Flick Of the Wrist Wikipedia Entry

A few weeks ago I noticed that Wikipedia missed "Flick Of The Wrist" in its chronology of Queen's singles. I thumbed through other entries, like "Fat Bottomed Girls" and "Bicycle Race," and saw that both tracks have their own entries. Well, this was a wrong that needed righting, so I created a detailed entry for the song. As a AA-side, I'm sure you'll agree that it deserves individual recognition. That it was not a hit does not appear to be relevant to Wikipedia's guidelines. I took a look at a few other artists, like David Bowie, and saw that even singles which were not hits get entries. The Beatles, too, have their AA-side single receiving individual attention.

Well, after returning from a vacation, I noticed the "Flick Of The Wrist" entry had been deleted. No explanation had been given and I was pissed! I went into the page's edit history and reloaded it. Hopefully it will be there when you read this thread.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flick_Of_The_Wrist

It wasn't the Wikipedia editors who deleted it, it was another user. Like I said, no explanation was given. If it gets removed again, I plan to contact Wikipedia and ask them to intervene.

"Flick Of The Wrist" is the forgotten single, which gets ignored in favour of "Killer Queen!" Well, no more! Hit or not, it deserves to be returned to its rightful status as a song released in the pre-Rhapsody days of Queen! If Bowie's "The Laughing Gnome" gets a Wikipedia entry, so too should "Flick Of The Wrist!"

Oh. That’s bad. The goal of the encyclopedia is enhancing the quality of the information by fostering positive cooperation among readers. The user could have at least justified his attitude with a helpful and informative feedback.  : - (

It looks nice, I think. In my humble opinion, though, you could make it more clear who basically wrote the song or who was responsible for this or that part of it. If you have the info, it’d be nice to know how the song originated and how it evolved or modified over time until becoming what we listen to on the album.

You could elaborate on what you mean by "octave vocals" too, creating links for such concepts as vocal range or vocal register. If you mean that Freddie’s singing spans more than an octave during the song, you could point out which key is the song in and what are the highest and the lowest notes reached by Freddie in it.

That’s what comes to mind, now. I liked the entry.

Congrats. :- ))

If the person deletes it, we re-up it again - we’re Queen fans and will keep on fighting till the end! :op

Take care.

nice, for some reason people see Queen as a singles band. non hit songs like flick of the wrist need to get more attention.  They have so many brilliant songs that wern't hits.   you did a good Job.

Yara, that octave bit was imported from the Sheer Heart Attack page automatically when I created the page. I think it's a feature of Wikipedia when a new article is created linking it to an existing article (as I linked it to Sheer Heart Attack via the list of singles). In short, I didn't write the octave bit.

I plan to add links to sources, particularly for the 'song versions' part. I don't really know the history of the song, why Freddie wrote it or its inspiration. However, the information on song versions is correct. What bugs me about Wikipedia is that the only source you can cite safely is another website. If someone hasn't created a site which supports a statement in your entry, someone else can argue it. It discourages independant research, which means you could be knowledgable on a subject and note a fact, but it can still be argued. This is a double-edged sword, as it help deflect incorrect information, but can also deflect correct information.

Anyway, feel free to improve the article with additional information.

For the record, I backed up the entire article on my hard drive, so, if it gets permanently deleted, I can still reload it.

At that time they were having a lot of problems getting money out of Trident and encountering a lot of sharks in the music business, so it's possible the song's related to that.

I dind´t know it was Doble A side...is it the same with Bohemian Rhapsosy / I´m in Love with my Car? or with Long Away?

Cheers

Good job.

If you're feeling ambitious, change the next/current/previous single links to Flick Of The Wrist from Seven Seas Of Rhye, Killer Queen, and Now I'm Here.

Also be sure to call the article "Flick of the Wrist" (case sensitive), as clicking on "Flick Of The Wrist" on the bottom of the page of any one of Queen's singles leads one to the Sheer Heart Attack page, not your Flick of the Wrist page.

Well done you!  [img=/images/smiley/msn/thumbs_up.gif][/img]

Nice job!
Good to see that kind of ambition on wiki :D
I just get frustrated not finding what I'm looking for and close the page

Why Flick of the Wrist was never a hit, I'll never know. I sometimes wonder why some of their songs weren't hits.  A lot of their unknown songs were great and i feel were better than some of their hits. Oh well.

Good job standing your ground. We die hard QUEEN fans know what we're talking about.

Why wasn't "Flick Of The Wrist" a hit? The best answer I can give is that "Killer Queen" completely eclipsed it. I think it's fair to say the pairing of KQ/FOTW wasn't as balanced as, say, "Fat Bottomed Girls/Bicycle Race." Could "Flick Of The Wrist" have been a solid follow up single, on its own, to "Killer Queen?" Hard to say. If "Killer Queen" had been paired with a different Sheer Heart Attack track as a AA-sided single, like maybe "Stone Cold Crazy", could *that* song have been a hit as well (I'm sure "Stone Cold Crazy" could have been a hit as it's own single...it's uptempo, catchy and short [which radio stations love, because you can play more songs])? Maybe anything paired with KQ was doomed to fall short because it was such a perfectly crafted song and a perfect single.

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[b]rhyeking wrote: [/b]

.... Maybe anything paired with KQ was doomed to fall short because it was such a perfectly crafted song and a perfect single.

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Brief and spot on. : -)) The fact that "Flick" was part of a medley of sorts didn’t help either - what’s interesting about the reviews Queen received back then is that most of the things I as a fan appreciate the most on such albums as Sheer Heart Attack were regarded as the record’s weak points: what I see nowadays as an hypnotic burst of creativity was seen back then by many reviewers, some of them well-intentioned, as disjointed sketches which weren’t strong enough to stand on their own.

Queen Archives
(http://www.queenarchives.com/index.php?title=Brian_May_-_XX-XX-1983_-_Guitar_Greats_-_BBC_Radio_One) has this interesting interview with Brian in which he talks a little about Flick - it was probably a song he related to.

Here’s the excerpt:

[i]"In the spring of 1974, while on tour in the U.S., May collapsed with a complaint that’s not so very uncommon in the music business, Hepatitis. It also led to the discovery of a problem He’d also, apparently, suffered from since his teens, a stomach ulcer. May returned to the band later that year, rejuvenated. Being away from the band seemed to have given him a new perspective. [/i]

[i]B.M.: It was very weird. I was able also to see the group from the outside, almost and I was very excited by what I saw. We’d done a few things before I’d got ill but, when I came out they’d done a load more things[/i][b] including a couple of backing tracks of songs that I hadn't heard from Freddie and I was really excited[/b], [i][b]‘Flick of the Wrist’[/b][/i] [b]was one[/b]. [i]It gave me a lot of inspiration to get back in there and do what I wanted to do[/i]. [b]I did sort of get them to change a few things which I didn't feel were right and I also asked for a couple of things to be changed which they said “No You’re Wrong” and they were probably right.[/b] [i]It was good I wasn't negative at all I just went back in there with a lot of energy and enthusiasm and did my bits and the whole thing got finished off quite quickly then. I also managed to do some writing, I think ‘Now I’m Here’ was done after that period which came out quite easily. I’d been wrestling with it before and never got anywhere but, after the illness, it just seemed to come out and it went down very easily in the studio."[/i]



It seems he was, at least up until that point in 1983, proud of this song he had basically co-written with the guys. What’s more interesting about the quote, however, is seeing to what extent Freddie’s gifts as a musician and performer had already started to be part of Brian’s own musicianship and how important [b]"Flick Of The Wrist"[/b] was to him at that point of his career in terms of spurring his creativity. Later on things would get to the point where he could perfectly play the piano on one of his songs, but would insist on having Freddie playing it to give the song his distinctive rhythmic approach to the piano.

[QUOTE]

[b]rhyeking wrote: [/b]

Why wasn't "Flick Of The Wrist" a hit? The best answer I can give is that "Killer Queen" completely eclipsed it. I think it's fair to say the pairing of KQ/FOTW wasn't as balanced as, say, "Fat Bottomed Girls/Bicycle Race." Could "Flick Of The Wrist" have been a solid follow up single, on its own, to "Killer Queen?" Hard to say. If "Killer Queen" had been paired with a different Sheer Heart Attack track as a AA-sided single, like maybe "Stone Cold Crazy", could *that* song have been a hit as well (I'm sure "Stone Cold Crazy" could have been a hit as it's own single...it's uptempo, catchy and short [which radio stations love, because you can play more songs])? Maybe anything paired with KQ was doomed to fall short because it was such a perfectly crafted song and a perfect single.

[/QUOTE]




Flick of the wrist and stoned cold crazy were great songs, but they don't have that top 40 feel that a killer queen has.  I don't think these songs would have ever been hits.

What a Great song!, it deserves its own wiki page !!! great job!  I never knew these things before!!!!!! xD!

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[b]mike hunt wrote: [/b]

[QUOTE]

 



[b]rhyeking wrote: [/b]



Why wasn't "Flick Of The Wrist" a hit? The best answer I can give is that "Killer Queen" completely eclipsed it. I think it's fair to say the pairing of KQ/FOTW wasn't as balanced as, say, "Fat Bottomed Girls/Bicycle Race." Could "Flick Of The Wrist" have been a solid follow up single, on its own, to "Killer Queen?" Hard to say. If "Killer Queen" had been paired with a different Sheer Heart Attack track as a AA-sided single, like maybe "Stone Cold Crazy", could *that* song have been a hit as well (I'm sure "Stone Cold Crazy" could have been a hit as it's own single...it's uptempo, catchy and short [which radio stations love, because you can play more songs])? Maybe anything paired with KQ was doomed to fall short because it was such a perfectly crafted song and a perfect single.


[/QUOTE]




Flick of the wrist and stoned cold crazy were great songs, but they don't have that top 40 feel that a killer queen has.  I don't think these songs would have ever been hits.
[/QUOTE]
We'll never know, but I think SCC stood a chance. "Tie Your Mother Down" reached the UK #31 (I think, I don't have the chart infront of me), which was respectable, though not making the Top 30 meant it didn't get on Greatest Hits. SCC could probably have at least done as well, which was better than "Keep Yourself Alive" and FOTW fared.