Queen: The Complete Works (71 page)

In the spring of 1990, Brian was approached by theatre director Jane L’Epine Smith, who was about to undertake a stage production of William Shakespeare’s
Macbeth
. Keen to bring a younger crowd to the shows by adding music, she wanted a contemporary composer to record incidental music for the production. Brian agreed and promptly set about laying down some ideas on a computer at his newly installed home studio, Allerton Hill. Those tracks were later copied onto a cassette to be played over the PA system during live performances. Three different versions exist: the floppy disk version, the cassette version, and a ‘live’ version of the music being performed over the PA.

In all, the performance is interesting though somewhat tedious, and becomes downright vexing at times, which Brian addressed at the time: “I’m very aware that the music could be irritating if not done well, and that a lot of people might feel that rock does not fit in with Shakespeare. But [he] was into making direct contact with his audience, the way Queen has always done.” The music is worth listening to since it is adventurous, but the listener would need to have a high tolerance for computerized music in order to actively appreciate it.

MACHINES (OR ‘BACK TO HUMANS’)
(May/Taylor)

• Album:
Works
• B-side: 4/84 [3] • CD Single: 11/88

As Brian explained of
The Works
in 1984, “A lot of the new album is a synthesis of the two kinds, almost a battle between machines and humans.” On no other track is this more evident than on ‘Machines (Or ‘Back To Humans’)’ – originally titled ‘Machine’s World’ – the second collaborative effort between Brian and Roger, and certainly their most successful. “It’s a subject that’s been much sort of tried, but I mean it’s a sort of obvious thing,” Roger told Jim Ladd in 1984. “Brian wanted to make it a battle between the human side by using the real drums and guitars, etc., and a totally synthetic side – the machines, you know; the drum machines and the synthesizers and the Fairlights. So the thing is meant to be a battle between the two, with the idea of basically going back to humans.”

Roger was the prime mover behind the song, with the basic construct reminiscent of ‘Radio Ga Ga’, and both ‘I Cry For You (Love, Hope And Confusion)’ and ‘Killing Time’ from his
Strange Frontier
album. The drummer tended to embrace technology more freely than the others, and the song is largely his (including several questionable lyrics: “It’s self-perpetuating a parahumanoidarianised”), though the song was heavily worked on by Brian, with the guitarist adding his own touches and constructing the song into something tangible. Whereas a lot of
Strange Frontier
rambles and loses focus, the tight focus on Roger’s songs on this album indicates that he was coming up with worthwhile ideas, but with just a little bit of assistance, those ideas became great songs. Despite its reputation as an of-its-time song, ‘Machines (Or “Back To Humans”)’ is one of the few experimental songs on an album where Queen was playing it safe after the horrifying reception to
Hot Space
.

A superb instrumental version, mixed by Brian for the occasion, was issued as the B-side of the American release of ‘I Want To Break Free’ (other countries got the standard album version), incorporating instrumental bits from ‘Ogre Battle’ and ‘Flash’, plus parts of Freddie’s vocal from the 1972 recording of ‘Goin’ Back’. This unique mix was issued on the long-deleted UK-only
12” Collection
companion disc as part of the 1992
Box Of Tricks
, and should have been an obvious candidate for inclusion on
The Singles Collection – Volume 2
, but so far eludes any further release. The song was used as an intro for the 1984 and 1985
Queen Works!
tours, and formed the basis for a synthesizer-dominated improvisational jam before Brian’s solo, but the song was never performed live in its entirety.

MAD THE SWINE
(Mercury)

• CD Single: 5/91 [14] • Bonus:
Queen

Discovered when Hollywood Records archivists raided Queen’s vaults in search of bonus tracks for the impending US CD reissues, Freddie’s ‘Mad The Swine’ was recorded during sessions for the debut album in 1972, and was preliminarily placed between ‘Great King Rat’ and ‘My Fairy King’ before it was removed for reasons that have been hotly debated for years. The official reason is that there were disputes between band and producer over the drum sound and additional percussion, but an equally plausible counter-argument may be that it was a tad too religious for everyone’s liking, and, with an album already chock-f of songs with religious overtones (‘Great King Rat’, ‘Liar’ and ‘Jesus’), this was one song too many. Despite a superb band performance and the sweetly-sung lyrics, with Freddie already showing signs of the power his
voice could possess, the song was cast aside. Upon its discovery, the song was remixed by David Richards and duly released on the CD single of ‘Headlong’ in May 1991, and then as a bonus track on
Queen
that same year – and again a decade later, on the deluxe edition of the debut album.

MADE IN HEAVEN
(Mercury)

• Album (Freddie):
BadGuy
• A-side (Freddie): 7/85 [57] • Album (Queen):
Heaven

This centrepiece of Freddie’s debut solo album is a terse, doom-laden ballad, with moments of light and shade that sits at odds with the rest of the dance-oriented material on
Mr Bad Guy
. The song is more heartfelt and profound than the more frivolous songs, with Freddie accepting his natural-born status as a true romantic, despite the pain and misery it brings upon him. Released as the second single from the album with ‘She Blows Hot And Cold’ as the B-side, and an extended remix of the A-side on 12” vinyl versions, ‘Made In Heaven’ peaked at a disappointing No. 57 in the UK. The video is more well-known for displaying the extravagance Freddie was willing to expend on his solo career. Set in a north London warehouse to replicate the stage of The London Opera House, it was based on Stravinsky’s
The Rite Of Spring
and Dante’s
Inferno
. According to David Mallet, who directed the video in July 1985, “This was in the days before major special effects, so Freddie really was standing up there, and in fact he was very unhappy about it. He was standing on a disc about five feet round, and sixty feet up in the air. In the end, we put a harness on him; a very thin wire, because it became very obvious that he was getting serious vertigo up there.”

Much like Queen’s reworking of ‘I Was Born To Love You’, ‘Made In Heaven’ was rescued from Freddie’s 1985 solo album,
Mr Bad Guy
, and drastically reworked to give it a genuine Queen treatment. Brian’s goal with
Made In Heaven
was to make it sound as if the band had actually recorded all the songs together in the studio, which, at this late stage in their career, was hardly the case. He achieved that effect most successfully with this song, and so pleased were John, Roger and Brian with the results that it became a fitting title for their final album. The song explodes into life with Roger’s thundering drums and then takes on a menacing pace, adding a sense of atmosphere with the introduction of keyboards and effects, the like of which wouldn’t have been an option back in 1985. The finest moment comes with the guitar solo. Brian redeemed several mediocre Queen tracks with his trademark Red Special, but he gives one of his most emotive performances here with a haunting slide guitar solo, a technique he used very rarely but to good effect, transcending the song to new emotional heights. In 2004, Brian wrote on his website that he was pleased with the album as a whole, but he was proudest of the title track, “which I think is possibly the best-sounding Queen song ever.”

Though not released as a single, Virgin Radio ran a promotional campaign on 25 November 1996 in which all the songs from
Made In Heaven
were pressed as promotional singles. To commemorate the fifth anniversary of Freddie’s death, Virgin Radio held a ‘Queen Day’ and ran a competition by asking fans to call in and nominate their favourite track from the new album. One random caller per hour, for twelve hours, was selected to receive a 12” copy of their chosen song, thus making these among the rarest Queen singles ever. Unfortunately, the one caller who asked for ‘Made In Heaven’ was given a misprint of ‘Heaven For Everyone’; EMI had printed five copies of Roger’s song and none of Freddie’s, so ‘The Magnificent Seven’, as these discs (‘Heaven For Everyone’ [VIRGIN2], ‘A Winter’s Tale’ [VIRGIN3], ‘Mother Love’ [VIRGIN4], ‘Let Me Live’ [VIRGIN5], ‘You Don’t Fool Me’ [VIRGIN6], ‘It’s A Beautiful Day’ [VIRGIN7] and ‘I Was Born To Love You’ [VIRGIN8]) were collectively known, came and went without the standout title track.

MAGIC IS LOOSE
(Taylor)

• Album (Roger):
Fun

Buried deep on side two of
Fun In Space
is this lovely gem of a song, a prime example of the light and shade methodology that Queen employed on their early albums. With a sparse introduction of glockenspiel and Roger’s disembodied vocals, the song kicks into high gear with a ringing acoustic guitar melody and an upbeat backing of a thunderous drum beat and a quivering, swirling synthesizer. Magic would be a recurring theme throughout Roger’s subsequent songs, and it would remain an intangible, inexplicable thing in almost all cases; what the magic is referring to here is anyone’s guess. Even Roger seems unsure himself.

Unfounded rumours persist that the song was originally submitted during sessions for
The Game
in 1980, and that Freddie was particularly keen on the song, but it remained unreleased – or very possibly
unrecorded. A sad but understandable loss: Roger was proving to be a prolific writer at the end of the 1970s, and it was inevitable that certain songs, no matter how high their calibre, would be tossed away in favour of other songs. While this would have made a superb Queen song, their loss was Roger’s gain, and made
Fun In Space
that much stronger a debut solo album.

The song received its first-ever live airing on 19 February 2000, at a gig by the SAS Band (fronted by former Queen and The Cross keyboardist, Spike Edney) at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in London.

MAN MADE PARADISE
(Mercury)

• Album (Freddie):
BadGuy

Not one of the better tracks from
Mr Bad Guy
, ‘Man Made Paradise’ was first worked on by Queen in 1982 for
Hot Space
, and then became an even likelier candidate for release on
The Works
, even appearing as the closing track on an early running list of the album. Queen’s version has been promised on the eventual release of their archival box set, though it’s hardly likely to deviate much from the officially released version. As it is, the song – originally titled ‘Paradise For Man’ (“or something”, as Freddie scribbled on the handwritten lyric sheet) – sounds much like an unreleased Queen song, with Paul Vincent providing a solo reminiscent of Brian May, who later expressed annoyance that Freddie had instructed Paul to perform the solo in his style. Closing with some impressive a cappella vocalizations from Freddie, the song isn’t a highlight of the album, but fits in nicely with the other dance-oriented material.

MAN ON FIRE
(Taylor)

• A-side (Roger): 6/84 [66] • Album (Roger):
Frontier
• German CD single (The Cross): 11/90 • Live (The Cross):
Bootleg
,
Germany
• German CD single (The Cross): 8/91

Most of
Strange Frontier
was mired in sociopolitical posturing, undoubtedly well-intentioned at the time, but for fans used to the usually apolitical Queen, Roger’s second solo album was off-putting at first. There are certain songs that balance out the politics, though, and ‘Man On Fire’ finds Roger back on familiar ground: written about a downtrodden, unemployed man searching for a solution to his financial strife, the song strikes a romantic, poignant tone in the bridge, where the narrator reveals the power of love is his main motivator.

Chosen as the first single in June 1984, a fortnight before
Strange Frontier
was released, the single charted at a miserable No. 66 in the UK and didn’t chart at all in the US. Backed by ‘Killing Time’, a 12” extended version was also created, which opened with ninety seconds of additional drum work missing from the standard version. It was considered strong enough to be played live by The Cross (with live versions appearing on the 1991 and 1992 Fan Club-only bootlegs,
The Official Bootleg
and
Live In Germany
), and became a regular in the set lists for all their tours, as well as Roger’s 1994/1995
Happiness?
tour. Rumours circulated for years that ‘Man On Fire’ was submitted to sessions for
The Works
; indeed, in promotional interviews for that album, Freddie spoke of four or five songs that Roger wrote being rejected in favour of ‘Radio Ga Ga’, but it wasn’t until 2010 that these rumors were confirmed with a preliminary running order for
The Works
placing the song as the fifth track on the album.

‘Man On Fire’ also became Roger’s debut solo video. Filmed in May 1984 and directed by Tim Pope, who also directed ‘It’s A Hard Life’, the video depicts Roger taking out his aggression in his garage, hitting oil drums and dramatically pounding his fist into the palm of his hand. Unfortunately, a little girl was shown inside a building that ultimately exploded; hence, the video was banned by MTV and, apart from a few other showings worldwide, remains largely unseen.

MAN ON THE PROWL
(Mercury)

• Album:
Works
• B-side: 11/84 [21]

In an attempt to recapture the good-time rockabilly of ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ and ‘Don’t Try Suicide’, Freddie submitted ‘Man On The Prowl’ to sessions for
The Works
, a song that’s neither stellar nor offensive but merely fills up three and a half minutes. The elements are all there: rollicking piano (mostly by Freddie, though Fred Mandel provided the rip-roaring conclusion), a hiccuping doo-wop vocal from Freddie, and a devil-may-care set of lyrics of a swingin’ bachelor in pursuit of a fun time. Considering the personal nature of other songs written around this time (‘It’s A Hard Life’, ‘Love Me Like There’s No Tomorrow’, and ‘Man Made Paradise’), which find Freddie yearning for a lasting relationship, ‘Man On The Prowl’ sits hollow, despite its lighthearted disposition.