A Couple Tidbits on Some Queen Songs

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Earlier this week, I wrote a review of "Bohemian Rhapsody." I had been a strong Queen fan since high school and always enjoyed their lyrics. There are particularly a few songs that strike me and I want to highlight them.

The first, the obvious, Bohemian Rhapsody. Inproperly titled as "Mama" by many, the song is seen as a collage on Mercury's traumas and such. It's notable for being meant as an easily accessible progressive rock number - being that prog rock was on its death bed around 1975 or so.

Apart from the fact that the song goes from a capella intro, to power ballad, to opera, to hard rock, and back to a power ballad, there are some terms that many may be curious about. I will briefly define them below:
Scharamouche: A stock character from a popular Italian commedia d'arte. He is portrayed as a lunatic but quickly learns to come to his senses.
The fandango is a Spanish flameco dance.
Galileo was a famous Florentine astronomer.
Beelzebub: Has been portrayed in Arab countries as a demon and was previously worshiped by the Hebrew.
Bismillah: A term meaning "in the name of Allah." It's the first word in the qu'ran which is essential a "user manual" (figuratively speaking) for followers of Islam.

We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions is also an interesting song from their 1977 record News of The World. Contrary to what you may have seen in the movie (if you watched it), the song DID NOT originate from a crowd singing back Love of my Life. Rather, it originated after an encore during which the crowd sang the popular, "You'll Never Walk Alone", a popular socccer anthem (football for any Europeans that read this). Anyway, the band wanted to engage the crowd a little more, so they came up with the idea by Freddie Mercury, John Deacon, and Roger Taylor stomping and clapping. The overdubbed this about 150 times so that it sounds likes there are a lot of people.  The two songs, since day one, had been played back together and chances are your local classic rock station does that.

Queen's 1980 record The Game spawned two interesting songs. Crazy Little Thing Called Love is the ONLY song Mercury ever composed on guitar. He got the thing down in 5-10 minutes, and because he only knew 3-5 chords, he was limited in his framework. Initially only Mercury, Deacon, and Taylor were in the studio recording. Brian May did come on to add his guitar solo and the electric guitar licks as heard. There is a version of Mercury playing the guitar solo on his acoustic guitar, but that version has been long lost since the recording sessions ended. Mercury would state at concerts (and I quote): "This song's the only chords I learned on guitar." The track is an ode to Elvis (Presley of course), and you can clearly hear Mercury singing in that deep, lower register souding rather Elvis-like.

The other track from that album, Another One Bites the Dust, is perhaps one of (if not THE) Queen signature songs. It came from bass player John Deacon while the group was in NYC and he happened to pop in to the recording studio where Chic were recording, hence the thumping, disco influence.

Now there are people who think that with the advent of the 80s, the band began using synthesizers (especially that woosh sound before the lyrics start). However, Deacon played nearly all the instruments (electric guitar, bass, piano), and a harmonizer was used to run through the guitar and piano notes, so NO SYNTHESIZERS no matter what anyone tells you!

Well I think that's the jist of their biggest songs. Speaking of John Deacon, he composed You're my Best Friend (1975) for his wife on the Wurlitzer electric piano (die-hard Supertramp fans should be able to recognize this as that was their biggest instrument). However, Mercury ABSOLUTELY refused to play that Wurlitzer stating that it was "tiny and uncomfortable." Hence when done live, Mercury would play the piano notes and Deacon would zero in on bass (did I mention that the ending is SIMILLAR to Killer Queen (1974).

There are many more to talk about, but I do not wish to make this post unneccessarily long, so enjoy reading it, follow, and comment. Cheers!

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