Queen: The Complete Works (96 page)

Felix wrote a message on the website explaining the genesis of the song: “My dad wrote it a few months back and the first mix was cut with himself on vocals. We all thought it was pretty catchy and that he had done a good job all round. But, ever the perfectionist, he wasn’t quite happy with what he had, and started tinkering with it, suggesting that I cut a vocal for it. Not being particularly experienced in this field, I was very chuffed to be asked, and gave it a go in the studio. I was pleased with the result, it sounded pretty good and was dead catchy (almost irritatingly so). My dad was happier with this cut too, so he thought he would try and hawk it to Transistor Project and Parlophone as a summer single. They took the bait and here we are!”

According to Felix, the song was written during the Queen + Paul Rodgers tour of Japan in October 2005 and first recorded in April 2006 at Roger’s home studio, though work continued on the song into the next month, which was when Felix added his vocals. When asked if, like Paul Rodgers’ ‘Take Love’, it was intended for the reported new album, Felix balked at the idea and claimed it was always intended as a solo single. In terms of the lyrical theme, Felix intimated that the song “started off as a sort of statement about how women are, paradoxically, both wonderful and incredibly annoying” and that it’s “just a damn good, reggae-lite summer pop tune, with a killer chorus that stays in your head whether you like it or not.” It’s hard to disagree with him, and ‘Woman You’re So Beautiful’ confirmed that the creative bug had bitten Roger once again.

WOOLLY HAT:
see
BACK CHAT

WORKING CLASS HERO
(Lennon)

• Album (Roger):
Electric

“I am a big John Lennon fan, I could go on about him forever,” Roger gushed in 1998. “I think the
Plastic Ono Band
album wasn’t a big hit when it was first released ... This song is probably not so well known by a whole generation so we decided to do a different kind of rock band variation on it.”

There’s something vaguely hypocritical about a multi-millionaire rock star like Roger covering John Lennon’s ‘Working Class Hero’; then again, by the time Lennon had written and recorded the song in 1970, he, too, was a multi-millionaire himself, which is just another of the perfect ironies that makes the world go round. Simply said, Roger’s rendition of Lennon’s diatribe against the upper classes at first may be questionable, and the full-band performance of the originally acoustic solo recording muddles the song and makes the power of the lyrics less effective.

However, it should be remembered that
Electric Fire
is largely autobiographical, and that the song relates to some aspect of Roger’s early life before he made it big as a rock star (this was an angle that contemporary reviews couldn’t grasp). Despite the obvious flaws, the instrumental backing is hypnotic, with Keith Airey’s guitar creating considerable feedback throughout most of the song. While it’s an appreciated nod towards John Lennon, one would have preferred another original number from Roger, especially on such a personal album.

YEAH
(Queen)

• Bonus:
Heaven

Hardly constituting a track in its own right, ‘Yeah’ is a four-second snippet of Freddie saying exactly that, extracted from ‘Action This Day’. Instead of counting this as the ending of ‘It’s A Beautiful Day (Reprise)’, it is inserted between the former song and a twenty-minute instrumental.

YELLOW BREEZES
(Mercury/Moran)

• Compilation (Freddie):
Solo Collection

One of the more interesting compositions to be released on
The Solo Collection
, ‘Yellow Breezes’ was recorded during sessions for Barcelona on 9 March 1987 at Townhouse Studios in London, but is the polar opposite of the sound Freddie was trying to achieve on that album. Largely improvised with Mike Moran on keyboards, David Richards providing the drum programming and Erdal Kizilkay on bass, the song is a showcase for Kizilkay, who features prominently. The song has a slight Caribbean tone (with Freddie making a reference to John Deacon’s 1977 composition, ‘Who Needs You’, with the line “Oh muchachos!”). Lasting over five minutes, the song is interesting though inconsequential, but is definitely worth a listen.

YOU AND I
(Deacon)

• Album:
Races
• B-side: 3/77 [31]

John had a knack for writing deliberately chart-friendly pop songs but the best example of his pop sensibility comes in ‘You And I’, a superb song that strays from the bubblegum he was nearing on ‘You’re My Best Friend’. Another song written for his wife Veronica, the bassist’s contribution to
A Day At The Races
is a highlight of the album, thanks to the perfect balance between piano, guitars and a tight rhythm section.

“That was a track by John Deacon, his contribution to this album,” Freddie told Kenny Everett in 1976. “His songs are good and are getting better every time, actually. I’m getting a bit worried, actually. He’s sort of quiet, loads of people think that. Don’t underestimate him, he’s got a fiery streak underneath all that. I talk so much anyway, he likes to let me do all the talking. But once people crack that thin ice, then he’s alright.”

“It’s very John Deacon, with more raucous guitars,” Freddie told
Circus
in 1977. “After I’d done the vocals, John put all these guitars in, and the mood has changed. I think it’s his strongest song to date.” No argument there, and there’s no doubting ‘You And I’ would have been a far better choice for single release than ‘Tie Your Mother Down’ or ‘Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy’. However, John’s song was featured only as the B-side of that single (and on the US release of ‘Long Away’ in June 1977), and was disregarded as a choice in the live setting.

YOU DON’T FOOL ME
(Queen)

• Album:
Heaven
• A-side: 11/96 [17]

A sleek and sexy rocker tucked away on the
Made In Heaven
album, the origins of ‘You Don’t Fool Me’ have been forever cast into doubt due to an ambiguous description on the
Greatest Hits III
sleeve notes: “Harking back to the early 80s and their disco-flavoured
Hot Space
album, Queen wrote and recorded ‘You Don’t Fool Me’ as a latter-day foray into dance music.” Thus, fans have been under the impression that the song was an outtake from the
Hot Space
sessions, but it’s easy to hear that the song is 1990s in sound and approach.

‘You Don’t Fool Me’ started off as a jam during the post-
Innuendo
sessions, and with only ninety seconds of usable material recorded, the onus fell onto producer David Richards to create a song. Brian recalled in 2004, “As I remember, the bare bones of this song (and they were VERY bare!) were put down in the last sessions we did with Freddie in Montreux. When it came to piecing together
Made In Heaven
, David Richards was keen to make the fragments into a finished song. I wasn’t sure there was enough to work on! He got a long way with weaving textures around the vocal sections we had, stretching things out a little. I think both Roger and John, who had had a lot to do with those original fragments in the beginning, went in and added some ideas. There came a point where finally I got enthusiastic, and I spent a day or so, with Dave, putting down a lot of different riffy ideas that came to me while listening to the rough so far. Dave then moved a lot of things around, and worked his magic ... and then we all sat around and said, ‘Didn’t we just play that perfectly!’” Not an easy song to love upon first listening, it eventually grows in interest with repeated listens, and while it may bring back horrible memories of ‘Body Language’ and ‘Staying Power’, the song is redeemed by real instrumentation and a stunning guitar solo from Brian. Released as a single in November 1996, the song may not have been the most ideal choice for the singles chart – certainly, ‘Made In Heaven’ or ‘I Was Born To Love You’ were far superior choices – though it did make it to No. 17.

Unfortunately, here’s where the story gets a bit ludicrous. In an attempt to foster the belief that ‘You Don’t Fool Me’ was a decent club single, the band commissioned various DJs to remix the song for various worldwide markets. The resulting fifteen remixes are less than stellar – while there are a few diamonds in the rough, the majority of the releases are truly the nadir of Queen’s singles output. Forget the bastardized ‘Liar’ in 1974 or ‘It’s Late’ in 1978: the ‘You Don’t Fool Me’ remixes transform Queen from a respectable rock band to an anonymous dance club act. When compiling a running order for
The Singles Collection
in the late 2000s, Greg Brooks admitted that his intent was to have every single variation on there, but that Brian and Roger had vetoed inclusion of any remix of ‘You Don’t Fool Me’. While some fans would cry foul at this attempt at revisionism, in this instance, the right decision was made, and only the four-minute single edit was released, along with the standard album version.

A video was commissioned by the British Multimedia Institute in 1996, directed by Mark Szaszy. The video is based on the concept of androgyny and
the sexual code of appearance and identity separation between the sexes. This video was issued on the video compilations
Made In Heaven – The Films
and on the more commercially geared
Greatest Flix III
.

‘YOU HAD TO BE THERE’
(Taylor)

• Album (Roger):
Happiness?
• B-side (Roger): 9/94 [26]

Nestled away on the second side of
Happiness?
is this minor-key ballad, written about Freddie and Roger’s relationship with him. The most touching verse is the second one, in which Roger briefly details the darker years following his friend’s death, when “the night was hell”, though he attempts to remain optimistic about “happy days that might come again”, remaining optimistic that they will meet again. Roger plays all the instruments except for the soaring guitar solo, in which Jason Falloon extracts sounds from his guitar that resemble David Gilmour’s style, and the whole song, all three minutes of it, is a poignant tribute to Freddie.

“You Had To Be There” was released as the B-side of ‘Foreign Sand’ in September 1994 and was also performed on the resulting world tour, and was one of the highlights of the show. As with most of
Happiness?
, the song was kept out of the set for subsequent tours.

YOU KEEP ME HANGING ON

(Holland/Dozier/Holland)

Originally performed by Diana Ross and the Supremes, ‘You Keep Me Hanging On’ was performed live by 1984.

YOU TAKE MY BREATH AWAY
(Mercury)

• Album:
Races
• Bonus:
Races

After the raucous opening of ‘Tie Your Mother Down’, the next song was designed to slow down the mood of
A Day at the Races
, and ‘You Take My Breath Away’ was the perfect choice. Written for Freddie’s then-lover David Minns (not Mary Austin, as has long been rumoured), the result is an unabashed love song that finds the vocalist wearing his heart on his sleeve. With Freddie only on multi-tracked vocals and piano, and an understated guitar solo from Brian, the song clocks in at over five minutes yet achieves so much. The song was written after Queen’s spring 1976 tour in Japan, where Freddie was inspired by both their culture and their music, and based the melody on the Japanese Pentatonic scale.

“This one I did myself, I multi-tracked myself,” Freddie told Kenny Everett in 1976. “So the others weren’t used on this for the voices. I played piano and basically, I don’t know how we managed to stay this simple, you know, with all our overdubs and things. People seem to think that we’re over-complex, and it’s not true. It depends on the individual track really, if it needs it – we do it. So this is pretty sparse actually by Queen and our standards.”

The song was one of the few to be premiered before its official release date, when it was performed at the four summer shows in 1976. With only Freddie on vocals and piano, he was amazed that it went off so well (it’s breathtaking to listen to the performance from Hyde Park, despite audience members shouting for people to sit down). “‘You Take My Breath Away’ is a slow ballad with a new twist,” Freddie explained to
Circus
in 1977. “That’s another track I did at Hyde Park, with just me on the piano. It was very nerve-wracking, playing all by myself in front of 200,000 people. I didn’t think my voice would come through; it’s a very emotional, laid-back number.”

The song remained in the set list until June 1977, when it was replaced by ‘My Melancholy Blues’.

YOU’RE MY BEST FRIEND
(Deacon)

• Album:
Opera
• A-side: 5/76 [7] • Live:
Killers
• CD Single: 11/88 • Bonus:
Opera
• CD Single: 12/95 [6]

By 1975, John hadn’t exactly established himself as a proficient songwriter. He had missed out on composing songs for the first two albums, and his first composition – ‘Misfire’ from
Sheer Heart Attack
– was an inoffensive but slight pop song that lacked substance. It’s surprising, then, that ‘You’re My Best Friend’ has become one of John’s most well-known and endearing songs, and that it broke the tradition of Freddie- and Brian-only singles.

“I’m very pleased with that, actually,” Freddie told
Rock Australia
magazine in 1976. “John has really come into his own. Brian and myself have mostly written all the songs before, and he’s been in the background; he’s worked very hard, and his song’s very good, isn’t it? It’s nice. It even adds to the versatility, y’know what I mean. It’s nice that four people can write and they’re all strong; if John or anyone else wrote a song that we thought was weak, it would never be on the album. So he has had to work really hard on it to keep up the standard.”

Written for his wife Veronica (the two had been dating since 1971, and married in January 1975) and composed on an electric piano, which John also plays on the final cut, ‘You’re My Best Friend’ is a simple love song with no hidden or deeper meanings: John is in love, and he wants the world to know. “Freddie didn’t like the electric piano,” John explained in a Christmas Eve 1977 BBC radio interview, “so I took it home and I started to learn on the electric piano and basically that’s the song that came out of the thing when I was learning to play it. It was written on that instrument and it sounds best on that.”