Superlatives
A Vulture series in which artists judge the best and worst of their own careers.
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Few rockers possess this crazy little thing called crowd awareness quite likeQueen.
We opted for this business of having the audience as part of the show, he recently told me.
And there was never a reason to look back.
Its just what good monarchs do.
Indeed, hes a Dr.anda Sir.
Ive found that the best science, he explained, is always done with an artistic instinct.
It encapsulates a lot of what we are, what we have been, and what our dream was.
There are a lot of facets to Queens music.
We entered into so many areas believing we could innovate.
Bohemian Rhapsody has so much content.
I will eternally be grateful for that.
We had a dream that we would be songwriters.
We would be creators.
And underneath all that would be something very imponderable, thrilling, heavy, and challenging.
It never was there before.
Its hard to imagine a world where we just didnt have heavy music here.
In the sense, it was.
You also wouldnt think the Shadows were heavy.
Its purely instrumental music, but at the time it had a great edge to it.
It felt very dangerous and very exciting.
So we wanted all that.
We wanted to have that as our bedrock.
So its a big dream.
Collectively, we started to work on achieving that dream from the first album onward.
Song that took the longest to appreciate
Dont Stop Me Now.
When I first heard it, I knew it had a real tune to it.
But next to a lot of the other stuff we were doing, its quite light and fluffy.
Theres also an indication of recklessness there.
At the time, Freddie was zooming out into a different universe.
We felt he might be in danger.
So I think in the back of my mind, I had a block on this song.
I didnt really want it to be a single.
It took me a long time to realize that this is a magnificent anthem in its way.
It brings people joy, so why would I stand in the way of that?
Now I accept Dont Stop Me Now as one of the great Queen anthems.
And its taken over.
My mind shifted when I started to experience it at parties.
You suddenly realize as soon as people hear Dont Stop Me Now that they come to life.
They get set alight.
I just thought,Oh, shit.
This is really a good song.
Also, selfishly, there wasnt a lot for me to do on it.
Thats something you have to deal with if youre in a band.
This particular song is all about piano, drums, bass, and vocals.
Theres just one little spot in the middle where the guitar takes over the vocal line.
I like doing that, but I didnt feel I was very organically anchored into the song.
Thats probably another reason why I didnt really take it that seriously in the beginning.
All thosebillions of streamsare from theGreatest Hits.
Thats a separate thing.
We have a whole career of creating music in the album format.
Theres a million things I wish, in a sense, had gotten a lot of attention.
I suppose The Prophets Song prevails the most.
It was the antithesis of Bohemian Rhapsody and on the same album.
Im not going to say Im unhappy because its okay.
The people who are into that stuff are very into it.
They understand it, and they get it.
That isnt anywhere near a billion streams.
Among the hits, Im happy for them all.
Im getting all esoteric about the deep tracks of Queen, but you cant knock having a hit.
Thats a precious thing.
What a wonderful thing to have in your quiver of arrows.
You didnt go to a Led Zeppelin concert and sing along.
Black Sabbath, you didnt do that.
Whats going wrong here?
And then it became enormous.
Theres one particular instance that happened in Bingley Hall in Staffordshire.
Its in the middle of England the Midlands.
The crowd wouldnt stop singing.
They sang every note of every song, every word.
When we went offstage, they kept on singing.
We just looked at each other and thought, This is new.
This is a phenomenon.
It seems we shouldnt be fighting this.
We should be embracing it.
What can they do?
They can stomp their feet, clap their hands, and chant.
And Freddie went off and wrote We Are the Champions.
Both of those songs were very deliberately angled at allowing the audience to be part of the show.
In fact,invitingthem to be part of the show.
From then on, we became a band that was absolutely dedicated to making our shows an interactive experience.
The funny thing is that its become common now in all kinds of music.
So its something I feel proud of.
Its something which we pioneered at some pain.
There are things to consider when it comes to these matters.
You always gain something, and you lose something.
Bicycle Race and Fat Bottomed Girls were conceived in a related kind of way.
Sometimes we link them in concert because theres a connection.
They were both written around the time when we were recording in the south of France.
The Tour de France was coming through, so theres that whole jumbled set of concepts there.
But with We Will Rock You and We Are the Champions, its something that just works.
It was almost designed that way.
I had it happening in my mind long before it happened in the real world.
The funny thing is we had a lot of disputes about it within the band.
It wasnt really agreed that We Will Rock You should startNews of the World.
For once, I won the argument, and the next track was We Are the Champions.
It was a wonderful combination.
We Will Rock You is so jagged, open, and asking questions.
The first time I put them together, I thought it was a match made in heaven.
But when it came to doing singles, I lost that argument.
I was happy about that because I always loved the sound of that combination on my radio.
It never gets old to me.
It always sounds fresh and fulfills its promise.
That would be Killer Queen.
I was ill in the hospital when the band started laying it down.
They had already recorded some harmonies for it and some chorus vocals.
I felt they were very harsh, and it didnt quite fit the song.
So Freddie said, Thats okay, darling.
Well do it again when you come out.
Well scrub it all, and well start again, which they did.
We started singing the harmonies and again, realized this was a monumental song.
I got into this business of using the guitar as an orchestral instrument.
It was always part of my dream.
But it happened more and more as time went on.
The solo for Killer Queen is a three-part thing.
I dont think anyone else had ever attempted something like that.
Theres this little bell effect, which I stole from a traditional jazz group called the Temperance Seven.
Thats something in my DNA.
I love the business of adding instruments in and building up harmonies.
For the first time, I had a real exposition of the way I wanted guitars to work.
Each of those parts is played with my kind of passion, and it all fits together.
I love that track.
I think its a perfect example of my guitar playing.
Its not wildly exciting and heavy and explosive, but it fits the song really nicely.
I love that song as a work of art.
I think its one of Freddies masterpieces.
Its like a painting.
Imagine a Baroque painting.
Everything has its space and can be enjoyed in an uncluttered kind of way.
It opened theQueens Golden Jubileeand was met with big fanfare.
It was completely live and without any kind of safety net.
I mean, the amount of fear to face in that situation was colossal.
Ive never quite experienced that again in my life, and Im sure I never will.
I felt like I was called upon to represent rock music of the last 50 years.
I was humbled by it but at the same time incredibly adrenalized.
The greatest thing is I didnt fuck it up.
I didnt, so thank you, God.
That was a moment of religion for me.
Song that always reminds you of Freddie
The Miracle.
I love that track because its so delicate and full of hope and light.
I think he had some inkling of what the future might hold.
Its just beautiful and so innocent.
It talks about modern innovations in the world in a very appreciative way.
I just love it.
Its Freddie, that little keyboard, and his voice.
The lyrics are just sensational.
It still evokes tears in me.
Song most influenced by physics
The one that springs to mind is 39.
It was designed to sound like a folk song that would be sung in the future.
Its a story about some people who go out to try and find new worlds for humanity to exist.
They go about close to the speed of light.
So the astronaut comes back and looks for his wife and his family.
Theyre gone, and he sees his descendants instead.
Thats the theme of the song its scientifically inspired.
Its not really science fiction.
It could be science fact.
This could happen in the future.
What an extraordinary thing that would be.
So I guess its technically a science-fiction story, but something not beyond the realms of possibility.
I dont know anyone who wrote time-dilation lyrics apart from me.
I love this business of me being able to sit on the cusp between art and science.
People said, You have to choose between being an artist and being a scientist.
And I went, I dont want to choose.
I want my life to be full of everything.
Why would I be cutting myself off from music if I decide to be an astronomer?
Of course, its nonsense.
I dont know why people were telling us that.
Most of the great astronomers from Isaac Newton downward were musicians, too.
A lot of musicians that you would call to mind have a fascination with astronomy like I do.
So I wentfull pelt on both.
Im being honest here; this bang out of stuff happens at a distance.
Which we sometimes do if its abusive.
Some of the things we get asked to put Queen music on we really dont like and reject it.
We have the ability to say no.Shaun of the Deadobviously passed the selection process.
At that time, there werequite a few filmsusing our music, which was great.
Its not something I take for granted.
But it didnt change my life because the songs are out there, I suppose.
When it gets to that point, its like youve said goodbye to your child.
This child is out there standing on his own two legs.
I dont feel particularly paternal about Dont Stop Me Now.
There are some songs that I do feel a bit more attached to.
It doesnt mean I dont like comedy.
Thats okay for me.
But if it becomes commonplace, I think that would be upsetting for me.
I would like We Will Rock You to always be some kind of a call that hits you viscerally.
From time to time Ive said, No, I dont want this to happen.
If somebody puts new words in, We willsomethingyou, it becomes, ugh.
Thats a no every time.
Its something that I suppose everybody wrestles with.
Were lucky to be able to wrestle with it.
What a nice problem to have.
For instance, my song Flash is very cartoonlike.
I wrote it for theFlash Gordonmovie.
Theres a floor cleaner actually called Flash.
At first I thought,I dont want this.
This is just going to trivialize it.
Its making a mockery of my song.And then I thought,Hang on, Brian.
Youre being too self-conscious about this.The song has a sense of humor to it.
I saw the script and I thought,This is actual humor.
It makes people laugh, so why not?And theyre going to give us money for doing it.
I do good things with money.
So I said yes.
Some people went, How could you have done that?
And I go,You know what?
Its a bit of fun, and its doing some good out there.
But theres a fine line.
Weve had some stuff sent to us where its tough, particularly in the rap domain.
I love good rap.
But some of the stuff that sampled and incorporated our music has made my skin crawl.
I felt it was so abusive.
This isnt just me the whole group feels the same.
We talk about this.
We dont want Queen music associated with that kind of a mentality.
Maybe they think its funny.
Maybe they think its a feeling of power.
But it seems abusive to us, so we say no to that stuff.
This is my long way around saying, yeah, I thoughtShaun of the Deadwas funny.
Im a bit on the cusp, though.
Theres a lot of space these days glorifying violence.
Im a little bit equivocal about it.
But its on the edge.
We made our first album in a difficult situation.
Very little time and money was spent on it.
Its very rough and ready, but it sounds like a rock album.
We had some proper studio time to make the second album, and we got quite involved.
Theres a lot of arrangement on that album.
Ill never forget the couple of reviews that said, This isnt rock anymore.
Queen has decided to desert rock.
We thought, well, maybe we have to be a bit direct with people.
SoSheer Heart Attackwas very bright and glistening.
That doesnt mean it was crass.
It means it was calculated.
It was arranged to have an impact at every point in different ways.
Maybe Im not expressing this very well.
Once we putSheer Heart Attackout, it was very well received, especially by the Queen clientele.
It did well commercially.
It reinforced our feeling that we were getting somewhere, and we were establishing ourselves as a rock band.
And of course, Killer Queen gave us our first proper hit single.
Now Im Here managed to break through as a hit as well, which was unusual.
It was more oriented toward pop music.
That made me feel like we had a good trajectory, and we knew where we were going.
