Widespread Erroneous Info

> Soul Brother = Queen
Actually, it's Freddie, both lyrics and music.

Yeah, but it was credited as such because they used song titles by all of them. (He will rock you, He's my best frriend, he's my champion.) Though I don't know that he mentions a Roger song except Under Pressure which as stated before the other 3 didn't even write it, David and Freddie did, then again wouldn't soul brother then carry the Queen/Bowie writing credit then?

Re: Soul Brother
Maybe they were feeling democratic and said, "Screw it, we'll credit the whole band, it's just a b-side." Or maybe Freddie was the primary composer, but they all added bits of lyrics and or ideas. 

At the time, the only other songs credited to Queen as a whole were "Stone Cold Crazy" and "Under Pressure" with Bowie. Brian has said repeatedly that the story behind UP is long and complicated, so I'm of the opinion that our best theories are probably not complete. The missing details there probably account for the five of them getting credit, in what probably a convulted, collaborative way. For a band that previously guarded individual songwriting credits up to that point, it must have taken something extraordinary to warrant equal billing.

"Stone Cold Crazy"? We all now the story of how no one could remember who wrote what and that it originated as a Wreckage song. For the same reasons as before, the band must have had a good reason to forgo an individual credit and thus credit all four.

I can only imagine the same thing is true about "Soul Brother"

They were vocal about adopting the joint credit on the later albums, but the circumstances in 1981 were quite different. 

Someone should ask Brian.

Yeah but I don't like the reasoning for Stone Cold Crazy. Only Freddie was in Wreckage. I could understand crediting it to Wreckage but why Queen. I think they all wrote something, that or 3 of them did (remember, John's Misfire was his first so maybe he was the one who DIDN'T write on it) and they wanted to give a band credit as opposed to (Mercury, May Taylor)

"Stone Cold Crazy" BEGAN (reportedly) as a Wreckage song. There is no record of a specific song by Wreckage with that name, so we're left to assume it was altered significantly when Queen worked it. John may or may not have had a lot to do with that, it's hard to say, since he was the last to join (but he also might have had a fair bit to say, either musically or lyrically). SCC is also one of Queen's earliest songs, several of which came from earlier bands.

Polar Bear, Silver Salmon, Doing All Right, See What A Fool I've Been, Blag (via the Brighton Rock Solo) = Smile
Hangman, Lover (re-written as Liar) and the unnamed SCC-track = Ibex & Wreckage

I don't have time to go into specific detail about these songs' journey into Queen-dom, but you see my point, I hope, that SCC is far from unique as a song that partially predates Queen.

As for "Misfire," it's the first song John has a solo credit on, but that only means it's the first song he wrote, by himself, for Queen, which made it onto a Queen album. It doesn't preclude any lyric/music writing he may have done before that.

Some more thoughts on the matter(s):

* Brian, apparently, used non-RS electric guitars more often than I'd thought and claimed earlier on. While his main instrument was of course the one he and his dad had made in his teenage years, the exceptions were far more frequent than just CLTCL, LA and ML. For instance, there's the thing about the Flash reprise (after The Hero finishes), the rhythm on TIU and HTF and the twelve-string on UP (unless of course it's recorded by someone else [remember that all four Queen members and David Bowie were good enough on guitar to play that bit]). An NME interview from 27th September 1975 (almost 35 years ago, BTW) implies Brian was meant to use a new guitar especially made (assumedly the Birch replica) on 'The Prophet's Song,' but it's currently unknown (by me) whether he finally did it or not.

* Due to Freddie's tongue-in-cheek 'I can only play three chords' comments he introduced CLTCL on stage with, people both inside and outside the Queensphere tend to think of him as a rather clumsy guitar player. The truth is, while he was certainly not even close to Brian's skills and he's way more famous as singer for a reason, he was quite a decent player and, apparently, played it on 'some songs', which implies CLTCL was not the only recording with his guitar playing.

* Largely through my own fault, loads of people started to believe loads of drums and basses were computer-, synth- or in general terms machine-generated on the records, rendering Roger and John virtually redundant for large portions of the albums (save for Rog's backing vocals).  While it is true that there were occasions of that (e.g. Body Language has no John at all), both Roger and John played on the vast majority of recording and were as featured as Freddie and Brian. Over 85% of drums + bass found on Queen records are human and played by them.

* Broke in 1975? I don't think so... Roger drove an Alfa Romeo for crying out loud! Fred owned a wonderful Japanese lacquered piano, each band member earnt way more than what the average salary was in England at the time. Granted, their record company executives were taking a much larger slice than they should, and Queen weren't still multi-millionaire as they'd become some months later, but they weren't broke at all.

* Fred in his death bed asking the others to write music for him? Again, quite unlikely considering for both The Miracle and Innuendo he was the dominant songwriter, and for the three post-Innuendo tunes, he wrote one and co-wrote the other two (so, again, he was the dominant songwriter).

* By the time 'Hot Space' was released, most of the 'Thriller' songs had already been written and demo'd. So, again, to say that without one we wouldn't have had the other ranges from ridiculous to plain stupid.

If Stephen King can learn to play rhythm guitar well enough to want to do it on stage with Rock Bottom Remainder, I have no trouble believing a musician of Freddie's calibre could learn to play without making a fool of himself.

Given what actually appears new on Made In Heaven (Let Me Live, Mother Love, You Don't Fool Me, A Winter's Tale) it's not hard to figure out who wrote how much of the material they recorded in those last days. Freddie may have genuinely made the request to "write me anything to sing," but given the time he had left, he didn't get a lot of it down, so maybe the band decided to do *his* song first, so whatever they ended up with would include Freddie's last written AND recorded works.

I'm curious as to when the older songs were decided on? Did Freddie have a say in suggesting which of his Mr. Bad Guy songs were to be used? Did the band focus solely on recording right up to when Freddie could no longer physically do it, not giving a thought to how to finish the material once he was gone? I wonder if they thought at one point Brian and Roger could record a few songs each on lead vocals and that the shape of the 'last Queen album' could have been very different. Brian and Roger WERE working on solo projects at the time of Freddie's death, so I don't think it's a wild supposition. They might have changed their minds after the hiatus between 1992 (Tribute Concert) and 1994 (returning to the studio) and decided then to use older songs to finish the album off.

I think you may have forgotten that there is such a thing as a loan from the bank (instalment credit).   :-)

Sure, but the bank wouldn't give you installment credit if you were 'broke'. AFAIK (and I think one of the documentaries shows the actual contract), each of them earnt sixty quid a week after 'SHA' (i.e. over 3 grand per year, in 1974-5).

Was it very little money compared to what the management was getting for the album the band had made and the single Freddie'd written? Of course.

But, were they broke? Of course not.

You are just looking at the income side.  If expenditure equals income, they will of course be broke.

In which case the bank wouldn't have given Rog the loan and he wouldn't have gotten the Alfetta. But he did... so, they weren't broke.

Like you the bank would only look at the income and what a person declares as liabilities (and maybe his mother could have acted as his guarantor :-) ).  After paying for the monthly instalment he could be broke until the next pay cheque.

Edit:  Put it another way, they were broke after incurring the expenditure on the expensive items that you noted.  Amen  :-)

I never heard they were outright broke or destitute, but that they had to keep going to Trident for money like kids asking for their allowance, which, after a couple of hit singles (TSSOR, KQ, NIH), probably seemed to them to be not befitting their status as a successful rock band. That was why they went to John Reid (Elton John's manager/lawyer) to get out of their contract.

I think it's in The Early Years biography where I read the most in-depth account of what the contract was and the author made a good case that Queen weren't being as mistreated as some accounts lead us to believe (though Queen might disagree). Still, they wanted out and that was probably for the best.

"For instance, there's the thing about the Flash reprise (after The Hero finishes) "

I know what Brian said about this and I suppose I have to take his word for it, but up to the point he said it I would've bet my right arm that bit was played on the Red Special.

> Like you the bank would only look at the income and what a person declares as liabilities (and maybe his mother could have acted as his guarantor:-) ).

In which case, he still was not broke.

> After paying for the monthly instalment he could be broke until the next pay cheque.

Sure... if, if, if, if... if one of John's kids got kidnapped in '81 and he paid a multi-millionaire ransom, he'd be broke after AOBTD, but that's purely counterfactual. Queen weren't earning, in mid 75, what they deemed fair, while their record company executives were swimming in money. But Queen weren't broke.

> I never heard they were outright broke or destitute

Classic Albums ANATO DVD, just after they mention KQ, Rog says 'we were broke'. Keyword: broke. Listen to it again: he doesn't say bloke, oak, yoke or roque, he says 'broke'. Which of course they weren't. Sure, he may have been saying it as a figure of speech, but my point is people taking his word for it are quite misled, just as those who believed ______ (insert overstretched statement).

> That was why they went to John Reid (Elton John's manager/lawyer) to get out of their contract.

AFAIK, they went to John AFTER they'd gotten out of their contract. They needed a manager who was persuasive enough to convince EMI to invest loads and loads of dosh on them. Who knows how much ANATO cost, but just to make a slight idea: Trident charged 25-41 quid per hour in 1972. How much could Sound & Recording Mobiles charge in 1975? Roundhouse? Lansdowne? Rockfield Quadrangle? Rockfield Coach? Olympic? Scorpio? Elstree? How many hours did they hire those studios (sometimes simultaneously) in a five-month period (recordings started in late August but rehearsals had begun three weeks prior, and that still counts)? How much did it cost them to transport equipment (including a 9 ft piano which wasn't hired for free, BTW) from and to the different studios? So... without somebody like John Reid, EMI would've never signed the cheques, and the album wouldn't have been made. While they weren't broke, they were still not even close to being able to pay for the whole thing themselves, not when their weekly wage was 60 GBP each.

> I know what Brian said about this and I suppose I have to take his word for it, but up to the point he said it I would've bet my right arm that bit was played on the Red Special.

So would I. In case he indeed used a different guitar, that proves how much of his sound is in his fingers.

I agree, Seb.

After work, I'll throw on The Magic Years Vol. 1 and see what John Reid and co. had to say about the contract issues. I'm pretty sure there are some specifics in there. I'll try to find The Early Years bits about the contract, it's been a while since I read that book.

I'll let you know what I find.