Do these demos exist?

I see the "Seaside" thing as being related to Freddie's apparent wish to have Seven Seas of Rhye... finsihing the first album and starting the second.  Either he wanted to get his way so that "Seaside" finished Queen II and started SHA or someone made it up - confusing it with the SSOR story...

@ FWBF & PISCTP: I think the whole thing about John starting both songs and having Fred helping him out with them comes from Phoebe's book, which IMO is not quite the most reliable source when it comes to those details.

@ Assassin: I agree with Holly. It could've also been something lost in translation (e.g. if you translate 'hitman' to Japanese and then translate the resulting word [??] to English, you'll wind up with 'assassin' or 'killer' - at least in my dictionary, but via Babelfish it doesn't happen and the term is different [???] but incorrect). As a side note, if you use Babelfish and translate 'master stroke' to Greek and then back to English you get 'gentleman blow'... that'd be a lousy title IMO.

@ Fly By Night, Deep Ridge and Surrender to the City: Last year, Brian claimed in his website that none of those would have existed. However, you know the thing about Dr May's memory (he also claimed to never have played a V on stage, It's Late on stage, and suggested Freddie didn't use Steinway pianos).

@ Heaven for Everyone: Indeed, serveral (not completely related) sources point at Freddie working on it when visiting The Cross (or running into them at one of the studios used for both that and Barcelona), having some drinks and singing it, probably not being intended for release (with his voice) at first, but more for the sake of it. If so, it was definitely not for AKOM. Roger's claim also points at that, and while his memory isn't perfect (nobody's is), it's positively eidetic compared to Brian's.

@ Shaving Foamasi: I couldn't agree more.

I clearly recall Roger saying in interviews that Heaven For Everyone was written originally for Joan Armatrading to sing (though whether still to go on The Cross LP but with guest vocalist, or in her own right I don't know). 

I thought that it was only after she said that she didn't like it (which probably confirms there is a Roger demo that he played her), that Freddie was brought in for the lead vocals.  In light of this, my belief is that it was never a Queen song.

Does anyone know if Freddie recorded his vocal before Roger's version (as per the single & US LP version), or was it the other way around?  I've always thought that Roger's vocal was done first, because the arrangement, instrumentation and mix of that version always sounds a bit less polished and finished than the Freddie version on the UK Shove It! album.

Any thoughts?

Cheers

Found a bit of info about these convention demos, may not be completely accurate.

Convention Recordings:
You Take My Breath Away - Freddie on piano and vocals, in the studio with Mike Stone.
Fight From The Inside - Similar to the album version, but a different vocal take with slightly altered lyrics.
Dragon Attack - Mostly instrumental with the bass loop, some guitar and vocal shouts. Maybe from the Jazz Sessions
Man Made Paradise - Short (50 second) demo, very similar to Freddie's solo demos (which were not included in the solo collection for this reason).
Party - Standalone version without the segue into Khashoggi's Ship.
The Invisible Man - Roger's guide vocal, early version.
Breakthru - Quick and heavy instrumental with a pounding drumbeat.
Rain Must Fall (Full Version) - ? Is this a longer version of the one circulating that is cut at the end?
Too Much Love Will Kill You - Brian's guide vocal with Freddie singing over the top.
Headlong - Bass, Drum machine and Brian's guide vocal. 5 mins. I think this is the same as the one we have but without Freddie.
Ride The Wild Wind - Instrumental demo with lots of drums.
Face It Alone (Full Version) - 3 different parts totalling 10 minutes.

About the Rain Must Fall version that is going round, I believe Greg said it was a version where all the vocals recorded for the track were put in the mix. For some reason I find that hard to believe. The formants of some of the vocals sound shifted, like they were put through a vocoder and have the original vocal line mapped to the keys played on a keyboard.

I believe the intro of Driven by You was also done that way.

Can anyone with more experience with vocoders and similar effects confirm this?

I think he said this about the track "It's a bit of a mess all this stuff because you've got all the vocal tracks up in the mix (referring to RMF and the Khashoggi's Ship demo that preceded it in the playback session), so you're hearing eight days' work at once, which would never normally happen. They'd go back, listen to a vocal track, say 'That's not good enough, do some more, lose that one', but here we've got all tracks up in the mix, and that's why it sounds like a mess."

It definitely sounds like there is some vocoder work going on in there, especially the descending "must fall" about halfway through.

He actually says before the track plays, "we're running short of time, we might cut it after 1 or 2 minutes" or something to that effect, so a full version might not have been played/recorded. He also states that the full version is about 4 minutes.

hangman acetete does NOT exist ....... it is a total hoax

Any credible source for that info?

Rain Must Fall is definatly cut, the shared version is only 1.10 long. I've been told the full version 2.11, but the person who claimed to have it refused to trade or share.

As Sebastian mentioned Fly By Night, Deep Ridge, and Surrender To The City, I thought I'd chime in on the subject, as I have done many times here in the past.

These three songs are absolutely the fabrications of a wind up merchant that used to post here years ago, that went by the incredibly serious and credible name of The Left Testicle of Freddie.

The very first mention anywhere (online or otherwise) that I'm aware of of three purported demos from the Queen II sessions was in a post made by The Left Testicle of Freddie on 9 August 2004. You can find it here:

http://www.queenzone.com/forums/375315/queen-ii-the-demo-recordings.aspx

If you care to look at the posting history of TLToF, you'll see that he burst onto the site with mildly believable insider info. Supposedly he was in contact with Brian's crew and the like, and he provided the kind of info that us fans love to hear. But his claims soon got more and more outlandish, and it became increasingly apparent that this was just someone having a laugh winding people up - and he didn't care who knew it.

By the time of his later posts, it was so obviously all a load of bullshit there was absolutely no reason to believe anything he'd previously said. And as he was the originator of the Fly By Night, Deep Ridge and Surrender To The City titles, there's no reason to believe they are anything but fantasy.

But, the internet being what it is, these made-up titles got around, and their origins were soon forgotten, or not researched. And incredibly, it got to the point where Brian even commented on his Soapbox about their non-existence. A fairly successful wind up, I'm sure.

(Oh yeah, there was quite a debate at the time that TLToF was actually Greg...).

...and I would agree with Niek. There's no way the Rain Must Fall demo is a vocal slave (such as is seen on a version of Barcelona on the Freddie box). It's definitely some kind of vocoder thing, or whatever it is that Bri uses on Driven By You.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence... if Hangman hasn't surfaced on-line it doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't exist.

Regarding Fly by Night et. al., what I find quite shocking is that (IIRC) even Mick Rock bought it and published it on a very respectable book. How good was his quality control?

That's why a project like this one is very important and necessary... people often believe word of mouth and pass it as fact.

Can anyone point me to a source that says Queen definatly recorded Say It's Not True with Paul Rodgers? I've always taken it for granted that they did, but I'd like to point to a source in my guide. Thanks

Queen: 
Keep Yourself Alive (De Lane Lea Demo) 3:44
Status:   Shared
Link:       http://www.mediafire.com/?wtzzizjzejz

Just testing...

Queen:
Keep Yourself Alive (De Lane Lea Demo) 3:44
Status:   Shared
Link:       http://www.mediafire.com/?wtzzizjzejz

Great King Rat (De Lane Lea Demo) 6:07
Status:   Shared
Link:       http://www.mediafire.com/?mymwqiyyaku

Great King Rat (Convention Version 1) 3:39
Status:   Shared
Link:       http://www.mediafire.com/?ymlezmywfmh