Queen: The Complete Works (67 page)

A KIND OF ‘A KIND OF MAGIC’
(Taylor)

• Bonus:
AKOM

A pointless edit of the instrumental sections from the extended version of ‘
A Kind Of Magic
’, the only
redeeming factor about this track is the emergence of a unique alternate guitar solo.

THE KISS (AURA RESURRECTS FLASH)
(Mercury)

• Album:
Flash
• Bonus:
Flash

Leading in from John’s atmospheric ‘Execution Of Flash’, Freddie’s ‘The Kiss (Aura Resurrects Flash)’ is a multi-tracked tour de force showcasing his beautifully controlled vocalizations. With a snippet of orchestration from Howard Blake (from a piece called ‘Rocket Ship Flight’, which had been arranged by Blake prior to Queen’s involvement with the project), this song concludes the first side of
Flash Gordon
in a sublime fashion. An early demo, recorded during sessions for
The Game
, features Freddie on piano and vocals, and even captures a snippet of the melody of ‘Football Fight’ toward the end.

KNOCK ON WOOD
(Cropper/Floyd)

Eddie Floyd’s soul standard was performed live by 1984.

LA JAPONAISE
(Mercury/Moran)

• Album (Freddie):
Barcelona
• Compilation (Freddie):
Solo Collection

Japan was one of Freddie’s most beloved countries, and he spent a considerable amount of time there in the last years of his life. ‘La Japonaise’ is a stunning ode to the country, constructed with prominent Eastern sounds, and even containing alternating lines in Japanese.

Two alternate versions were recorded: the first on 1 September 1987, credited as Freddie’s demo vocal version and featuring largely improvised lyrics since the words had yet to be written; and the second, an a cappella version of the finished vocal, recorded on 9 November, is stunning upon first listen. An instrumental version was also created and included on
The Solo Collection
.

LANDSCAPE
(May)

• Soundtrack (Brian):
Furia

Introduced by the wail of a police siren and the sounds of the street, ‘Landscape’ is largely a keyboard atmosphere soundtrack piece, lasting a little over a minute and adding to the sombre ambience of the film.

LAND OF 1,000 DANCES
(Kenner)

Originally performed by Wilson Pickett, ‘Land Of 1,000 Dances’ was performed live by The Reaction.

LAS PALABRAS DE AMOR

(THE WORDS OF LOVE)
(May)

• Album:
Space
• A-side: 6/82 [17] • CD Single: 11/88 • CD Single: 10/91 [16]

Much as Queen’s 1975 concerts in Japan had inspired Brian to write the gorgeous ‘Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together)’, the guitarist’s admiration for new cultures was channelled into ‘Las Palabras De Amor (The Words Of Love)’, written after the band’s first-ever concerts in South America in 1981. Written and recorded for the
Hot Space
album in the winter of 1981, the song is a plea for love and hope in all societies around the world. Set to a lavish acoustic guitar backing, the song erupts into a traditional Queen anthem, and the hypnotic synthesizer woven throughout is perhaps the first successful integration of that instrument into a Queen song. “The minimalist era of Queen, liked by some but not by others, but this particular track was un-minimalist, it’s really rather romantic,” Brian said in 2003. “I was playing keyboards in this one, Freddie seemed to be less inclined to play keyboards, and many ideas came from keyboards rather than guitar. I like the track, painted with a very light brush.”

“I write best when I’m not on guitar; maybe a few riffs or the basis, but strangely enough, you usually get the most perspective on a song when you’re on an instrument that you’re not accustomed to,” Brian told
International Musician & Recording World
in 1982. “I’m not accustomed to playing the piano and I find that quite inspiring, because your fingers fall on different patterns. Whereas on a guitar, I pick it up and know where my fingers are going to fall. Mostly I sit alone someplace and think about it. That’s the best way. I don’t think my songwriting has changed as much as the others in the group. I tend to write more traditional Queen material like ‘Las Palabras De Amor’. I still tend to write melodies and that certain sort of heaviness, which the group does well at its best; the guitar and piano which have that sort of thick sound. I really enjoy that, although these days it’s used a little bit more sparingly.”

Unfortunately, the song was inconspicuously placed on the second side of
Hot Space
, between ‘Calling All Girls’ and ‘Cool Cat’; it might have been
more suited as the closing track. A demo version of the song exists, with considerably altered lead vocals and a rougher arrangement, while a second version of the song was mixed but left unreleased. This version places more emphasis on the guitars, vocals and drums, while pushing the synthesizer further back into the mix.

Released as a UK single in June 1982 as the third single from the album, ‘Las Palabras De Amor (The Words Of Love)’ went on to reach No. 17 in the charts, which was described as disappointing, but considering the chart performances of the other recent singles – ‘Under Pressure’ reached No. 1, ‘Body Language’ peaked at No. 25 and ‘Back Chat’ charted at No. 40 – its placement in the singles chart was relatively impressive. Given that it was the only single taken directly from the album (‘Under Pressure’ was thrown on as a last-minute addition) to reach the Top Twenty, its exclusion from
Greatest Hits II
in 1991 is peculiar. Even more astonishing is the song’s lack of inclusion in the live setting; though the band rehearsed a version in Leeds on 31 May 1982, and Brian played a snippet of the song before ‘Love Of My Life’ at the Milton Keynes Bowl on 5 June (he explained to the audience, “Well, it seems that we’re not playing our song of peace tonight”), the first live airing the song would receive would be at the Concert For Life on 20 April 1992, where it was performed with Italian rocker Zucchero on lead vocals. More significantly, the song was performed on the South American leg of the 2008
Rock The Cosmos
tour, with Brian on lead vocals, and receiving a rapturous response from the audience.

Though a video wasn’t specially prepared for the single, the band did appear on
Top Of The Pops
for the first time in five years, performing the song on 10 June 1982, the broadcast going out the next day. The result leaves a lot to be desired: coming at the end of a gruelling European tour, with less than receptive audiences to the new material, the band are clearly uninterested in being on the programme and give an uninspired performance. Nevertheless, it remains the only official performance of the song to have been attempted, and was duly released on the 1999 video
Greatest Flix III
(while the song was issued on its similarly titled counterpart,
Greatest Hits III
) and the 2003 DVD
Greatest Video Hits 2
.

LAST HORIZON
(May)

• Album (Brian):
BTTL
• A-side (Brian): 12/93 [51] • Live (Brian):
Brixton
• Live (Q+PR):
Return, Ukraine

Recorded at Allerton Studios in 1988, Brian’s ‘Last Horizon’ was released on his 1992 debut solo album,
Back To The Light
. Name-checked as one of Brian’s favourite songs, he performed it on both of his Brian May Band tours in 1992/1993 and 1998, and even offered a remixed backing track, which ‘erased’ his guitar piece, as a download on his website for his birthday in 2004, for aspiring guitarists to play along to.

The song was performed by Queen + Paul Rodgers, which was unusual considering that prior tours hadn’t featured any solo material (except for the vocal improvisations in 1984 and 1985, which loosely resembled Freddie’s ‘Foolin’ Around’), but given Brian’s appreciation for the song, its inclusion wasn’t entirely unsurprising.

LAUGH OR CRY
(Taylor)

• Album (Roger):
Fun

Roger’s songwriting subjects were usually restricted to songs of chauvinistic love or politics (and, in the case of
Fun In Space
, science-fiction and aliens). Rarely did he write a tender love song, but he has been known to surprise his listeners, and ‘Laugh Or Cry’ is one of those surprises. Starting with a sparse acoustic guitar, piano and bass guitar introduction, the song is a beautiful excursion into a territory Roger rarely explored during the earlier part of his solo career.

The song was released as the B-side of the Japanese and American single, ‘Let’s Get Crazy’, and was performed live by The Cross on their 1988 tour.

LAZING ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON
(Mercury)

• Album:
Opera

Coming as the second track on
A Night At The Opera
is this quirky music hall-inspired number. Sung in a delightfully camp style by Freddie and ending with an over-the-top guitar solo, ‘Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon’ chronicles the busy schedule of the protagonist’s week, with a day of respite planned before it begins all over again. In keeping with the experimental nature of
A Night At The Opera
, the vocals were recorded in an unconventional manner, with the signal from Freddie’s microphone being fed into headphones placed in a metal can, thus giving it a megaphone effect.

“That’s the way the mood takes me,” Freddie lucidly told
Record Mirror
in 1976. “Y’know... that’s just one aspect of me, and I can really change. Everything on
‘Sunday Afternoon’ is something that... I’m really, I’m really sort of, I really... well, I love doing the vaudeville side of things. It’s quite a sort of test... I love writing things like that and I’m sure I’m going to do more than that... It’s quite a challenge.”

‘Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon’ was performed live throughout 1976, but was dropped just before the Hyde Park concert that September.

LEAVING HOME AIN’T EASY
(May)

• Album:
Jazz

Brian’s mournful, self-sung ‘Leaving Home Ain’t Easy’ is a melancholy reflection on leaving his family once again, and expresses his disillusionment with stardom and the lifestyle it demands, a subject that Brian had first addressed in ‘Good Company’ back in 1975, and would reference at least once on subsequent albums. Just prior to sessions for
Jazz
, Brian became a father on 15 June, with the birth of his son, Jimmy, making going out on the road and being away from his blossoming young family all the more difficult. This dichotomy of staying to be with his family and leaving to support them is addressed, with its author reluctantly accepting that leaving is the only way.

Driven by a gorgeous acoustic riff, the song is an exquisite diversion from the slighter tracks on
Jazz
, and features some tasteful guitar orchestrations, sounding unmistakably like violins, while the bridge is Brian playing the part of his wife, begging him to stay. “The lady’s part? It’s me,” Brian explained in 2002. “We slowed down the tape to record it so it comes out speeded up. I think Wheetus just did the same thing on ‘Dirtbag’!”

LET ME ENTERTAIN YOU
(Mercury)

• Album:
Jazz
• B-side: 1/80 [11] • Live:
Killers, Montreal
• Bonus:
Jazz

By 1978, Freddie had transformed himself from a flamboyant yet mild-mannered vocalist into a defiant, outspoken and often lewd singer of songs and lover of life. Above all, though, he was an entertainer, a salesman hell-bent on giving the audience its full concert experience by whatever means. Never before had Freddie’s attitude to his ‘job’ been more perfectly documented than on ‘Let Me Entertain You’, a bawdy slice of good-natured rock ‘n’ roll written as a deliberate hard sell to audiences worldwide. Borrowing its title from a song written by Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim in
Gypsy: A Musical Fable
, ‘Let Me Entertain You’ finds Freddie as a barker, ramping up the audience participation gimmick he had perfected on the 1977/1978
News Of The World
tour. Given its concert-friendly atmosphere, the song would suitably become a live favourite between 1978 and 1981, securing a prime position as the second song in the set, though it was promoted to concert opener on a few dates on the 1979
Crazy
tour.

A recording from
Live Killers
was issued as the US B-side of the fast live ‘We Will Rock You’ in August 1979, and then as the UK B-side of ‘Save Me’ in January 1980. A different version from the November 1981 Montreal concert was released as a bonus track on the 2011 reissue of
Jazz
. In 2007, Greg Brooks debuted an alternate version of the song at a Fan Club convention, with the song’s spoken outro replaced by a studio singalong of ‘We Are The Champions’ – a fun novelty upon first listen, and reminiscent of the self-referential ‘I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside’ outro on
Queen II
and intro on
Sheer Heart Attack
.

LET ME IN (YOUR HEART AGAIN)
(May)

Written by Brian and recorded by his partner Anita Dobson for inclusion on her 1988 album
Talking Of Love
, Queen archivist Greg Brooks revealed that a band version of ‘Let Me In (Your Heart Again)’ was recorded during sessions for
The Works
, assuring fans that it was better than anything on that album. Whether or not this is hyperbole remains to be seen when the anthologies are eventually released.

LET ME LIVE
(Queen)

• Album:
Heaven
• A-side: 6/96 [9]

This welcome return to gospel started life in 1976 as an untitled impromptu jam with Rod Stewart, before it was revisited seven years later in Los Angeles – again with Stewart and his one-time bandmate, Jeff Beck – fleshed out more fully and given the working title of ‘Take Another Little Piece Of My Heart’. Originally intended as the sixth track on
The Works
, according to an early “ideas” cassette, there’s no proof to indicate that the song was finished; indeed, when Brian, Roger, and John returned to it a decade later, there was only ninety seconds of Freddie’s voice with which to work – that an entire song was constructed around this snippet is not only a testament to the advances of technology, but to the tenacity of the others to create a complete song.