Freddie Mercury Vs. Brian Wilson

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[b]master marathon runner wrote: [/b]

     No it's not really fair to compare the two geniuses.We can wax lyrical on both of them, Brian ,undoubtedly, brought new dimension to vocal harmonies and pushed them to a level nobody had been to, before or since, except Queen, namely Freddies compositions.For example 'Killer Queen' has unparalleled complex, and at the same time simple harmonies.
     It's said that Brian's most creative period came while under the influence of certain substances which eventually may have been responsible for his creative demise. But he also suffered a great deal under his father, Murray Wilson, as a child and in his adult life, which may be another contributory factor.He was at one time even sacked by the Beach Boys,and was devastated when he took no part in their 1988 single 'Kokomo'
     But as regards, '15 Big Ones' and his other under par efforts, perhaps it simply proves that  no artist has peaked, creatively and stayed at that level , they're all prone to peaks and troughs.How many years since Jagger / Richards have scored a hit of note?
     Having said this, Brian and his band 'The Wondermints' as they are known in their own right, are superlative live performers. (Check out my videos on youtube, Mr. Anth 58 ), gaining universal praise over the last 8 years or so since Brian went back on the road , thanks to the persuasive powers of his new wife Marnie, who convinced Brian that he 'needed to get back to work' and is probably the best thing that happened to him, i believe she is his redemption.
    Did Freddie subconsciously gain a penchant for harmonies from Brians work? I remember Pete Wingfields review of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' in ( i think) the NME, in October '75 ; 'it opens with a Beach Boys pastiche' going on; ' an incredibly disjointed, but nevertheless dazzlingly clever epic from the fevered mind of Freddie Mercury' !!!
     Perhaps a 'Fevered Mind' is a prerequisite of genius.


     Master Marathon Runner
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Marnie? Who is that? Is that what he calls Melinda? Haha.

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[b]Pim Derks wrote: [/b]

Almost no-one can beat Brian Wilson 1963-1967. Producing, writing, playing and touring something like 10 albums in that timespan, all of which included amazing tracks like Let Him Run Wild, The Little Girl I Once Knew or Hushabye PLUS lots  of hits like Fun Fun Fun, Sloop John B and ofcourse God Only Knows and Good Vibrations is a feat no-one else could've accomplished - not even Freddy. BW even produced and wrote for other artists - while he was just 21!

On the other hand - the Brian from POST 1967 has produced some amazing crap - the 15 Big Ones album, Sweet Insanity from 1990, the 2004 album Getting In Over My Head.... Even though there are still some amazing gems to discover: Til I Die, the Fairy Tale from the bonusdis on Holland, the 2008 album That Lucky Old Sun....

Comparing BW to Freddy is not really possible. They came from very different backgrounds, worked in a totally different context and did completely different things. It's not like one of them is better than the other. Comparing a masterpiece like Surf's Up to another masterpiece like March of the Black Queen is not fair.
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I think 'Sweet Insanity' just had the wrong kind of production, especially since Landy was pushing Brian to "play more synths!"

And with 'Gettin' In Over My Head', I think that album lacks production values, as I think Brian was thinking too far back at the time, and I think it was also kind of rushed and pushed, especially considering over half the album is full of 'Sweet Insanity' remakes.

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[b]Mr. Britt wrote:[/b]

Obviously you arn't as musically intelligent as I thought you were.

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There is a very long list of people who have no business lecturing me on music.  Several of the people gave up their positions on this list just to accommodate you.


I wasn't commenting on the quality of his output in the past couple of decades.  I'm merely pointing out (and rightly so) that it might as well not exist, for all of the impact it has made.  For better or worse!

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[b]Mr. Britt wrote: [/b]

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[b]Soundfreak wrote: [/b]



It's absurd to compare them, they are completely different with also different backgrounds, different culture...everything. 

Brian Wilson lives in a world of his own, nearly unable to communicate with the world. I once saw him perform "Smile" with his fantastic band. It was a brilliant performance, but he hardly connected with the audience, he was "somewhere else" and from the way he moved his arms it looked as he could see the music in his mind. But he is far from being a performer like Freddie Mercury was. They have nothing in common except for the fact that they both made music that reached and influenced many people.     

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I didn't ask about stage performances. Brian has some horrible stage fright, ever since he quit touring with the Beach Boys back in '64, he rarely went on the stage without sitting behind a keyboard or piano or a bass guitar. Even on television specials or music programs where The Beach Boys mimed to tracks. Such as 'Getcha Back' on some television show hosted by Andy Gibb, Brian had his bass guitar and he didn't even perform a single instrument on the track except vocals. And when Brian isn't behind a keyboard or piano, he has these very odd dance moves, which freaks me out.



 



Brian has wrote a wide variety of songs. He obviously was an influene on Queen's harmonies, but he was questioned about what he thought of Bohemian Rhapsody, and he said it scared him.



 



There are songs by The Beach Boys (and songs on Brian's solo albums) that you can compare to Queen's. You just have to dig deep enough and know all the songs.



 

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I went pretty deep into the Beach Boys catalogue, probably as deep as into Queen. I even reconstructed my own "stereo Smile" from all those available outtakes and stuff. So I guess I'm pretty deep into Brian Wilsons world. Compared to Freddie Mercury he used very different harmonies and chord changes, has a very different writing style. 
They are both brilliant writers, liked vocal harmonies and yet were very different. Brian Wilson would have never come up with anything like "Mustapha" nor would Freddie have written something like "Cabinessence"

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[b]Mr. Britt wrote: [/b]

I think 'Sweet Insanity' just had the wrong kind of production, especially since Landy was pushing Brian to "play more synths!"

And with 'Gettin' In Over My Head', I think that album lacks production values, as I think Brian was thinking too far back at the time, and I think it was also kind of rushed and pushed, especially considering over half the album is full of 'Sweet Insanity' remakes.[/QUOTE]
Getting In Over My Head has some  nice moments (Fairy Tale is my favorite track on that album, Soul Searching with a 1996 BB-reunion outtake by Carl is also quite good), but IMO it's let down by all the cheesy arrangements, special guests (you'd expect McCartney and Wilson combined could come up with something better than A Friend Like You) and rehashes of Sweet Insanity-material.

So far, I'd have to say my favorite Brian solo album is Lucky Old Sun, with Imagination being a close second. His first soo album also has some great moments (Rio Grande, Little Children, Love and Mercy), but is also letdown by the creepy 80's Jeff Lynne-type production. I don't really count BWP Smile as a real solo album, otherwise that'd be on top of course :)

What a strange post for discusssion, both great singer/songwriters, but thats about it. It would be more logical to compare Freddie to Plant,Gillan,Rodgers,Coverdale etc.But there you go...Stranger than fiction!!!

Can you compare apples and oranges? Of course, and you'll find similar and different features.

In spite of all the differences between Fred and BW (era, country, scene, mental health), there are many similarities as well, so I think it IS an interesting thread.

While Freddie was probably into more daring and elaborate songforms, the way vocal harmonies were arranged in the Beach Boys was a hell of a lot more advanced in average. That doesn't make them 'better' or 'worse' but indeed, they were more advanced in that department (because of several different reasons, but the bottomline is they were). At the end of the day, Brian couldn't have arranged [i]Bo Rhap[/i] and Fred couldn't have arranged [i]Good Vibrations[/i] because of many different subtle reasons.

In terms of piano-playing, while neither one ever got too far on that, I think Fred was a bit more advanced at times (e.g. [i]Love of My Life, Death on Two Legs[/i]). Regarding their vocals, they were both excellent, but IMO Fred was a bit more excellent. IMO, the best singer in the Beach Boys was Carl, even though they were/are all great.

And by the way, Freddie admired the Beach Boys a lot, and they were one of the acts mentioned by people close to him as his heroes or influences. Before 2004, loads of people including his family, his friends, his former bandmates and his boyfriends were interviewed and asked about his favourite artists and loads of names came in those interviews and those made to Fred while he was alive: Michael Jackson, Prince, Aretha, Paul Young, Robert Plant, George Michael... and d'you know who was never mentioned? Paul Rodgers.

One is not better than the other but one is "more excellent" .. hmmmm....

As for the PR thing, as has been stated before, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Or in this case, we have Brian May as evidence, who was, no doubt, a lot closer to Fred than some of those interviewed, what with him actually being there and also sharing the same main interest in that he was a musician in the same band, which, one might think, might carry some weight over, say, a boyfriend Fred met and dumped in the 1980s. And maybe Fred's family could've named a few bands but if you were to ask my mum/dad/brothers what music I used to like, they'd say Queen and "rock" but probably not UFO, Metallica, The Third Man, Steve Earl etc. There's nothing wrong with being cynical, but basically you're calling Brian a liar, and a shameless one at that, telling lies to promote Queen + PR. I've never seen anything in his character to suggest he's like that -- at least in his professional life.

Both were/are geniuses, but one similarity between them is that they arguably worked best in group settings. None of Brian's post-BB stuff (with the exception of Smile which doesn't really count) comes close to his BB work IMO, and none of Freddie's solo work came close to his Queen work.

Sebastian, whenever we have a thread about possible inlfuences on Freddie, you always mention that he never named Rodgers as one of his favourite singers. We get it, we get it. While it was a good point the first time you mentioned it, it has since become extremely boring what with you mentioning it hundreds of times. Plus, in a thread about Freddie and Brian Wilson, it's irrelevent. Can we please not turn this thread into yet another Q+PR thread?!

I have not mentioned it hundreds of times. Maybe dozens of times, but not hundreds. If we actually counted, I think I've posted the Rodgers point 37-40 times. Closer to 0 than 100.

Since Brian didn't do solo work in his golden period, and neither did Freddie, I think that's an unfair point to make. A 1975 Freddie album wouldn't have been 'Mr Bad Guy' and a 1965 Wilson solo album wouldn't have been 'These Times'.

> One is not better than the other but one is "more excellent" .. hmmmm....

One is not better than the other in terms of ARRANGING vocal harmonies. One is 'more excellent' in terms of singing and playing the piano. They're even in different paragraphs. Unless you can't actually process information or are obsessed about me, that point makes absolutely no sense.

> As for the PR thing, as has been stated before, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

It IS evidence that PR was not Fred's favourite (especially when you've got such amount of evidence). He may have liked him (and probably did considering that Paul's indeed a very good singer), but he was not a favourite.

> Or in this case, we have Brian May as evidence, who was, no doubt, a lot closer to Fred than some of those interviewed

And Brian May often mentioned Fred's influences, and not once he mentioned PR. That's before he conveniently started re-writing history, months before the tour with him began. Same for Roger.

> There's nothing wrong with being cynical, but basically you're calling Brian a liar

I'm not calling him a liar. In fact, in my previous message I just commented that from what can be gathered from interviews made to Freddie, Brian, Roger, John, Fred's close friends, former bandmates and boyfriends, the list of Freddie's favourites included several singers, but Paul Rodgers was not one of them. It's not the same as calling Brian a liar. It may be suggesting that Brian lied (and, actually, it's Roger who overplayed the alleged 'Paul was Freddie's favourite', Brian only mentioned it occasionally) or that he conveniently used something that can't be proven and that actually has a lot of counterevidence to promote or validate a collaboration (something they didn't need to do when issuing the single with George Michael, and he [i]was [/i]one of his favourites).

But saying or implying 'he may have not be telling the truth' is not the same as 'he lied', let alone the same as 'he is a liar.' For all we know, 99.99% of what he's said about Fred is completely spot-on. But the thing about PR is part of the remaining 0.01%.

i cant see..euh...how to say...a similitude ?

Brian wilson was  unique.

not the same back ground. is all i can add.

but he knew what he was looking for.

I love it the way Brian's last couple albums he's released have sold far better than a lot of the efforts made by the other Beach Boys when he wasn't in the picture. What's that last Beach Boys album? Summer In Paradise? Talk about crap. I don't even own that one. I heard a few songs and I'm not spending a fortune to buy a an album that contains mostly M. Love / T. Melcher crap. Mike Love thought that album was going to be the biggest thing since Pet Sounds... he thought it was his Pet Sounds of the 1990s. Rediculous. Jessica likes a lot of the songs on that album, but I don't see any genious in it, just far too commercialized. I don't see much genious in any of M. Love / T. Melcher tracks. Getcha Back is great because Brian's falsetto throughout the song basically made the song sound great. Rock 'N' Roll To The Rescue is great, due to Brian's rocking lead, and Al's verse that he sings, and Carl's bit is great on that song. Towards the end of Queen and The Beach Boys releasing of albums spree, they both got a bit commercialized, eh? Even Brian's stuff. Love And Mercy is my favorite track, a very nice vocal. Great vocal arrangement. But, the production was waaaaaay too '80s. Apparently Landy wanted it to be a trendy song, and kept telling Brian 'MORE SYNTHS!'... I think if that song was done with just piano instead of keyboards... it'd of sounded great. And the problem with the version of Love And Mercy remake that Brian did on 'I Just Wasn't Made For These Times', is that it lacks the vocal depth, as well as the better harmonies he had on the first version. It basically became far too mellow for me. So I prefer the original. In fact, I prefer the version (which wasn't released) that contains the verse... "I was praying to a God who just didn't seem to hear, oh the blessings we need the most, are what we all fear."

I'd of loved to see have seen a duet between Brian Wilson and Freddie Mercury.

Freddie and Brian have always have always put out things that really weren't actually 'hip' at the time.

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[b]Amazon wrote: [/b]

Both were/are geniuses, but one similarity between them is that they arguably worked best in group settings. None of Brian's post-BB stuff (with the exception of Smile which doesn't really count) comes close to his BB work IMO, and none of Freddie's solo work came close to his Queen work.

Sebastian, whenever we have a thread about possible inlfuences on Freddie, you always mention that he never named Rodgers as one of his favourite singers. We get it, we get it. While it was a good point the first time you mentioned it, it has since become extremely boring what with you mentioning it hundreds of times. Plus, in a thread about Freddie and Brian Wilson, it's irrelevent. Can we please not turn this thread into yet another Q+PR thread?!
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i'll take barcelona over 80's Queen any day.

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[b]mike hunt wrote: [/b]

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[b]Amazon wrote: [/b]



Both were/are geniuses, but one similarity between them is that they arguably worked best in group settings. None of Brian's post-BB stuff (with the exception of Smile which doesn't really count) comes close to his BB work IMO, and none of Freddie's solo work came close to his Queen work.

Sebastian, whenever we have a thread about possible inlfuences on Freddie, you always mention that he never named Rodgers as one of his favourite singers. We get it, we get it. While it was a good point the first time you mentioned it, it has since become extremely boring what with you mentioning it hundreds of times. Plus, in a thread about Freddie and Brian Wilson, it's irrelevent. Can we please not turn this thread into yet another Q+PR thread?!

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i'll take barcelona over 80's Queen any day.
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Barcelona is the greatest of Freddie's solo projects in terms of song writing and his vocal abilities, in my opinion. Brian Wilson performed the same day Freddie performed at that thing for the Olympics. Brian mimed to tracks, as well. Haha.

I think Barcelona sold more than some of Queen's albums from the 1980s. It really had a lot of press and gossip surrounding it. I think it caused quite a stir.

Barcelona outselling some Queen's 80's albums?

Let's see:

Barcelona sold 30,000 copies in Switzerland (where it was most successful), and let's say, for the sake of argument, that it also got platinum in Spain (90K). It earned silver in the UK (60K) so it adds up to 210 thousand copies in those three territories. In the rest of the world, it didn't gain much interest so let's say, again for the sake of argument, it sold 290K elsewhere, adding for about 500,000 copies.

Barcelona vs The Game: Half a million vs nine million. Who wins? The Game.

Barcelona vs Flash Gordon: Half a million vs two and a half million. 0.5 < 2.5. Thus, who wins? Flash Gordon.

Barcelona vs Hot Space: 500,000 < 3,500,000. Who wins? Hot Space.

Barcelona vs The Works: 500,000 < 5,000,000. Who wins? The Works.

Barcelona vs A Kind of Magic: 500,000 < 6,000,000. Who wins? A Kind of Magic.

Barcelona vs The Miracle. 500,000 < 5,000,000. Who wins? The Miracle.

So no: it didn't outsell ANY of the albums Queen released in the 80's. I agree about the quality of the album (I also prefer it) but to each its own. Commercially, even Queen's least successful album (i.e. a toss-up between Flash and the first two albums) was waaaaaaaaay more successful than 'Barcelona', full stop.