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Playing My Role In History

"I've never considered myself the leader of Queen — the most important person perhaps..."

The concept of Queen was to be regal and majestic. Glamour was part of us, and we wanted to be dandy. We wanted to shock and be outrageous. We didn't want people to have to think about whether they liked us or not, but to formulate an opinion the moment they saw us. We're not just trying to be different, because if you're professional, darlings, you don't have to try to be anything!

The idea of Queen was conceived by me whilst studying at college. Brian, who was also at college, liked the idea and we joined forces. The very earliest traces of the band go back to a group called Smile*, who made a single that was released in the States. I used to follow Smile a lot and we became friend», I used to go to their shows and they used to come to see mine. But the group was plagued by bad luck.

I was saying to Brian and Roger, "Why are you wasting your time doing this? You should do more original material. You should be mal| demonstrative in the way you put the music across. If I was your singer that’s what I'd be doing!" Eventually Smile split up and we decided we'd form a band together. It's as simple as that. We thought our musical ideas would blend. Then we met John Deacon [in July 197l| and decided to call the band Queen.

I thought up the name Queen early on. It was a very regal name and it sounded splendid. It's strong, very universal, and immediate. It had a lot of visual potential and was open to all sorts of interpretations. It lent itself to a lot of things, like the theatre, and it was grand. It was very pompous, with all kinds of connotations. It meant so much. It wasn't just one precise label.

I was certainly aware of the gay connotations, but that was just one facet of it. Anyway, we always preferred to think of Queen in the regal sense rather than in the queer one. We worried that the name would give people the wrong idea, but knew our music would override the image because we'd concentrate on putting out good product the whole time. We were confident people would take to us because although the camp image had already been established by Bowie and Bolan, we were taking it to another level. We thought that teenyboppers would probably like us and we might get a bit of a ‘pop’ tag, but it wouldn't last. At that moment we were just interested in creating a reaction amongst those who came to see us.

There was a long gap between actually forming Queen and having a recording contract. That's why we were so concerned about people saying, “Here comes Queen, glam rock is in, and they are following the tradition." We newer copied anyone. We were into glam rock before groups like the Sweet and Bowie, and we worried that we might have come too late. Our way ut together a different kind of theatrical music.

I think when everybody starts off they get a label. Journalists try and put you in a compartment and label you. With any band that starts now, they say they sound a little bit like Culture Club or whatever. We sounded a little bit like Led Zeppelin, because we had harmonies and things, and so they put us in that sort of category. We were labelled so many different things. Labels are as bad as they are good, and if you took them seriously you'd be very silly. I don’t care what they say, really. 1 think people have said things about us and then they changed their minds after listening to an album. In the end we had our own stamp - we had the Queen stamp. We had our trademark. A lot of bands that came after us were told they sound like us and they were not pleased either, but you have to go through that from the start. It’s always been that way.



We had a lot of belief to start with, but I thought it would be over after five years and I would be doing something else. It grew and grew, and, remember, we had all been in various bands before, so we had plenty of experience of what not to do, and how not to be flabbergasted by the first rosy offer from record companies.

The moment we made a demo [in 1971] we were aware of the sharks. We had such amazing offers from people saying, "We'll make you the next T-Rex," but we were very, very careful not to jump straight in. We went to probably every record company before we finally settled on one. We didn't want to be treated like an ordinary band. We approached it that way because we were not prepared to be out-of-work musicians, ever. We said, "Either take us on as a serious commodity or don't take us at all."

That's how much planning went into it. It wasn't an overnight success, you know, we'd already been going for three years. We just got the right people to work for us, and the right company, and it took a long time. Ami yet we were accused of being a 'hype', and compared to bands we'd never even heard of, and then finally told that we didn't even write our own songs,

To most people it must have seemed like an overnight success story, but really we'd been going for a while, doing the club circuits and all that, without having a recording contract. From the very start there were always business pressures of some sort or other. It was like a real obstacle race. I will always maintain the fact that for a major successful band, it's never plain sailing, otherwise there's something wrong about it. If it's too easy you hit your peak and then that's it!

You can't go around saying, "What a wonderful musician I am! What a terrific song I wrote last night!" You've got to make quite sure you get discovered. Part of talent is making sure your music reaches people. You can’t just be a wonderful musician and an outstanding song writer - there are lots of those about. Learn to push yourself, be there at the right time and learn how to deal with the business right from the start. That's the state of play in rock'n'roll now. You have to instinctively have an awareness of all the things that will work in make it successful.

The higher up the ladder you go the more vicious you have to be if you want to stop yourself falling off. It isn't that I wanted to be tough and vicious, it's something that is forced upon you. Once you are successful all the baddies move in and that is when you've got to be really strong and try and sift them out - and that is a test of survival really. All the leeches appear and they will suck you dry if you give them half a chance. You have to watch everyone who Works for you and if they seem to be taking you for a ride you have to weed them out fast. You can't afford to let anyone get away with anything. It's like playing dodgems; it's rock'n'roll dodgems. You've got to make sure you don't get hit too often by the bad people. Everyone who's successful will always be burnt once or twice. That's kind of a classic rule. Just call it experience.

I think we gained that experience in the early days, getting ripped off and things like that. It's not just a question of having a recording contract and it, it's not all going to be peaches and cream. It's a business proposition as well as a musical one. You have to keep in check all of the things that are going on. Talent isn't just about being a good musician, these days, it's about being aware. It's vital to do the whole thing properly. Talent is not just writing I longs and performing them, it's having a business brain, because that's a major part of it - to get the music across properly and profit from it. You use all the tricks of the trade and if you believe in yourself, you'll go all the way. That’s the only way we know and it has worked for Queen. And, of course, you must have key people around you to take care of all those things, but you have to take a personal interest as well.

It’s very hard to find those kind of people. It's very difficult to put your trust in others, especially with the kind of people that we are. We're very highly strung, very meticulous and fussy. What we went through with Trident took a lot of us, so we became very careful and selective with the kind of people that worked with us after that and became part of the Queen unit.

John Deacon kept a very close eye on our business affairs. He knew everything that should and shouldn't be going on. If God had forsaken us, the rest of the group wouldn't do anything unless John said it was all right.

I think the pressures of the business are getting greater and greater now. There's so much happening that you have to make snap decisions and everything has got to be cut and dried. The most difficult thing to deal with is the time factor, and in some cases you have to make compromises, and we hate that. I just die when I feel I've done that because you're forever thinking you could have done it better, and that's awful. In the end it's your career and you're the one who has to live with it.

For a band that's starting off, guidance and good management is certainly vital. But people like to think that artists don't have brains, and certainly a lot of them are very easily separated from their money. We were more cunning than that. After Trident, we approached a series of top class managers to make sure we made the right choice. At the time John Reid happened to be the right choice. He flashed his eyes at me and I said, "Why not?" He was great, actually. It was the sort of combination we'd wanted for years. His approach and method of work was so right. He came in to negotiate the whole structure of recording, publishing and management.

Eventually, years later, we became a very difficult group to manage because we demanded a lot. We're fiends, really, and it would take somebody like a Hitler or Goebels to be our manager. Queen is a business, it's an organisation, and we decided to take care of it ourselves.

As Queen play and record together, people see us as having a super-unit image. But Queen is a musical group, not a family. Sure, there are bitter rows, just like there are in many families. We argue about the smallest details. But we all know that fundamentally our aims are very similar; to carry on making good music and stretching ourselves beyond what's been done before by the band.

There's an inward jealousy all the way through our history. Roger, Brian, John and I all write separately and battle to get as many of our own songs as possible onto each album. There's a push, a hunger, a constant fight, which is very healthy. We slug it out and in the end it's very democratic. I don't want to hog things. I mean there is no way I want to say that just I have to write the songs. You have to go only on the strength of the songs. Wouldn't it be awful if I just pushed my compositions and insisted they're the best?

It's a kind of a group policy where we argue and say, "Ok, it doesn't matter who wrote it, we think this song is the best, or that song is best, because it Works for all of us." I mean, if I pushed a song but was thinking that it might not be a hit, that would be detrimental to me in the long run anyway. So, for example, with Radio Ga Ga [1984] I was the first one to say that the song Roger had written was going to be a very good starting point for the single. It was commercial, very strong and different, and very current.

I'm not the leader of the band, by the way. Everybody calls me the leader "I Queen, but I'm just the lead singer. I'm not the General, or anything like that. We are all four equal people. We all wanted to be pop stars but the group comes first. Without the others I would be nothing.

Modern-day people in my position call themselves the focal point of the group, which is fine if your name is Rod Stewart and you have a backing band. But no way is this Freddie Mercury and his backing band. When you analise it, the four of us make the whole thing work. It's 25 percent down the line, and I'm the one up front, that's all. Queen is a four-way thing, but that's very hard, I must say. It's not very easy to get a four-way decision every time, but sometimes you've got to run with the majority. We often disagree. Sometimes we get a two way split, then what do you do? We have to kind of the background for a while and then rehash it later.

We always argued. We fought on virtually the first day. The four of us are very strong individually, so we just keep going at each other. It's like four cocks fighting, and we're the bitchiest band on Earth! We're often at each other’s throats. But if we didn't disagree, we'd just be yes-men, and we do get the cream in the end. Usually all the vanity, outrageousness and temper is associated with me. I am very emotional, and I certainly get very temperamental, but you would be surprised what you get from the others in the group too. We've all got our individual characteristics, but it's probably that keeps us together.

I think we’ve grown so used to each other by now, it's just instinct that keeps us going. Basically, we're four people that work together. There's no big bond and we don't socialize all that often. We've been together so long now that we see each other practically every day anyway, professionally. But I think socially we like to keep away, because otherwise we see too much of each other and we get bored. If there are receptions we need to go to, we do it, we are highly professional in that respect. But otherwise it's nice to just move back into our own thing. The others have their families and of course that takes up their time, and I like to have my privacy without them as well, if you know what I mean.

I can't live a life of one quarter all the time. Because of our work we were always seeing each other, and in anybody's life the same people hanging around all the time would drive you mad. So when the work is finished I go my way, and they go theirs. It can be that I don't talk to them for months and months and then we go on tour and we still gel. It's the music that brings us together, and we have learned to accept each other instinctively now. We know that if we stay together all the time we get on each other's nerves. There was a time when there was a lot of friction, then we sort of ironed that out. Yes we argue a lot and we fight a lot, but in the end what's really the key issue, is that we come up with the product, some good stuff. We use our intelligence. It's very easy to get egotistical and say, "Yes, I'm the greatest!" The egos can run riot and all kinds of things can happen, but you have to keep one foot on the ground. That's called being professional, I guess.

What keeps us going is that musically we still respect each other. We have four very different characters, but that doesn't matter. If musically we don't get on, that's when it starts and tempers fly, but in the end if you can't stand the other person being in the same room, then you have to say, "Forget ill" It's just torture. Instead, when an album's finished, we end up thinking, "Oh well, I had my views, he had his point, but we came together again in the end for the sake of the music."

If you have four very different people in a band like ours, they all want go off at different tangents, and that's very hard. The break-up of a band normally comes from the fact that one ego seems to shoot too far ahead and then |just can't get back. When there is one strong person, the others get left out and think, "This arsehole is just too strong, so we want to try another band." We manage to keep our egos in control one way or another.

That doesn't mean we're all so boring that we agree on everything, but we never let it go so far that we actually say "Ok, let's forget it!" There were times where I thought I should call it a day, but musically we seemed to want to do so much more. I think the reason we have stayed together so long is that nobody wants to leave. If you leave, it's like being a coward. It's a survival instinct that I have in me, and which the whole group has.

Brian was once approached by the band Sparks [in 1975}, who said they would like him to join them as guitarist. But we treat that sort of thing as everyday and mundane. We're so involved in what we do that we don't give in a second thought. We've all had offers to join other bands, but while, say, ,cr and I would tell them to piss off, Brian takes his time about being lo people, so they sometimes get the wrong idea. Brian is really too much of a gentleman, which I am not - I'm the old tart... but not for one moment 1 lie consider leaving us.

The only reason Brian would leave Queen is to become an astronomer, not to join another band like Sparks. My God! Especially at the time when was just starting to be fun. We were riding on the crest of a wave, and things lined up for us. The rewards were finally beginning to show in the sense we were being respected as musicians, and our songs were hitting the right kind of people.

I suppose the way we tackled our career sounds clinical and calculating, but our egos couldn't handle anything but the best. I've always thought of us as a top group. It sounds very big-headed, I know, but that's the way it is. When we had the opportunity of playing with Mott The Hoople, that was great, but I knew damn well the moment we finished that tour, as far as Britain was concerned, we would soon be the ones headlining.

We’re not scared of trying out different ideas. One of the things that we really steer clear of is repeating the same formula. Basically we are a rock band, and that’s what we established with the firm album. The second was a bit different, and those who heard the third one didn't even think it was us. You see, the style change has always happened. We go on the pretext that you should stick to the formula that works, so the new phase is still the old style but we add things as they take us. It's just a way of doing things. It goes right through everything - even down to the artwork. I mean. God, the agony we went through to have the pictures taken for Sheer Heart Attack!!! My dears, can you imagine trying to convince the others to cover themselves in Vaseline and then having a hose of water turned on them? The end result is four members of the band looking decidedly unregal, tanned and healthy, and as drenched as if they've been sweating for a week. But the point is, everyone was expecting some sort of Queen Ø cover, but this was completely new. It's not that we were changing altogether - it was just a phase we were going through at that time.

There are so many directions our music can follow. I also think that we have just done the things that we wanted to do. "We haven't pandered to the public taste or anything. We have tried to be aware what's going on and stay one step ahead. I think in the end it's the good music that speaks for itself and I think we write good songs and we play them well. We did take a lot ot risks actually and I think most of them paid off. But we're still as poncy as ever. We're still the dandies we started out to be. We're just showing people we're not merely a load of poofs, that we are capable of other things.

I think every time you make an album it's a new burst of energy - and we make such different albums. When we undertake them it's like a new project every time. It's very fresh, and that's a nice shot in the arm. If we were comin (up with the same old thing, thinking it would be readily accepted or whatever, that would be playing safe. We never play safe.

Look at the risks we took with the Hot Space album [1982]. It was nice. We were finding out different areas and outlets, therefore we were sort of channelling our energies in different ways. But we were still the same four people, but in many ways it's fresh. I was quite excited. Was the album |oln|| to get into the black charts) Was it going to get the diico following? W» tlltiti't know.

I remember when Another One Bites The Dust came out [in 1980] and went to number one, a lot of people went out and bought it and thought that we were a black act. Then they would come to see our shows and realise we are all white.

I think Hot Space was one of the biggest risks we've taken, but people can relate to something that's outside the norm. I'd hate it if every time we came up with an album it was just the norm. It's not to say that we're always right, because we're not. This whole dance/funk mode was basically my idea and it obviously didn't do that well. I think it was way ahead of its time, but we did what we felt like doing at that time and at that time we felt it was right.

We go through so many traumas, and we're so meticulous. There are literally tens and twenties of songs that get rejected for an album - some of them in nice ones. If people don't like the songs we're doing at a given moment, we couldn't give a fuck. We take so much care with what we do because we feel so much about what we put across. And if we do an amazing album we make sure that album is packaged right. We're probably the fussiest band in world, to be honest.

Each time we go into the studio it gets that much more difficult, because we’re trying to progress, to write songs that sound different from the past. The first album is easy, because you've got a lot in your head that you're anxious to put down. As the albums go by, you think, "They'll say that I'm repeating the formula here." I'm very conscious of that.

There are 10 many things we want to do but we can't do them all at the same time. It's impossible. There were a few things that ended up on A Night at the opera which we actually wanted to do on the first album, but it would been too much to take for most people. You can't cram everything on one album, You have to bide your time.

I enjoy the studio, although it's the most strenuous part of my job. It's so exhausting and mentally. It drains you totally. I sometimes ask myself why I do it. After Sheer Heart Attack we were insane and said, "Never again”. Than look what happened!

After that album, we realised we'd established ourselves. We felt that there were no barriers, no restrictions. Vocally we can outdo any band so we thought we would go all out, not restrict ourselves at all, and just do exactly what we want to do. We went a bit overboard on every album, actually, but that's the way Queen is. A Night At The Opera [1975] featured every sound, from a tuba to a comb. Nothing was out of bounds. As soon as we made it we knew there were no longer any limits on what we could do.

I'll never forget A Night At The Opera. Never. It took the longest time to do out of all the first four albums. We weren't really prepared for it. It was more important to get the album the way we wanted, especially after we spent so long on it.

It was the most important album for us and it had the strongest songs ever, I knew it was going to be our best album. I was really pleased about the operatic thing. I wanted to be outrageous with vocals. At that moment we'd made an album which, let's face it, was too much to take for most people. But it was what we wanted to do. We wanted to experiment with sound, and sometimes we used three studios simultaneously. The actual album took four months to record. Brian's The Prophet's Song alone took two and a half to three weeks. There were just so many songs we wanted to do. And it makes a change to have short numbers as well. We had all the freedom we wanted and it was so varied that we were able to go to extremes. I had only

about two weeks to write my songs so we worked fucking hard.

The title A Night At The Opera came at the very end of recording. W» thought, "Oh, we've got all these songs, what are we going to call flip album?" It was going to be called all sorts of things, and then I said, "Look, it's got this sort of operatic content, so let's look upon it that way." Then Roger and I came up with the title and it just fitted.

We learned a lot about studio technique from making A night At tmj Opera. The poor sound engineer really suffered because we wanted as much level as possible. We're very bad for that, actually. We keep pushing the phasers up and he keeps looking at the meters saying, "Oh, it'll never cut!"

Then we give him the added task of going over to New York, or wherever, saying, "Make sure that cuts as loudly as possible." It's a very fine dividing line, because we always want to put in more music, but at the same time you've got to make sure you don't put too much in, otherwise it suffers. But our engineer, Mike Stone, was pretty good. That little bugger... what a nice

little chap he is!

The other thing that really helped was a successful worldwide tour which we'd never done before. It taught us a lot. It taught us how to behave on stage and come to grips with the music. We started off in Britain [1974] and by the time we took that same stage act across to America, and then to Japan [1975], we were a different band. All that experience was accumulating, and when we came to do Opera there were certain things that we had done in the past that we could do much better now. Our playing ability was better.

We tend to work well under pressure. We will work until we are legless. I'll ling until my throat is like a vulture's crotch. We're fussy and finicky and live very high standards. If a song can't be done properly, we'd rather it '1't done at all. We're the fussiest band in the world and we put so much loving into every album. It's what keeps us going. If we were to come up with an album where people said, "It's just like Sheer Heart Attack again," I'd ' have given up. I really would. Wouldn't you?

There will be always be someone new on the scene, a new face after you and your success, and that challenge is good. I think that every major successful band needs that. It's like we are getting a fresh injection all the time. It’s good competition and I like that. I mean, when we started we just wanted to knock off who ever we thought were the biggest around, and say that we’re can do better. There's always going to be other bands that come along, and we’re aware of that. I like to feel that I'm competitive. If they're good they'll get their regardless. There's enough room for everybody. Isn't it nice that the newer bands feel that they are in competition with you? Because if you weren’t anything, they would say, "Oh, forget them!"

The whole punk thing| [1977] was a tough phase for us and I thought that was going to be it, but if there ii a challenge we embark on It and that's what keep us going.

Actually, I will never forget, we were in the studio doing the Sheer Heart Attack track, and the Sex Pistols happened to be in the next studio. You can imagine us and the whole punk rock and anti-establishment thing under the one roof. Anyway, I got Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious in to listen to one of our tracks and I said that I would sing on one of their songs if they sang on one of mine, and you should have seen them. They were like, "We can't sing with Freddie Mercury!" I was wearing ballet pumps at the time, and things like that. It was quite funny. I think I called Sid Vicious, Simon Ferocious, or something, and he didn't like it at all. I said, "What are you going to do about it?" He had all these marks on him, so I asked if he had scratched himself in

the mirror, and he hated the fact that I could speak to him like that.

We don't want to be outrageous. It's just in us. We're the Cecil B. De Mille of rock'n'roll - always wanting to do things bigger and better! But you still have to be talented. Sometimes I think, "Oh my God, they must think I'm working so hard to cultivate all this," but I'm not. I'd hate to live under false pretences. Queen are not frauds. We presented a kind of an image. We weren't putting any labels on it. We said, "This is Queen! This is our music, and this is how we present ourselves." The funny thing about Queen is that no-one can put their finger on it, and we don't want to give it to them. We say, "This is us, and it is up to you to interpret it."

The campness and the flamboyance comes into it too. We like to dress Up. If you cultivate something, it is only for the short term, but we are in it for th» long term. If tomorrow ballet suddenly became the rage, or jazz enjoyed a new wave of popularity, we wouldn't change. We'd just be playing the same thing, because that's what we really believe in.

When Seven Seas Of Rhye was a hit [1974], everybody said it had made a market for us, so let's stick to it. We didn't want that. Our strength is in the music. The amazing thing is we've been around so long, we know how to change, and there's a certain amount of intelligence that goes with it. I know we are good musicians. 1 know we have the talent to stay in this business just as long as we like. And we take more care over what we are doing than most of the groups who love having a go at us. We learnt from our mistakes. Now, we don't just go into the studio and make records, but follow everything else through too and make sure it's being done the way we want it. That goes from the artwork on the album sleeves, to the inner bags, and dealing with record companies and management. It's like undertaking a huge project. We still fight though. Brian and I still fight like kids every time we're in the same room... although I haven't hit him yet!

It's hard to pinpoint these things but we certainly have an ingredient between the four of us. We all have a role to play. Queen is like a chariot, with four horses, and at certain times we individually take a turn at holding the reins. We are four different characters, and that's why I think it's worked. No two of us are the same. We all like totally different things, but we come together and it's a chemistry that works. But I couldn't tell you what it is. Who can? It's just something that seems to fit. It's what good bands are made of… and we are good!

Let’s face it, darlings, we're the most preposterous band that's ever lived.

 

Chapter three


Date: 2015-02-03; view: 1230


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