Queen: The Complete Works (78 page)

It wasn’t the first time that Freddie would step in and take control of a song, nor would it be the last, but the band felt such a collaborative energy that it became a four-way composition instead of a Taylor-only. “I like to capture a song very quickly so that it’s fresh and you can work on it afterwards,” the vocalist said in 1986. “But I hate trying to write a song, and if it’s not coming – ‘Oh, come on, let’s try this’ – it either comes quickly, and then you have it, like the basic skeleton, and then I say, ‘Yes, we have a song,’ then we can start putting in all the clever bits. But if the song’s not happening, I normally say, ‘Oh forget it, let’s try something else’.”

The song featured an interesting programmed drum sequence which would later be extracted for use as the single’s B-side, ‘Blurred Vision’. Brian mysteriously said, “There’s a lot of influences on here: the drum solo on here is just an opportunity to do strange, psychedelic things.” Roger elaborated: “It was basically my lyric with the others putting in the odd line. It was a good collaboration on that song.”

“Sometimes, people take videos too seriously,” Freddie said in 1985. “If I write a song and put it on a video, I don’t want to create a very specific image, because you ruin peoples’ perception of it. Every time you hear a song, you have your own image of what it’s like. Sometimes the best thing to do with a video is to keep it very open; that way, the person who’s listening to it doesn’t suddenly say, ‘My God, he’s destroyed the image that I wanted the song to be!’” It was with that in mind that the band did something out of the ordinary. “We made a very rare decision to have documentary cameras in there while we were recording,” Brian said of the sessions in 2003, “but the documentary cameras actually ruined the whole thing, because I think everyone was so conscious of them being there – everyone sort of played to the cameras. And when I watch any pieces of that now, I think it’s totally false.” Roger concurred, saying, “I thought they’d never bloody go away, to be honest.”

Rudi Dolezal and Hannes Rossacher, or The Torpedo Twins, were an Austrian producer–director team who had worked on the Austrian television show
Hier und jetzt
in the early 1980s and had met the band while they were on tour in Austria in 1982. Dolezal conducted interviews with Freddie, Roger and Brian (seen on the bonus disc of
On Fire: Live At The Bowl
) and a friendship started; in mid-1985, The Torpedo Twins expressed an interest in creating a documentary about Queen, which would eventually surface two years later as
The Magic Years
. Their first order of business was to film a promotional video for ‘One Vision’ and they received the band’s permission to film the recording sessions, the only time the band were professionally filmed during recording sessions. (Other videos, like ‘Somebody To Love’, ‘Flash’, or ‘Headlong’, were filmed well after the songs had been recorded.)

The video finds the band at work and play in Musicland, stripping away the need for concepts and costumes. However, what does capture the imagination is the In The Studio portion of
The Magic Years
(subsequently released on the
Greatest Video Hits 2
DVD) which shows the genesis of the song, from birth to completion. There are fluffed notes, arguments and general camaraderie (several lines for the song, deleted or not even considered, have been collected onto various bootlegs as ‘Fun Vision’, including the hilarious improvisation, “One dump, one turd, two tits, John Deacon!”), as well as a fascinating segment of Roger, Brian and Freddie mulling over the lyric to get it just right. The best footage was pulled together to form the promotional video, and several of the outtakes appeared in the ‘Extended Vision’ cut of the video, featured on the second disc of
Greatest Video Hits 2
. To coincide with the tenth anniversary of the release of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, the introduction featured the iconic pose of the four heads looking moodily at the camera before giving way to the band, ten years on, fading into the first sequence as Roger and John look over at each other, bewildered.

The single was released in November 1985 and would be the band’s only single release that year. However, it showed that Live Aid had signalled a commercial rebirth when the single peaked at No. 7 in the UK, though it reached a dismal No. 61 in the US. (Considering the lack of promotion Queen were giving their American releases, it’s surprising they still had an audience at all.) Several different versions of the
song were released on various formats: the ‘Extended Vision’ version added an extra ninety seconds of the programmed drum sequence; the single version ran at 4’02, while the full-length version, including a longer intro and outro, clocked in at 5’10. A US promo also surfaced, featuring a 3’46 edit, though this has yet to be officially released on any format. An extended remix, running at 6’23, appeared on 12” versions of the single, and was also featured as an ‘extra magical ingredient’ on CD versions of
A Kind Of Magic
.

The accompanying press release for the single, which explained that the song was inspired by Live Aid, was misinterpreted in the press as being a cash-in on the event, which could not have been further from the truth. “I was absolutely devastated when I saw that in the press,” Roger lamented shortly afterwards. “It was a terrible mistake and I was really annoyed about it. Some public relations person got hold of the wrong end of the stick. I went absolutely bananas when I saw that.”

“We do a lot of stuff for charities,” Brian explained, “but ‘One Vision’ was a way of getting back to what we’re doing. And if we didn’t run ourselves as a business we wouldn’t be around for the next Live Aid. We’re not in the full-time business of charity at all. We’re in the business of making music, which is a good enough end in itself.”

The band were contacted by director Russell Mulcahy shortly before the ‘One Vision’ sessions with an offer to provide the soundtrack to a film project of his called
Highlander
. The band agreed and started work on this song, but, strangely, didn’t contribute it to Mulcahy’s project. Instead, ‘One Vision’ featured in Sidney J. Furie’s
Top Gun
-wannabe
Iron Eagle
, though the film was a critical and commercial bomb, and the song gained more notice from its accompanying album and tour, where it served as the perfect concert opener for the Magic tour. The song was brought out of mothballs in June 2008, when Queen + Paul Rodgers used it as a concert opener at the Hyde Park 46664 concert; the song was retained as the opener for the first four dates of the Rock the Cosmos tour, before being dropped in favor of ‘Surf’s Up . . . School’s Out !’.

ONE YEAR OF LOVE
(Deacon)

• Album:
AKOM

Rarely had Queen strayed so dangerously near to the sickly sweet, but they came close with John’s sole contribution to
A Kind Of Magic
, ‘One Year Of Love’. Unorthodox, in that the main instruments are the synthesizer and a sappy orchestra (arranged by Lynton Naiff), the song plods along at a slow pace as Freddie disconcertingly screeches a set of lyrics that claim the protagonist will never fall in love again.

Brian rather mordantly described the song in 1986, saying, “There’s a song called ‘One Year Of Love’, which John wrote, and that was written around a different romantic interest. It’s about the
Highlander
as he is in the twentieth century when he’s just about to fall in love again, even though he said he wouldn’t – ha-ha! That’s a romantic song, too.”

Perhaps the guitarist’s caustic remarks stemmed from the lack of any guitar work on the song (the band’s only other notable guitar-free tracks being ‘Seaside Rendezvous’ and ‘My Melancholy Blues’). Instead of a guitar solo, John drafted Steve Gregory to deliver a cheesy saxophone solo, reminiscent of his own throaty contribution to George Michael’s 1984 single ‘Careless Whisper’. John would later guest on Gregory’s 1994 debut solo album,
Bushfire
.

A drastically different, and more melancholy, performance of the song appeared in the
Highlander
film, which omitted the schmaltzy background altogether and replaced it with a tasteful piano backing and a more restrained vocal performance from Freddie. As an added bonus, for the
Highlander
commemorative DVD re-release, an extended mix of the song was included, though it’s not known whether this mix is an officially commissioned one.

The song was chosen as a single release in October 1986 in European and Australasian countries, with ‘Don’t Lose Your Head’ as the B-side; a video was created by DoRo for the 1992 US video compilation
Classic Queen
, which blended arbitrary clips of the band with more appropriate moments from
Highlander
.

ONLY MAKE BELIEVE
(Twitty/Nance)

• CD single (Brian): 9/98

Conway Twitty’s original version of ‘It’s Only Make Believe’ was released in November 1958 and reached No. 1 in the charts, thus making it a perfect contender for Brian’s
Heroes
project (for more information, see the entry for
Another World
in Part Two). Although that project was abandoned, the recording was included on the September 1998 single release of ‘Why Don’t We Try Again’. With a powerful lead vocal and superb background harmonies from Brian, as well as a great instrumental backing from Brian’s full band, the song
is worth repeated listens, and would have been a great inclusion on
Another World
in lieu of ‘Slow Down’.

The song was also included on the
Japanese Red Special
and
American Retro Rock
mini-albums, and was performed live throughout Brian’s 1998
Another World
tour as the opening number, although he took on a different guise: instead of performing the song as himself, he came out in full 1950s regalia, with a Brylcreemed wig and garish sideburns, as T. E. Conway, Conway Twitty’s ‘cousin’.

OTRO LUGAR
: see
ANOTHER WORLD

OUR LITTLE RENDEZVOUS
(Berry)

This rarely covered Chuck Berry song was performed live by 1984.

OVERTURE PICCANTE
(Mercury/Moran)

• Album (Freddie):
Barcelona
• B-side (Freddie): 1/89 [95]

Closing
Barcelona
in a glorious manner, ‘Overture Piccante’ is a six-minute recap of the album, with segments from ‘Barcelona’, ‘Guide Me Home’, ‘The Fallen Priest’, ‘La Japonaise’, ‘The Golden Boy’ and ‘When This Tired Old Body Wants To Sing’ mixed together to create a unique song. (That latter title, with a fast piano backing and chanted vocals of “Sing it, sing it”, remained a mystery until its release on
The Solo Collection
in 2000.) Though it would have been more appropriate to have ended with the delicate ‘How Can I Go On’, only seven usable tracks were recorded during the sessions, so ‘Overture Piccante’ was created to boost the running time of the album to just over forty minutes.

PAIN IS SO CLOSE TO PLEASURE
(Mercury/Deacon)

• Album: AKOM

Every Queen album since
News Of The World
featured an obligatory funk-disco amalgamation that was either successful (‘Another One Bites The Dust’) or not (‘Fun It’) – there wasn’t much middle ground. ‘Pain Is So Close To Pleasure’ has its feet planted firmly in that middle ground, being neither unlistenable nor spectacular.

Released on
A Kind Of Magic
, the song attempts to fuse together R&B with programmed pop, onto which Freddie added a distinctive falsetto vocal. “There’s a song called ‘Pain Is So Close To Pleasure’, which I started off,” Brian said in a radio interview in 1986, “and I think again John and Freddie worked together on it. That’s really sort of a Motown sounding track, very unusual for us.”

The second of several collaborations between John and Freddie, the song was, according to Peter Freestone, originally started by the bassist, but Freddie’s contributions were so significant that John insisted that the vocalist be given credit. Recalling the inoffensive ‘Cool Cat’ but taken at a quicker pace, the song glides along nicely in a minor key with an appropriate guitar solo from Brian, but is hardly a classic.

That didn’t prevent Capitol from issuing the song, with ‘Don’t Lose Your Head’ on the B-side, as the final US single selection from
A Kind Of Magic
in August 1986. To its credit, the record company issued a superior single mix (recorded after the conclusion of the Magic tour) with snappier production and additional programmed drums which were absent from the album version. The extended remix, present on 12” versions of the single, brought the running time to nearly seven minutes. Housed in perhaps one of Queen’s finest single sleeve covers, ‘Pain Is So Close To Pleasure’ failed to chart in the US, though it peaked at No. 26 in the Dutch charts, hence its inclusion on
The Singles Collection – Volume 3
in 2010.

PARTY
(Queen)

• Album: Miracle

Perhaps one of the worst tracks ever recorded by Queen, ‘Party’ became the opener for
The Miracle
and is an hommage to Freddie’s extravagant parties (surprise!) for which he was famous. Awash in programmed drums and a squawking vocal from Freddie, there really aren’t any redeeming qualities about the song, and its exclusion from
The Miracle
would have made the album far stronger.

PASSION FOR TRASH
(Macrae)

• Album (The Cross):
MBADTK

Joshua J. Macrae’s first song written for The Cross, ‘Passion For Trash’ is a surprisingly good rock song, with the best moments within the first few seconds when the guitars mesh with the drums and bass. Yet another song about sex, this time the dirty, trashy kind, the song is short and sweet, with a well-used stop-and-go rhythm that showcases Roger’s best rocker voice.
The keyboards are mixed to the background here until the climax, and the guitar solo is inspired, contributing to what is an overall strong composition.

PEACHES
: see
NOW I’M HERE

PENETRATION GURU
(Moss)

• Album (The Cross):
MBADTK

A punkish song written by Clayton Moss and taken at a breakneck pace, ‘Penetration Guru’ is, as its title suggests, a thinly veiled double entendre relating to the joys of sex; it may also be the first song to ever use the word ‘bandaloop’. This song is a disappointment considering that it came from the same person who wrote ‘Better Things’, but the guitars and tempo help reaffirm the fact that The Cross, despite the occasional set of dumb lyrics, were just a really good, old-fashioned rock band.