Works (57 page)

“But he said, ‘Brian, I’m not really happy – I need to take it away and think about it, and do my stuff at home,’ which tends to be what I do, so I said, ‘Fine.’ About a year later, I’m going ‘Er ... Jeff? Anything happened to that track?’, and he goes, ‘Oh yeah, yeah ... no no no ... I’m really doing it, I really love it, but I haven’t got around to it yet,’ so I was crossing my fingers, and hoping he was gonna come back, and I think two days before we were due to deliver the album to EMI, finally, I got the stuff back from Jeff, and it was really, really great. He’d done some more stuff at home and pieced it all together. He’s such a perfectionist, I couldn’t believe that; you know, the image of Jeff Beck, which is true, is that he’s unpredictable and he’s spiky and spontaneous, you know. But there’s another side to him which is very concerned, and very much a perfectionist. He didn’t want that to go out unless it was something that was dead right. He rang up a few times and said, ‘Are you sure it’s okay?’ and I said, ‘Jeff? Okay? Are you kidding? It’s unbelievable!’”

For the first time in twenty-five years, Brian is happy to abdicate the guitar throne to Beck, who absolutely scorches on the track. The rhythm section swings, with Brian on bass and Cozy Powell on drums, and the result is one of the better tracks from
Another World
, though it sits at odds among the more introspective songs.

HAD TO BELIEVE ME
:

see
EVERYBODY NEEDS SOMEBODY

HAMMER TO FALL
(May)

• Album:
Works
• A-side: 9/84 [13] • CD Single: 11/88 • Live:
Magic, Wembley
• Compilation:
Hits2, Classic
• Live (Brian):
Brixton
• Live (Q+PR):
Return, Ukraine

A welcome return to hard rock is found in ‘Hammer To Fall’, a standout rocker from
The Works
, which addresses the guitarist’s concern of living in a world dominated by trigger happy political leaders. Inspired by the 1953 play
Waiting For Godot
by Samuel Beckett, the song reaches a climax with the appearance of a mushroom cloud in the final verse, something that baby-boomers had to live with as a real threat, with the line “What the hell we fighting for?” embodying Brian’s pacifist nature by questioning the futility of war. The figurative hammer is a reference to the Soviet hammer and sickle, hinting at the worldwide fear of the USSR’s rise in prominence during the Cold War era.

With a crunching guitar riff and an exuberant performance from the band, ‘Hammer To Fall’ recalls the early-era Queen with an updated message for the 1980s. No wonder, then, that it was chosen as the fourth and final single from
The Works
in September 1984. By that time, however, the album had been in shops for nearly nine months, so the single peaked at a modest No. 13 in the UK (the first single from the album to miss the Top Ten), not charting at all in the US. The original sleeve featured a dazzling photo of the band on stage, with their impressive lighting rig in full glory, but this was withdrawn and replaced with a dull red sleeve. Two reasons for this odd switcheroo have been posited, with the official gloss being due to objections from Brian, who complained it would give the impression that the single was a live release – a dubious justification, considering earlier sleeves (
Queen’s First EP
and ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’) featured impressive live shots. According to Paul Webb, avid Queen fan and collector, this was not the case, which he recalled on
Queenmuseum.com
: “... On Brian’s 1998
Another World
tour I won a QFC competition to
meet the great man before the Royal Albert Hall show. I took my [12” vinyl ‘Hammer To Fall’ picture] sleeve with me for Brian to sign, and inevitably I put the question to him, ‘Why was this cover withdrawn?’. His reply was (and I remember it as if it were yesterday), ‘Ah yes, I get the blame for this, don’t I? Well, it’s not true, it wasn’t my fault that it got withdrawn. The man who took the picture was not an official Queen photographer. This meant that we would have had to pay vast sums of money to him for using this picture. This all came to light just in time and the live cover was taken off the shelves. I really like the picture, I think it’s so much better than the red version.’”

There’s no denying that the song was well-suited to the live setting, which the David Mallet-directed promotional video captured perfectly. The filming took place on 25 August 1984 at the Forêt Nationale in Brussels (the band had played a date at that venue, the first on the
Queen Works!
European tour, but had a day off on the day of shooting), and premiered the tour’s impressive lighting rig, two mechanical cogs behind Roger and dry ice galore. The video was also interspersed with crowd shots from the previous day’s show, with the soundtrack overdubbed with the crowd screaming and clapping along.

‘Hammer To Fall’ was performed at every show between 1984 and 1986, including the Live Aid performance at Wembley Stadium on 13 July 1985, and by Extreme vocalist Gary Cherone at the Concert For Life in 1992. Brian played the song live as the last song on his
Back To The Light
tour, but restructured the song for the 1998
Another World
tour, slowing the song down as a shimmering ballad, before kicking the tempo up for the outro. A similar arrangement was used again on the first Queen + Paul Rodgers tour in 2005 and 2006, with Brian tackling the slower first verse and chorus, and Paul taking over for the double-time remainder.

Several remixes were produced shortly after its release; the 12” mix, dubbed the Headbangers Mix, is essentially an extended remix of the track, with a pounding introductory drum solo and additional guitar work throughout. Brian Malouf remixed the song in 1991 for a Hollywood Records promotional release, giving the song a punchier mix and more prominent drum sound.

HAND OF FOOLS

(OUT OF CONTROL)
(Edney/Noone)

• Album (The Cross):
Blue

The penultimate track on
Blue Rock
is the gorgeous ‘Hand Of Fools (Out Of Control)’, addressing the topical conflict in the Gulf and pondering the eternal question of the validity and necessity of war. The line “While profit oils the big machine / And we’re shortchanged the facts” rings eerily true to this day, with the world’s dependency on oil a bane to advancing green technology. Set to a gentle bed of acoustic guitars and keyboards, the song was doomed to obscurity: it was never performed live nor featured on any single release.

HANG ON IN THERE
(Queen)

• B-side: 5/89 [3] • Bonus:
Miracle

Sessions for
The Miracle
proved to be fruitful, with the band writing songs based on collective jams while getting reacquainted with each others’ company. One of the first songs recorded during the sessions was this acoustic rocker, originally titled ‘A Fiddly Jam’, which makes up the second half of the song, but finally given the more inspirational title of ‘Hang On In There’.

Initiated by Freddie, the song hints at his own condition: by now suffering the effects of AIDS, it’s not coincidental that he was writing more positive songs in order to keep his optimism high through the dark times ahead. Why it was left off
The Miracle
is puzzling because it is certainly a far better track than ‘Party’ or ‘My Baby Does Me’, perhaps the worst offenders on that album. Instead, it was issued as the B-side of ‘I Want It All’ in May 1989, and also appeared as a bonus CD track on both the 1989 original issue and the 1991 reissue.

HANGMAN

One of the most sought-after Queen songs is ‘Hangman’, a track performed as a regular in the set list between 1970 and 1973, and only scarcely thereafter until 1976. Its origins remained shrouded in mystery for years until the early 1990s, when Brian confirmed in a personal letter to a collector that he wrote the music and Freddie penned the words. With a nod to Queen’s early day Led Zeppelin-inspired crunch, ‘Hangman’ was derived from that band’s 1970 rendition of Leadbelly’s ‘Gallows Pole’. The words were fluid and changed nightly, depending on Freddie’s mood, with a curious line about pork pies and cups of tea thrown in for good measure. What was consistent was Freddie’s cry of “Shag out!”, just before an instrumental jam, which bootleggers erroneously
divided into another track of that name. Given the abundance of material written for the first two albums, rumors circulated that a studio version was recorded for the debut album, although the official word was that no such recording exists. It turns out that the rumors were true: a 10” acetate from the 1972 Trident sessions contains a studio recording of ‘Hangman’, though this is now in Queen Productions’ possession, and if it will ever be released is anyone’s guess.

HAPPINESS?
(Taylor)

• Album (Roger):
Happiness?
• A-side (Roger): 11/94 [32]

The title track to Roger’s third proper solo album is, uncharacteristically for Roger, an upbeat ballad with a set of introspective and philosophical lyrics of not only the need for happiness in everyone’s life, but that the definition of happiness is based on the individual’s needs and goals. Based on a delicate piano (performed by Mike Crossley) and acoustic guitar backing, the song kicks into high gear with a soaring guitar solo from Jason Falloon, leaving Roger as the other musician on understated drums, bass and keyboards. Cleverly and beautifully arranged, ‘Happiness?’ is an early triumph, and was released as the third and final single from the album, peaking at No. 32.

A video was filmed for the single on 23 May 1994 in Vienna by the infamous Torpedo Twins, bringing to life the imagery of the album sleeve, with close-up shots of Roger’s visage set against a colorful clouded sunset. Suitably, the song was a staple in Roger’s 1994/1995 solo repertoire, but, in keeping with his desire to progress and incorporate newer material in lieu of older songs, wasn’t revisited for the 1998/1999
Electric Fire
solo tour.

HAPPY HENDRIX POLKA

Credited in
As It Began
by Jacky Smith and Jim Jenkins as a “minor hit ... by a group called the Scandinavian Spotnik”, which Brian learned for a gig by 1984 at the Mosely Boat Club in the summer of 1966, ‘Happy Hendrix Polka’ has eluded collectors, and no information about the song or the alleged group exists anywhere.

HAPPY X-MAS (WAR IS OVER)
(Lennon/Ono)

John Lennon’s 1969 single was performed live by The Cross at both Fan Club shows in December 1992 at the Marquee.

A HARD RAIN’S A-GONNA FALL
(Dylan)

Bob Dylan’s 1964 folk protest song was performed live by Roger Taylor during the early part of his 1994
Happiness?
tour, but was dropped in favour of ‘Man On Fire’.

HAVE A NICE DAY
(Mercury/Moran)

• Compilation (Freddie):
Solo Collection

On 18 April 1987, Freddie and Mike Moran were hard at work recording ‘Rachmaninov’s Revenge’ at Townhouse Studios when the vocalist took the opportunity to record a greeting for the upcoming Fan Club convention. Instead of providing a spoken greeting, he characteristically went over the top and recorded an improvised song. ‘Have A Nice Day’ (or ‘Good Times’ as it has alternately been called on bootlegs) gets the job done in its short, forty-six-second lifetime.

HEADLONG
(Queen)

• Album:
Innuendo
• A-side: 5/91 [14]

• Live (Brian):
Brixton

Rock songs were the minority on the latter-day Queen albums: though
The Miracle
was a welcome return to what Queen did best, it was sabotaged by of-its-time production and too much of the bland, by numbers rock explored on
The Works
and
A Kind Of Magic
. With the mission statement for
Innuendo
to not be a collection of songs but instead a cohesive album, ‘Headlong’ was readily accepted and provided the band with a much-needed return to form, firmly reestablishing them as a heavy rock band.

“‘Headlong’ came from me, at our studio in Montreux, a home recording studio for us that’s very state-of-the-art, lovely for creating,” Brian told
Rip
magazine in 1991. “The ideas came in a couple of days. At first I thought about it as a song for my solo album [
Back To The Light
] but, as always, the band is the best vehicle. As soon as I heard Freddie sing it, I said, ‘That’s it!’ Sometimes it’s painful to give the baby away, but what you gain is much more. It became a Queen song.”

A promotional video was shot on 23 November 1990 at Metropolis Studios, and was directed by The Torpedo Twins. Showing the band recording the song in the studio, it was interspersed with footage of the
band goofing around in the control room and lying on bunk beds while singing the chorus. Freddie appears very perky during the performance, leaping around the sound stage and even doing push-ups at one point – certainly not giving the impression that he was on his deathbed. The video also features a unique guitar solo from Brian, extending the running time to just under five minutes (the audio of this version hasn’t appeared anywhere on disc).

Released as the third single from
Innuendo
in May 1991 and backed by ‘All God’s People’ (with the previously unreleased Queen outtake ‘Mad The Swine’ as a CD-only bonus track), ‘Headlong’ peaked at No. 14 in the UK. In the US, the single was backed by ‘Under Pressure’ and issued as the lead single in January 1991, and though it didn’t appear in the Billboard Hot 100, it did reach No. 3 in their rock charts. Brian performed the song on all of his solo tours, with a version from the
Back To The Light
tour released on his 1994 live album,
Live At The Brixton Academy
.

HEARTLAND
(Noone)

• German CD single (The Cross): 10/91

A terse and uncompromising track of mental and emotional abandonment, ‘Heartland’ was recorded during sessions for
Blue Rock
but was deemed surplus to requirements and relegated to B-side status. It’s no worse than anything else on the album and, with only ten tracks barely scraping forty-five minutes, ‘Heartland’ would have been an ideal addition. As on ‘Breakdown’, Peter once again takes the lead vocal for the first half of the song before Roger takes over, their two voices harmonizing on the chorus, the former’s nasally hum contrasting nicely with the latter’s raspy squawk. The strength of the song lies in the band’s performance, turning in a tight and remarkable effort showing instrumental maturity, with Clayton Moss especially showing little restraint on guitar.