Queen: The Complete Works (61 page)

A video for the single was made in March 1984, and went on to achieve far more notoriety than anything Queen had done in the past. Suggested by Roger’s then-girlfriend Dominique, the video shows the four members spoofing the popular UK television soap opera Coronation Street, dressing up in drag and looking fairly convincing in the process. However, the drag section of the video lasts for only the first and last verses and choruses, with the remainder being made up of some truly baffling (yet very Mallet) sequences in which the band are surrounded by coal miners, made up of members of the Fan Club, in an abandoned warehouse. (“And bang – there’s the Royal Ballet in a box,” Roger quipped in the commentary for the song on the 2003
Greatest Video Hits 2
DVD.) Typical of Freddie, it was the combination of this sequence with the drag that would be the final nail in the coffin of Queen’s relationship with America: the single fared no better than No. 45 in the charts, and Queen never toured there again. However, “We had more fun making this video than we did any other,” Roger said, though he regarded the offensive ballet sequence as “art with a capital ‘f’ ... there’s not much more I can say to that.”

The single became a beloved anthem for impoverished nations, and was always well received when performed live between 1984 and 1986. When the band performed the song on the
Works!
tours, Freddie would appear with a pair of false breasts,
revealing them to a delighted crowd (and usually thrusting them in John’s face) at the conclusion of the song. However, when the band appeared at the Rock In Rio Festival in January 1985, reports trickled back that this cross-dressing move wasn’t so well received: “Pop star Freddie Mercury ... received a royal pelting when he appeared on stage in Rio de Janeiro wearing women’s clothes, huge plastic falsies and a black wig,”
People
magazine reported. “A near riot erupted when the crowd of 350,000 began tossing stones, beer cans and other missiles at him as he started to sing Queen’s ‘I Want To Break Free’. Why the violent reaction, especially when fans obviously knew they weren’t paying to see Lawrence Welk? Explains Maria Caetano, who worked as an interpreter at the concert: ‘The song is sacred in South America because we consider it a political message about the evils of dictatorships.’” Record Mirror reported: “There’s a spot of trouble when Freddie decides to dress up in his best Bet Lynch gear for ‘I Want To Break Free’. Some outraged Brazilians decide this just isn’t on and get very nasty. Instead of throwing beer cans at the stage in time honoured tradition, they decide that pebbles and bits of concrete are far more effective. Fred does a sprint to safety and it’s all forgotten quickly.” The truth is that the audience did boo and react negatively, but nothing was flung at Freddie, as shown in the uncut video. Just to be safe, the following week Freddie opted to go flat-chested.

I WAS BORN TO LOVE YOU
(Mercury)

• Album (Freddie):
BadGuy
• A-side (Freddie): 4/85 [11] • Album (Queen):
Heaven

Written by Freddie for his 1985 solo album
Mr Bad Guy
, ‘I Was Born To Love You’ is a joyous and ebullient admission of love. Set to a pulsating synth beat, with some raucous piano work, the song is an early highlight of
Mr Bad Guy
and was rightly chosen as the first single from the album. Released in April 1985, the single peaked at No. 11, surprising even Freddie, who didn’t think much of it to begin with and had no choice but to capitulate to CBS’ demands that it be finished and released. (In Japan, the song became a minor sensation, appearing in a commercial to promote cosmetics company Noevia, and peaking at No. 55 in the charts.) An extended remix, doubling the original running time to seven minutes, is a gruelling test of endurance and patience, throwing in just about everything that a remix can handle, including trick-shot drum programming and several vocal interludes. An early version, recorded on 25 May 1984, features only Freddie on vocals and piano and is a fascinating insight into his underrated capabilities on that instrument.

One of Freddie’s more endearing videos was created for the single at Limehouse Studios on 2 and 4 April 1985 and directed by old stalwart David Mallet. Showing Freddie and a female lover cavorting through several rooms of a luxurious home, with Freddie serenading her as she gleefully runs away from him, the video strikes a saccharine and poignant tone – though the following scenes of hundreds of Amazonian women goose-stepping in a large arena is baffling. Interspersed are shots of Freddie in a room full of mirrors, dancing and twirling around as his white leather jacket increasingly dislodges itself from his upper torso.

Revisited for the
Made In Heaven
project and given the typical Queen treatment, the song is an undoubted highlight of the album. The most rock-oriented track on the album, ‘I Was Born To Love You’ features an exuberant vocal performance from Freddie and a delightful instrumental backing painstakingly arranged by Brian. In Japan, it was used in a 1996 Kirin Ichiban Shibori liquor advert, and was released as a single in March 1996, peaking at No. 45. Six years later, based on its use as the theme to the TV show
Pride
, it was re-released, and peaked at No. 40. Recognizing the emotional connection that Japan had to the song, it received its live debut in 2005 during the Japanese leg of the Queen + Paul Rodgers tour, when Brian and Roger performed an acoustic version as part of the final encore; a rendition of this touching duet was later released on the
Super Live In Japan
DVD.

I WISH YOU WOULD
(Arnold)

This Yardbirds song was played live by 1984.

I’M A LOSER
(Lennon/McCartney)

This Beatles song was played live by 1984.

I’M GOING SLIGHTLY MAD
(Queen)

• Album:
Innuendo
• A-side: 3/91 [22]

Written by Freddie with his tongue planted firmly in cheek, ‘I’m Going Slightly Mad’ is a welcome return to the camp, vaudeville songs that had peppered early Queen albums but ended abruptly in 1977 once the band’s increasing success dictated their musical
direction. Following the humour-impaired 1980s, this exasperated outburst of comic insanity was a refreshing reminder of Freddie’s wicked sense of humour. A nice wordplay song, the lighthearted lyrics betray a serious side effect – states of dementia – of AIDS victims, which Freddie was indeed going through. While on a radio promotional tour for
Innuendo
in 1991, during which Brian was inundated with questions about the band touring the US again, he candidly – and offhandedly – mentioned that Freddie was prone to black outs, and “you don’t want the singer blacking out in the middle of the song.”

Jim Hutton, Freddie’s partner during the last years of his life, said of the song in his book
Mercury And Me
, “When Freddie penned the song ‘I’m Going Slightly Mad’, it was after another through-the-night session with [friend] Peter Straker. Freddie explained he had the phrase ‘I’m going slightly mad’ on his brain and told Peter what sort of thing he wanted to say in the song. The inspiration for it was the master of camp one-liners, Noël Coward. Freddie set about with Peter trying to come up with a succession of goofy lyrics, each funnier than the last. He screamed when they came up with things like ‘I’m knitting with only one needle’ and ‘I’m driving only three wheels these days’. But the masterstroke was ‘I think I’m a banana tree’. Once that came out there was no stopping Freddie and Straker – they were then in full flow. I went to bed to fall asleep listening to their laughter wafting upstairs.”

“That was very much a Freddie track and you tend to want to give the author his head,” Brian told
Guitarist
in 1994. “Even though we said that everything is by Queen, there was still somebody who was basically the original author and everyone else worked on it. It was a good idea as it produced a lot of input, but in the end it was Freddie’s baby so it was natural that he would want to get certain things right.”

The promotional video, filmed on 15 and 16 February 1991 at Wembley Studios, and directed by Rudi Dolezal and Hannes Rossacher, ranks as one of Queen’s finest and was also one of Freddie’s final appearances in front of a camera, his illness starting to show. Despite wearing a layer of padding, two layers of clothes, and a wild, matted wig, he still appears gaunt but, adapting that old adage “the show must go on”, he performed as if he was the paragon of health. During filming, Freddie was heard to comment, “I wanted to make the video as memorable as possible. I’ve always wanted to co-star in a video with a gorilla and a group of penguins. A little bit of Queen madness.” At one point during filming, one of the penguins, Cleo, decided to mark her territory – unfortunately, it happened to be on the black leather couch where she was seated between Roger and Freddie, but both leapt out of the way in time. (Life imitating art, perhaps; witness one particular line of lyrics from ‘Delilah’.)

The song was picked as the second single from
Innuendo
and was released in March 1991, peaking at a disappointing No. 22, though it reached No. 1 in Hong Kong.

I’M IN LOVE WITH MY CAR
(Taylor)

• B-side: 10/75 [1] • Album:
Opera
• Live:
Killers, Montreal
• CD Single: 11/88 • Bonus:
Opera
• Compilation:
WWRYHits
• Live (The Cross):
Bootleg
• Live (Q+PR):
Return, Ukraine

Roger’s paean to four-wheeled beauties became a cult favourite upon its release in 1975, before receiving widespread attention in the live setting two years later. Full of double entendres and sexual innuendo, the song’s tongue-in-cheek demeanour may not have won Roger any points with the fairer sex: “Cars don’t talk back / They’re just four-wheeled friends now.” Featuring a raucous guitar line from Brian and some masterful drumming, the song became a perfect showcase for Roger when played live, appearing as part of the medley between 1977 and 1981, and was brought out of mothballs in 2005 for the Queen + Paul Rodgers tour.

“I remember my car at the time,” Roger said in a 1997 BBC interview, “because I think we’ve got the exhaust on the record, and that was a little Alfa Romeo. But I think it was more about people in general, for instance boy racers. In particular we had a sound guy/ roadie at the time called Jonathan Harris, who was so in love with his car, and that inspired that. I think he had a Triumph TR4.”

When ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was selected as the first single from
A Night At The Opera
, Roger fought ardently for his song to be released as the B-side, though this was initially met with resistance. Roger told the
Detroit Free Press
in 1982 that “I wish that would’ve been a single in its time. Of course, I made just as much money on it. It was the backside of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, so I probably made more money that way.” Sixteen years after its initial release, the scars still had yet to heal, with Brian grumbling to
Q
magazine, “We always rowed about money. A lot of terrible injustices
take place over songwriting. The major one is B-sides. Like, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ sells a million and Roger gets the same writing royalties as Freddie because he did ‘I’m in Love With My Car’. There was contention about that for years.” Considering one of Roger’s songs wouldn’t be released as an A-side until 1982, and even then as a US-only single, having ‘I’m In Love With My Car’ as a B-side was a small concession – though his bandmates were less than amused when he purchased a Surrey mansion in 1978, while the others were still residing in modest city homes.

(I’M NOT YOUR) STEPPING STONE
(Boyce/Hart)

Although Jimi Hendrix later wrote a song called ‘Stepping Stone’, it’s likely that it was The Monkees’ 1966 hit that was covered live by 1984.

I’M SCARED
(May)

• Album (Brian):
BTTL
• B-side (Brian): 8/92 [5]

“I kept doing different versions of [‘I’m Scared’],” Brian told
Guitar World
in 1993, “as I kept finding out that I was scared of more and more things. And I figured that most of us are. We just keep it inside. I think it’s good to let all that stuff out sometimes, do a bit of screaming.” In the years following Queen’s retirement from touring, Brian catapulted himself into more and more projects in order to keep himself busy, but privately he was suffering from depression. With his personal life in a shambles – his marriage was falling apart because of an unstoppable attraction to EastEnder Anita Dobson – and his father dying in June 1988, Brian went through an increasingly difficult period, even contemplating suicide, an admission he was only able to make several years later in hindsight.

Music was his only solace amid the turmoil and, in 1988, he prepared a tape of demos that he circulated to a select group of friends, giving them an indication of what he’d been up to and what his first solo album would contain. Two of those songs – ‘The Dark’ and ‘My Boy’ – dated back to 1980 and 1982 respectively, but the third song was a more recently-written hard rocker that fashioned Brian’s fears into a self-deprecating story of public embarrassment and emotional anxiety.

First released as the B-side of ‘Too Much Love Will Kill You’ in August 1992, ‘I’m Scared’ was later remixed for inclusion on
Back To The Light
, fattening up Brian’s weaker vocal, making a few choice lyric changes, stripping away some fussy guitar work in the verses, and adding what was dubbed the ‘Chaos Karaoke’, a litany of fears collected into a jumbled chattering of semi-decipherable lines. Of what can be made out, Brian enumerates his fear of losing control, pain, being unknown, being ugly, dying, deformed, dull, the dark, being found out and, most importantly, being scared of Stephen Berkoff. (Known for his villainous character in
Beverly Hills Cop
, he also portrayed Adolf Hitler in the 1988 ABC miniseries
War And Remembrance
.)

I’M TAKING HER HOME

Originally performed by The Others, ‘I’m Taking Her Home’, the B-side of their breakthrough single ‘Oh Yeah’, was performed by 1984. Authorship is unknown.

IDEA (BARCELONA)
: