Queen: The Complete Works (129 page)

Authors: Georg Purvis

BOOK: Queen: The Complete Works

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While it’s not in this book’s interest to condone material not officially sanctioned by Queen, the stems and multitracks that have leaked onto the internet in recent years are a difficult grey area. It’s true that Queen Productions didn’t release these as an official release, though they were okayed for use on the wildly popular
Guitar Hero
and
Rock Band
video game series. As such, industrious fans collected the ‘stems’ (isolated tracks of each song) and leaked them out onto the internet for bedroom remix enthusiasts to go to town. It’s a fascinating listen, offering fans exquisite insight into the painstakingly detailed process that each ‘track’ is made up of.

Furthermore, the legitimate leaking of four multitracks – ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, ‘Brighton Rock’, ‘Get Down, Make Love’ and ‘Killer Queen’ – is even more fascinating, with all twenty-four tracks separated and isolated into their own file. The casual fan would be absolutely baffled by these, uncertain with which computer program they could even be played in (for the record, it’s Audacity, or other similar programs). For those patient fans who fancy a try at coming up with alternate approaches to Queen songs, the stems and multitracks weren’t so much a leak as they were a revelation and unintentional Christmas gift rolled into one.

D. WE WILL ROCK YOU ... THE MUSICAL

The genesis of
We Will Rock You: The Musical
can be pinpointed, depending on whom you believe, at either 1986 or (more realistically) 1997, shortly after the Bejart Ballet that January. While Brian had indicated in the past that the idea for a musical was thrown about following the conclusion of the
Magic
tour, it’s possible that no actual work was started as the band became increasingly busy, with the next decade occupied by Queen albums, Freddie’s death,
Made In Heaven
and various solo projects. Brian commented in March 2001, when official news first hit that such a project was becoming a reality, that “We’ve actually been working on this damn musical for about four years and been through various ideas, some of which were biographical, which in the end we didn’t want to do.”

In December 1998,
MTVnews.com
reported that “The life of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury is the basis of a new Broadway musical scheduled to open late this year or in early 1999. The play, tentatively titled Queen, uses that group’s music to tell Mercury’s life story from childhood through his untimely death from AIDS in 1991. The other members of Queen are co-producing the show, which was written by Craig Lucas, the screenwriter of the Meg Ryan/Alec Baldwin movie
Prelude To A Kiss
. The show will be directed by Chris Renshaw, whose credits include the most recent Broadway revival of
The King And I
. No word yet on who’s in the running for the starring role.”

With the benefit of hindsight, this information, no matter how accurate it may have been at the time, turned out to be false: the autobiographical idea was dropped, with a more absurdist and humorous angle being taken by another writer. Enter Ben Elton, a renowned British humorist who had made a name for himself with the TV comedies
The Young Ones
and
Blackadder
. His television-writing career faltered after that, though he went on to write a series of novels that were well received. He was contacted late in 2000 about writing a musical for Queen and promptly accepted, thus beginning one of the most controversial periods of Queen’s post-Freddie career.

While many have argued that Freddie would have loved it, initial criticism centred around the fact that Brian was too involved with the project; when word of such censure received Brian, he justified his involvement with the musical by arguing that he loved the script and concept so much that he wanted to immerse himself in it as he felt it was such a personal undertaking. Roger was initially supportive of the musical and became fairly involved, but pulled out after its premiere in May 2002 to concentrate on other aspects of his life, while John was not involved in any way except to offer his blessing, though he did attend the premiere.

“The rumour is that we’re doing a musical, which is true,” Brian confirmed in March 2001. “Ben Elton has written us a fantastic script ... [He] came up with this great idea, so we’ve been workshopping it privately and possibly by the end of this year or the beginning of next year we hope it’ll be on in the West End.”

The synopsis of
We Will Rock You
was vaguely Orwellian in tone: kids of the future subscribe to uniformity, enjoying their simple lives, with music programmed by computers and sung by puppets. A group of rebels discovers that musical instruments, which have been banned, may still lurk in the depths of Planet Mall and that the only way to save the children from their automaton lifestyle is to find the instruments and start their own rock band. Part science fiction and part biting satire, the plot of the musical is admittedly thin, but it suited Queen’s music and Elton’s sense of humour perfectly. As Bob Wegner, who played guitar in the Canadian residency and runs his own spectacular Queen website (
http://queenlive.ca
), stated, “It’s Rush’s
2112
except they win in the end.”

In September 2001, Brian and Jim Beach attended auditions for the show. Towards the beginning of December, early reports of cast members surfaced, with former
Young Ones
star Nigel Planer cast as Pop, while the next month saw confirmation of Kerry Ellis as Meat. Also in January 2002, Tony Vincent confirmed on his website that he would be cast as Galileo, the lead in the musical. On the production side, Robert De Niro (of all people) was named as a producer in March 2002, with Tribeca, his personal production company, handling the promotional and distribution side.

Meanwhile, rehearsals were moving along well, with the cast getting ready for the public previews on 24 April at the Dominion Theatre, where the musical was planned to start its residency. A Fan Club voicemail message two weeks before the previews stated that “The musical is taking up everyone’s time
and Brian and Roger are throwing themselves into the technical and band rehearsals, which have now begun down at the Dominion, so lots going on down there, and we think Brian is taking his bed down there and sleeps there most of the time as well, poor chap.” Unfortunately, the previews were postponed due to technical difficulties and slated to start two days later than intended, but last-minute script tweaks were needed too, so they were cancelled completely.

In an effort to make up lost promotion, Brian, Roger and the musical band appeared on
Parkinson
on 2 May, performing ‘Somebody To Love’, ‘We Will Rock You’ and ‘We Are The Champions’. The show finally opened on 14 May 2002 at the Dominion Theatre, with initially mixed reviews.
The Sun
ran a review reading “Queen’s Musical Is A Kind Of Magic”; “What an evening – magnifico,” it concluded. One of the more scathing reviews, in
The Observer
, ran with a title decrying the musical as “Very, Very Frightening”.

“Queen’s memorable songs,” it went on, “may have been preposterously overblown – hence the coinage ‘pomp rock’ – but the point was that these guys (and their fans) were having gloriously indulgent, stadium-sized fun. They were bloody good at what they did and you either loved it or, if you had no sense of camp, loathed it. They weren’t making absurd claims about ‘meaning’, they just did it. In the show’s defence, the band play hell for leather and the cast have serious voices. Alex Hanson’s wonderfully droll bad guy looks like Max Headroom in Armani (‘actually it’s Marks and Spencers’ – the jokes are that good) and sings up a storm. Likewize Sharon D. Clarke’s lethal Killer Queen could raise the dead. Hannah Jane Fox’s Scaramouche comes over as a young, stroppy Anita Dobson and sings like – and I mean this as a serious compliment – a young Lulu. When Tony Vincent’s sincere Galileo opens his mouth to sing, the hairs go up on the back of your neck.”

While the reviews were caustic, the fans enjoyed it and it became one of the top draws in the West End. In January 2003, not quite a year after its London premiere, the design concept for an Australian version was signed off, with auditions starting the next month, while tickets for a Madrid premiere went on sale later in February; the Australian premiere came on 7 August 2003, the Madrid one on 3 November. Further openings in Moscow and Brisbane occurred through 2004, while Las Vegas was the site of the show’s US premiere on 8 September that year. Reviews were predictably mixed, but fan reception was positive and the show ran for a good year before closing down to make way for other musicals. Apart from these cities, Cologne, Tokyo and Johannesburg, with Zurich coming at the end of 2006, were also given their own productions, though Brian wasn’t quite as involved in these as he had been in the others (mainly due to the Queen + Paul Rodgers concerts).

In November 2002, a CD of two London performances from 12 and 13 July was released to modest acclaim (but not exceptional sales); a Spanish version, from performances between 16 and 27 January 2004, followed in August that year. As if that wasn’t enough, a book was also published, chronicling the series of events and featuring not only the complete script but some truly spectacular photographs as well.

Repertoire:

Act I:
‘Innuendo’ (
Freddie Mercury and ensemble
), ‘Radio Ga Ga’ (
Ga Ga Kids
), ‘I Want To Break Free’ (
Galileo
), ‘I Want To Break Free’ (
reprise
) (
Scaramouche
), ‘Somebody To Love’ (
Scaramouche and Teen Queens
), ‘Killer Queen’ (
Killer Queen and Yuppies
), ‘Play The Game’ (
Killer Queen and Yuppies
), ‘Death On Two Legs (Dedicated to......’ (
instrumental
), ‘Under Pressure’ (
Galileo and Scaramouche
), ‘A Kind Of Magic’ (
Killer Queen, Khashoggi, and Yuppies
), ‘Here Comes Santa!’ / ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ (
Ga Ga Kids
), ‘I Want It All’ (
Brit and Meat
), ‘Headlong’ (
Brit, Meat, Galileo, and Scaramouche
), ‘No-One But You (
Only The Good Die Young
)’ (
Meat and Bohemians
), ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ (
Brit, Meat, Galileo, Scaramouche, and Bohemians
), ‘Ogre Battle’ (
instrumental
).

Act II:
‘One Vision’ / ‘Radio Ga Ga’ (
reprise
) (
Ga Ga Kids
), ‘Who Wants To Live Forever’ (
Galileo and Scaramouche
), ‘Flash’ (
Bohemians
), ‘Seven Seas Of Rhye’ (
Khashoggi and Bohemians
), ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ (
Killer Queen and Sex Yuppies
), ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ (
reprise
) (
Killer Queen
), ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ (
Killer Queen
), ‘Hammer To Fall’ (
Galileo and Scaramouche
), ‘These Are The Days Of Our Lives’ (
Pop and Bohemians
), ‘Bicycle Race’ (
Bohemians
), ‘Headlong’ (
reprise
) (
Galileo, Scaramouche, and Pop
), ‘Brighton Rock Solo’ (
instrumental
), ‘Tie Your Mother Down’ (
instrumental
), ‘We Will Rock You’ (
Galileo and Bohemians
), ‘We Are The Champions’ (
Galileo and ensemble
), Encores: ‘We Will Rock You’ (
fast
) (
ensemble
), ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (
entire cast
)

Cast, principals:

Galileo:
Tony Vincent (
May 2002–November 2003
), Mig Ayesa (
November 2003–August 2005
), Peter Johansson (
August 2005–October 2007
), Ricardo Afonso (
October 2007–September 2009
), Peter Murphy (
September 2009–July 2010
), Ricardo Afonso (
July 2010–August 2011
), Alex Gaumond (
August 2011–present
)

Scaramouche:
Hannah Jane Fox (
May 2002–February 2006
), Jenna Lee-James (
February 2006–October 2007
), Sarah-French-Ellis (
October 2007– September 2010
), Sabrina Aloueche (
September 2010–present
)

Killer Queen:
Sharon D. Clarke (
May 2002–April 2004
), Mazz Murray (
April 2004–June 2010, 8–20 August 2011
), Lucy Tapp, Hannah Levane and Tricia Adele Turner (
alternating between 6–18 September 2010
), Brenda Edwards (
20 September 2010–present
)

Khashoggi:
Alexander Hanson (
May 2002–November 2002
), Clive Carter (
November 2002–April 2005
), Alex Bourne (
April 2005–present
)

Brit:
Nigel Clauzel (
May 2002–April 2005
), Colin Charles (
April 2005–October 2007
), Lain Gray (
October 2007–September 2008
), Ian Carlyle (
September 2008–present
)

Meat:
Kerry Ellis (
May 2002–April 2004
), Jenna Lee-James (
April 2004–February 2006
), Rachael Wooding (
February 2006–October 2007
), Rachel Tucker (
October 2007–September 2008
), Louise Bowden (
September 2008–September 2009
), Amanda Coutts (
September 2009–May 2010
), Lauren Varnham (
May–October 2010
), Rachel John (
November 2010–present
)

Pop:
Nigel Planer (
May 2002–April 2004
), Mark Arden (
April 2004–April 2005
), Jeff Shankley (
April 2005–October 2007
), Julian Littman (
October 2007–September 2008
), Garry Lake (
September 2008–September 2010
), Kevin Kennedy (
September 2010–present
)