Queen Working Together Days of our lives

Should we do something out front?
See if the fucking monitor's working.
I think the great thing for us was that we always did sound checks.
We did long sound checks every single day.
So much happened in the sound checks.
We would talk to each other, look at each other, discuss things.
Very democratic, always.
And everybody had their say.
There were moments, yeah, there were moments.
I'm playing what I always play!
I'm playing exactly what is on the record, Fred.
-You do slow it down. -Oh, fuck slowing down.
The arguments were great, but then it would become personal.
Of course.
You're expecting all of us to be perfect
-before you even attempt to do any... -No, no, I'm just saying...
Oh, don't be so fucking ridiculous.
How're you gonna do it?
Take it down a bit.
No, don't take it down!
-That's all right. -I wanna hear it!
In the early days, I used to keep very out of it, really, in a way.
And the three of them used to argue like mad, all the time.
And I just used to, you know...
And they'd say, "Come on, John, why don't you join in?" I said... You know.
I just didn't want to get involved, really, with arguments.
We had lots of rows, you know.
Brian and I would probably disagree about things,
and somebody'd stomp off for two days.
And then Fred would find it quite funny and amusing, and then he'd actually
sort of help settle it, calm the atmosphere by making fun of it, really.
Silly little things.
We never really fell out, the four of us, in the studio that easily in those days.
Later on perhaps we did,
but in the early days we were just very good at fuelling each other
and getting those kind of magical vibes going.
You get on a roll. "Let's do this." "Oh, and you know what?
"And we could do this. And we could do that!"
"And then you could do this and then..." You know.
Those are great feelings, when you're building.
We did remain pretty close up to the very end, actually.
And I don't think it changed that much.
I mean, there were obviously big egos
but there was no ego that was too big for the band, really.
And especially Freddie, you know, who everybody assumed had this monstrous ego,
but he didn't, really.
He always knew the importance of the group and staying together.
The first three years we were with a company called Trident, right?
Who was management, record company, the lot.
And we were very badly handled.
Well, not badly handled, no. We were...
We were badly handled.
So, basically, we got out of that one, right?
By re-signing with a guy called John Reid.
We signed with him for three years, right? Which basically comes up...
Which finishes in about September next year.
And what we're looking, at that point in time, is basically to just look after ourselves
and do it completely on our own.
Yeah, things went very well with John Reid in the beginning,
but it started to wear a little thin after a while. John...
As very often happened, I think John related more to Freddie than the rest of us.
And his organisation, as a whole, tended to kind of
centre themselves around Freddie, which is a rather divisive thing.
He was put under terrific pressure
by his other artist, Elton John, who naturally felt...
We were being very successful,
and I think Elton felt a bit threatened
by the other client.
We weren't the only ones, but we were the ones that were really doing very well.
Elton was absolutely massive at the time,
so I think we came to the conclusion
that, mutually, it would be a good idea to split.
Jim Beach came to me and said,
"Look, the band are not unhappy with what you've done,
"you've done a good job.
"The contract's coming up.
"Going forward, they think they would like to manage themselves."
And I thought that was a very,
very nice way to tell me
and it was the correct way to tell me.
I've never had any difficulty with them at all.
That's been one of the gentlest parting of the ways
of anybody I've ever worked with.
We signed the severance contract
in Roger's garden down in Surrey.
Roger had bought this huge, great mansion,
which the rest of us were convinced he couldn't really afford,
and had insisted that we recorded
the promo video for We Will Rock You in his garden.
It was a freezing cold day and we were all there
and Freddie upstaged everybody by arriving in his brand new Roller,
which we also felt he couldn't probably afford.
Freddie insisted that we sign the contracts, all of us together, in the back of his Roller,
because this was the first Rolls he'd ever owned.
Freddie was not sober, I remember that.
-One... -No, he's late on that.
Yes, he is.
Late on that.
It's difficult, because you can't even count it.
We're not taking that out.
It doesn't... Don't worry about it. Yeah.
Could you ask Freddie to make sure that he thinks about his singing?
Because he goes well off.
Oh, yes! I love it, I love it.
I think he threw up in the rhododendrons.
Don't Stop Me Now is a whole different trip, really.
It's a great bit of Freddie's work, you know?
Very focused, very focused... There's not much guitar in it.
And I remember kind of having a moment of getting upset about that,
because I felt like the track
sounded rather light without the guitar, and I put a kind of heavy rhythm track on it.
I remember him trying to put a heavy guitar rhythm track onto it,
which didn't really work.
And Fred really wanted it to be piano propelled.
It's the unwritten law. The person who brings the song in, gets the final say.
So, we didn't have any rhythm guitar in it.
But live, it could sound quite heavy.
But I got to play a solo, which Freddie really liked.
It's one of our most popular songs now, actually.
I think it's a great, fun, party song.
And it was voted the best driving song of all time.
Okay, we're going for a take. Let's have quiet please, and roll the film.
Check headsets. We're on standby.
Start record.
Klytus, I'm bored.
What plaything can you offer me today?
An obscure body in the S-K system, Your Majesty.
The inhabitants refer to it as the planet Earth.
Flash Gordon was quite weird.
It was a very strange project.
Quite fun. We were all dabbling around, I had this synthesiser,
which we were getting into
and fiddling about with and having great fun actually.
'Cause it's such a tongue-in-cheek, kitsch film, we had carte blanche.
And we wanted to make a sort of comic book score for it.
No one, but no one,
dies in the palace without a command from the Emperor.
Brian said, I think, "This is the first heavy metal movie score." There were none.
You wouldn't think of putting a heavy metal song into a movie in those days.
And nowadays, every action movie you see has got AC/DC or something like that.
Very heavy stuff.
Remove the Earth woman!
Forget it, Ming!
This is a public announcement.
The Earthling, Flash Gordon, is to be executed
at 29:1 5 Mingo mean time.
Don't kill him yet, Father.
I want him.
Flash Gordon is still alive.
The film was a big hit in Europe, but it tanked in the US.
That tanked, but you were huge.
Yeah, yeah. Good, huh?
Every Queen video is worthy of discussion
in light of their historic role
in music videos.
Can I see what you might do, slowly?
Well, that position, right? Getting up, and coming forward.
-We'll all sort of... -Right.
-Split up there. Do you know what I mean? -So you come back...
The move you make forward is fairly slow, isn't it?
-At the end it will be. If I start... -The move you make forward is fairly slow.
It is fairly slow, isn't it?
'Cause it kind of goes... I come forward and all these have to be taken.
We were always credited with making the first promo video, Bohemian Rhapsody.
And we made it at a time when such things really didn't exist,
but, of course, suddenly the MTV generation grew up
and video became all important in selling music.
Turnover!
Since then, video's just skyrocketed.
You see the elaborate videos that people do
and the amount of money that's put behind them.
I think there's still a long way to go.
I absolutely detested that video.
And he was a director I'd quite admired.
But I almost thought he was taking the piss out of us, actually.
I don't know why we consented to dress in those ridiculous outfits.
Freddie was mad for it.
With everybody making videos, I mean, you have to try something different,
and Freddie had some strong ideas
and in the absence of any other really good ideas,
you know, you go with it.
No, I didn't really enjoy the process of videos.
It just seemed like...
I'd look around the room and I'd count 1 20 people and I thought,
"What the fuck are they all doing?" You know?
You know, you need about four people to do this, really, and then us.
You do feel like you're an extra in your own movie.
You're sitting around, and you feel like you've lost control
because the lighting guy is going on about something, and the sound guy...
You know, it becomes frustrating.
Rudy, are you ready for our take?
They usually were very, very boring
and they seemed to take so much longer than they should've done.
I was gonna play with your tie a bit,
but I don't know if... Each take will be different.
So, then what I do is...
So, that's your position.
After I've done your sort of thing, I come and sit down here next to Roger
who's sitting here, so Roger'll sit here.
In terms of video now, I like to have fun in them,
because, I think, if you do that, it comes across, you know,
people can relate to that.
And, basically, it's just me having fun.
Go for me, yeah.
And then I have to move across...
You know? We could have a play like that.
And subtle movement. It's not too jokey. All the jokey ones we've done.
And I end up, I'm slightly mad, right there.
End of session.
If one of the others was doing something, Fred and I would probably play Scrabble.
They were very intense games of Scrabble.
"Death Scrabble" we used to call it.
Brian got the biggest single Scrabble score for one word I've ever seen.
-What was that word? Do you... -It was "lacquers".
-Oh, yes. -And it was 1 68, which was quite impressive.
Because it was a triple word and all the tiles were gone.
Bastard!
-Freddie was very upset about that. -Yup.
Freddie never forgave me for that one.
Because Fred had this habit of putting one little tile down...
"If I put this little tile down there, I get this and this..."
And we'd say, "Fred, that's not a word!"
But he would say, "Yes 'em.' Of course 'em' is a word."
-You know, and he would... -"It's a printer's measure."
See, Freddie did graphic design at Ealing, didn't he?
And one of his projects was advertising.
They were supposed to come up with slogans.
And I'm sure it was Freddie who was coming up with some sort of product,
a fictitious product, and his motto was, "Adds lacquer to your knackers."
-"Knacker lacquer." -That's right!
-"Adds lustre to your cluster." -Exactly!
-Yeah, yeah. I'd forgotten it. -That was the thing.
The thrills of rock and roll.
The thrills of the road. The danger.
If you look at the last bit of existing footage of Knebworth,
John throws his bass guitar, very angrily, into the amp.
I think John was going through a difficult time on that tour.
And I think it was personal reasons, mainly.
And he was very volatile.
And Madrid being one of them.
And very thirsty.
John had a little cocktail bar behind his amplifier.
Complete cocktail bar, actually.
Mainly vodka in it.
And he had... His roadie used to whip him up a few cocktails through the show.
So, by the end of the show, he was flying.
I think because of the madness in our personal life
and because of the fact that we were saturated in our art, if you like,
you know, we were completely immersed in Queen at that point.
It led to us being something exceptional.
But in a sense we had paid the price.
We were all in turmoil in our private lives by then.
We'd lived through the touring life and remained quite sane for a long time,
but the cracks finally had sort of opened into huge fissures,
and all our marriages were breaking up.
It was a fearsome time for me
because throughout this madness of Queen,
my priority in life had been being a family man
and my kids and my marriage were everything to me.
Divorce was something that other people did.
But when I fell in love with this woman who was not my wife,
there was absolutely no way I could shake it.
Well, Anita was an amazing force to come into my life and still is.
She came to Wembley Stadium to see us
and, of course, my relationship with her had to be secret at that time,
which is not nice really.
But she came and took her seat
and a large part of the audience got up and applauded her.
And she said to me, "I want this. I want to do this."
And she said to me, "I want it all and I want it now."
And something clicked up here.
This is your first studio album since 1 986, why the wait?
The wait from 1 986, I think, really, was after we did the tour,
we were all absolutely exhausted and, basically, we didn't want
to really work together or see each other for a while.
And then towards the end of that second year,
we met up and Freddie suggested we try a little time in the studio.
We were refreshed, having two years off, and that helped get the album off to a good start.
These are some of our best studio times.
We'd made the decision that all the songs we write will be credited to all of us.
So it kind of releases a bit of positive energy in us.
They became closer and closer, without any doubt at all,
and the sharing of writing credits was a major breakthrough.
Ladies and gentlemen, of course, the top band of the '80s are Queen.
I'd just like to say, after all these years, contrary to what you might think,
we do very much appreciate that you still appreciate us
and we hope to be performing some more miracles for you very soon
in 1 990 and beyond. Thank you very much.
With Innuendo, somebody suggested that they should play live
and they thought that was a good idea so we set them up in the Casino hall.
The studio itself was linked with 54 mic lines going down
and we could record groups in there.
They actually created a song live, by improvising until it became a song.
And that's how it started.
We were working abroad again in Montreux studios,
I think Freddie had then decided he actually loved Switzerland
and he didn't want the studio to be under the lake,
which is where he wanted it before.
There's some very good stuff on Innuendo and it was quite live, as well.
I think a bigger studio is good for us.
There was a feeling of sort of re-exploring our youth, almost,
buried in there somewhere.
And it was fun.
We were working really flat-out on everybody's ideas
and not being possessive about things.
So, there's quite a liberation there.
I think we were all throwing in different ideas,
there was a lot more teamwork.
But people still get very precious about the songs they feel like they started off with.
Freddie was singing down there live, as well, with them
and there was absolutely no impression from me that he could have been sick.
He was full of beans and singing away.
The new album is great, I think it's the best one for quite a long time.
There's nothing in it that I'm embarrassed about.
Very often you put out an album and you think,
"Oh, but I wish we'd done this."
This one, I feel quite happy about and I can listen to it without any problem.
I like it a lot.
Actually, we had some fantastic times.
I think we got over our stupid going-out- the-whole-time business, you know?
And we were a very close-knit group, like a family,
and we would work in the studio until... Usually, until Freddie got very tired.
Will there ever be a Queen tour again, as far as you can say now?
I can't answer that. It needs four people to say yes
and, at the moment, we have only three saying yes.
So when we get the four to say yes, there will be, I hope, another Queen show.
We had recently signed a deal with Hollywood Records in America.
And it was a major deal, Hollywood are owned by Disney.
Freddie was, now, not well
and I was deeply concerned
that we had to go out and tell our record company in America
that Freddie was, effectively, dying.
There's only two bastions of the old British empire left.
One is the Queen Mary, which you're having this party on,
and the other one is us which you have just delightfully bought.
So we're thrilled to be with you and look forward to a great and sparkling future
under the Disneyland, or should I say, Hollywood sign.
-Good luck, Hollywood. -Okay.
-Bye. -Bye.
Maybe once more?
Oh, shit. All that crap again?
Mack and I were invited to a Queen party on the Queen Mary here.
We went down and, I believe, Brian was there with Roger.
Usually, Queen was always there together.
I called John up to see what was going on.
I said, "Is something wrong with Freddie?" And he wouldn't tell me.
Look in the camera.
I flew out to Los Angeles to meet with Michael Eisner, the head of Disney,
to explain that Freddie was now seriously ill.
And it was whilst I was out there, that I got a call
that it looked as though Freddie was reaching his last days,
and it was now getting very serious.
So the press release that Freddie and I had agreed
to be released at the last possible moment, was put out.
And, in fact, Freddie died 24 hours later.
So we got this press release out, announcing to the world
something that many people had suspected,
that he had AIDS,
just in the nick of time.
I think the press had their final bit of vitriol against Freddie at that time.
Which is amazing, that we had some nasty reports saying...
Some of them even saying that he deserved to die
because he had a promiscuous lifestyle.
Quite unbelievable things that people wrote.
So Roger and I went on television to set the record straight.
Last week saw the death of one of the most flamboyant and popular
figures in rock music, Freddie Mercury, lead singer with Queen.
Joining us in the studio now to pay tribute and maybe to reflect on Freddie's memory
for the first time, are two of the band members,
guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor.
And we do appreciate you coming.
Everybody's become instant experts on the life and past of Freddie Mercury,
be they in the papers or be they on television.
Where did they go wrong and where did they go right in their assessments?
You first.
It's been quite distressing to read some of the reports in the press.
Yes, it would be wrong of us not to say that he has been depicted in certain quarters
as a sort of decadent, wild, bisexual, irresponsible lover.
Certainly, the Freddie we knew wasn't wildly promiscuous, he wasn't consumed by drugs,
any of these things people are saying.
He had a very responsible attitude to everyone he was close to,
and he was a very generous and caring person
to all the people that came through his life.
And more than that, you can't ask, really.
I'll tell you, we do feel absolutely bound to stick up for him
because he can't stick up for himself any more. So, you know.
I think you can't defend anybody
in the context of having Paul Daniels sitting next to you.
Were you a fan of Queen and of Freddie Mercury?
Well, no, because I wasn't a fan of any music.
I just put my head down, I should imagine like you did into music,
I put my head down into magic.
What a dick!
And can I equally say that I'm not giving any of the royal family magic lessons,
which I read in the paper this week. Thank you.
This award is slightly different. It's not voted for by the grandees of the BPI,
but actually by the 1 7 million listeners to national Radio 1 FM.
Now, there were three Queen singles in the final 1 0 titles
and the winner is by Queen, These Are the Days of Our Lives.
Thank you. A great mixture of emotions goes through your head at moments like this.
This is a very special moment, I guess.
Awards are very strange things. People have different attitudes.
If Freddie was here, he'd probably say, "You go and pick it up, darling.
"Put it over there on the mantelpiece next to the Galle lamp or whatever."
But then later on he would say, "Look, Mum, Dad,
"that's what I did. I'm proud."
So, we're very proud. We're incredibly proud of everything that Freddie stood for,
and we feel like his spirit is definitely still with us. Thanks a lot.
Lurking in the wings, was all the material we'd done with Freddie
which was unfinished, and what were we going to do with this?
Would we manage to make an album with it?
Things like Winter's Tale really came out of that desperately-ill stage.
They were made, very much, out of an awareness
that Fred wasn't going to be around very long.
I think I kind of dragged my heels.
I think I went through a very extended grieving process, really,
because I didn't want to talk about Queen.
I went out on my tour, solo tour,
and, of course, all that people wanted to talk about
was Queen and Freddie's death and stuff.
I couldn't deal with it. I just said, "Look, let's talk about what's happening now."
So I had a bit of denial stuff going on
and I think I was reluctant to get back into opening those boxes
and dealing with Freddie's voice there.
And it was tough to begin with.
John and I will definitely be carrying things on.
With or without Brian, it's up to him. We'll never get over Freddie,
but I think the period of mourning has passed.
And it's time for a fresh look at it.
Roger made the first inroads
and he took some of the tapes down to his studio and started working on them.
Of course, that's the trigger I need.
I hear what he's done and I go, "No, no, no, don't do it like this, you gotta do it like this."
My juices were working and I just dived in before I had time to think.
And I took over some particular tracks. It was a monumental task.
It was very weird working with Freddie's voice coming out of the speakers.
But, again, it was a very interesting process.
We knew that the situation was closing in on us,
so we made the most of every moment and really enjoyed it.
I think Brian and I certainly felt that we knew what Freddie would have been thinking.
It felt like he was almost in the corner of the room,
we had known each other so well for so long.
We sort of thought, "He'd like that bit, he probably wouldn't like that bit."
So we sort of got there and I was very pleased with the result.
I'm very, very fond of Mother Love
and it has a little piece of Going Back at the end,
which is one of the first things Freddie ever sang in the studio.
In fact, probably the first thing. A Carole King song.
And I wrote to Carole King to ask her permission to use it
and she was delightful, she was so supportive.
She said that she was thrilled that we would consider it important to put on there.
The whole album is a fantasy, really, because it sounds like
the four of us are there all together having fun and making the album.
But, of course, for most of the time when you're listening,
that's not the case.
It's built to sound that way.
And a lot of love went into that.
And there's tracks like I Was Born to Love You which, of course,
was never a Queen track, that was a solo track.
Which Freddie did very hurriedly
and he never bothered about the backing track
so we stripped everything away and lovingly, cherishingly, re-edited all his vocal
and put it all together.
And I spent months and months piecing together our bits
to make it sound like we were in the studio together.
I think it's one of our best albums, strangely.
So, good experiences all connected with that album.
And I love the album. I can put it on anytime and, obviously,
there were moments working on it, when you're just listening to Freddie's voice
24 hours a day, and that can be hard.
You suddenly think, "Oh, God, he's not here. Why am I doing this?"
But now, having been through all that, I can listen to the album
and it's just joy. I feel like it was the right completion. 475 00:38:06,315 --> 00:00:00,-001 It was the right album to finish up on. �