Yep, but those songs didn't have words like 'live', 'born', 'kill', 'heaven (twice!), 'life... saved' in the title. I found all that very manipulative.
It's not an awful album but it's so death related that in the end it becomes too solemn. It's a hundred miles from what Queen used to be (fun, frivolous, passionate rock n roll)
brENsKi · Member since
vadenuez wrote: i disagrree with the notion that they used every scrap of every workable song
there are plenty of songs more complete than Let Me Live was
Yep, but those songs didn't have words like 'live', 'born', 'kill', 'heaven (twice!), 'life... saved' in the title. I found all that very manipulative.
It's not an awful album but it's so death related that in the end it becomes too solemn. It's a hundred miles from what Queen used to be (fun, frivolous, passionate rock n roll) _____________________________________________ i don't know if you missed what i was trying to say.....but my reply was to the comment that they used the most complete songs possible...i don't think they did there were some great songs - and also some rockers that would've appealed to Brian and Rog more then re-working Freddie solo stuff surely....to name two::
Dog with a bone Robbery
Sheer Brass Neck · Member since
Soundfreak wrote: Sheer Brass neck wrote: If Freddie wanted that, he would have presented the songs as Queen songs.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
How do you know?
I don't know. I do know that Freddie recorded the songs originally in a style that he didn't want to be like Queen music, and he succeeded. So given the author got his wish, to make them into something that is far removed from his initial vision strikes me as disingenuous. If a surviving member of the Da Vinci family wants to re-do the Mona Lisa with blonde hair and nose piercings, that's fine too. It's just not anywhere close to what the artist wanted, and I think MIH's Freddie tracks are pretty obviously far from what he wanted when he did them. Why not take the Hectics recording and make them Queen tracks, or 1984 or The Opposition stuff? I believe that the first go round is what people want, as Brian said "give the author his head", meaning they control final sound and direction. MIH strikes me as revisionist history, not my cup of tea and mostly because I too find it manipulative with the death theme.
brENsKi · Member since
there's one other aspect of the whole thing that leaves me cold......Queen (and particularly Freddie & John) were heading in a more "funky" direction - musically. And when it wasn't dancey/funky, Freddie's solo work veered between the dramatic and operatic
so if MIH was a frtibute to Freddie - why f*** the need to take his solo stuff and add rock guitar and drum sounds to it? IWBTLY has been desicrated...and the guitar work on MIH sounds like something Brian left off the Flash Gordon soundtrack...piss-poor
Pim Derks · Member since
I wish every Queenalbum sounded as good and undated as Made In Heaven does. I got it on the day of the release, when I was just 10 years old and it is still one of my favorites. All the old re-used tracks show is that Queen was bigger than the sum of the parts. Heaven for Everyone by The Cross was a nice little ballad, nothing too impressive. The Queen version is epic. Same goes for Made In Heaven, Too Much Love and Born To Love You. I'd rather have new music from Brian and Roger, but I would love to hear what they could do with other 'old' stuff like this.
Soundfreak · Member since
vadenuez wrote: It's not an awful album but it's so death related that in the end it becomes too solemn. It's a hundred miles from what Queen used to be (fun, frivolous, passionate rock n roll) <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< I'm not a real fan of that album, but I don't think it's lyrically so far away from the other albums. Probably every album had songs dealing with death in many ways, it seemed a central point in their lyrics. Beginning even with "Keep yourself alive" and becoming more obvious in songs like "Death on two legs", "All dead, all dead", "Dead on time", "Don't try suicide"..."Bohemian Rhapsody"..."Who wants to live forever"...."Hammer to fall"..."Another one bites the dust"..."The Show must go on"..."Flick of the Wrist"..."Great King Rat"...."Good Company"...."White Man".....
Someone else may add to this list....
Silken · Member since
vadenuez wrote: It's not an awful album but it's so death related that in the end it becomes too solemn. ===========================
Actually I feel like if the theme was "resurrection" more than death.
M-train · Member since
I really don't think the album was a snap your fingers, tap your toes, kind of album as it was more of a tribute to one of the, if not THE best front man in rock history.
Didn't Queen give us enough good songs over many, many years, that made us laugh and sing, that we can't have just one album like "Made in Heaven"?
I still love it, even though it is very sad in parts. However, in some parts its very uplifting.
mike hunt · Member since
brENsKi wrote: i have mixed feelings about it. i'll try to explain.
having been a queen fan since '74, i assumed (albeit justifiably) that by 1991 it WAS all over. So, in '95 the release of MIH gave my ears hope of one last "new" blast from a band i'd grown up with for 17 years. The aniticipation was soon replaced with some disappointment.
Too many old tracks - yes i get the idea, MIH was about a final sign-off for Freddie. but surely not by rehasing five or six old tracks. Of those here's my honest (if brutal) assessment
2. made in heaven - it doesn't matter (to me) that some fans like the Brian guitar sound added to it - it's not how Freddie wanted it to sound, his MBG album version was the "vision" for him 3. let me live - fantastic song, shame it was never finished with freddie - but woulda been better with maybe a group of friends etc doing a choral version of Brian's verse 5. my life has been saved - not much of a change to an older track 6. born to love you...compeletely ruined....i love frieddie's version 7. heaven for everyone - prefer the Cross version with Freddie taking lead 8 too much love - just a tarting up of Freddies demo
basically, this album "misses" too often because Brian and Roger didn't have the benefit of Freddie's input into quality control, and it suffers for it.
If we put nostalgia and sentiment aside - realistically it doesn't stand up, as a queen album it's a 5/10, as a gesture to Freddie it's a 10/10
Both versions of Made in heaven are solid, and love the MIH version a bit more..... but i do agree that i Was Born To love you was better on Mr bad Guy, and the best version was on his boxset with only piano and vocals. On the MIH version Brian and Roger added guitar and drums that didn't fit the song. The album is cool overall, and I like the fact that it has a different feel than every other Queen album. more reflective and mature lryically than most of their albums. No classics to be found here, but every song is at least good. Let Me live is a solid tune, but unlike most fans i find the duet of Brian and roger a bit off for some reason. a winter's tale is my favorite on the album, but some of the lryics towards the end don't quite fit. I give it 6.5 out of 10. Not sure how it competes with Hot Space and The works since it's so different.
rhyeking · Member since
Made In Heaven will forever be an anomaly for serious Queen fans. There's no getting around the fact that we all know the circumstances surrounding it: Freddie's death, his last few new recordings, many reconstructions of old material and the 4 year wait.
Still, I think this album, in and of itself, does not deviate much from how most Queen albums were assembled, with the obvious exception of Freddie's death. Songs get written at different times, sit on the shelf and get pulled back out to be used later dates ("White Queen," "Champions," "Sheer Heart Attack" to name a few), so that some tracks date from much earlier times isn't a problem for me.
It could be argued that Brian, Roger and John did little more than "Queen-ify" those solo tracks, but I think that's overly simplistic. After the first few years, I don't imagine all four band members were in the same studio on the same day too often. You might have one member there by himself for an entire song ("Fight From The Inside"), or two (Brian and Roger on "God Save The Queen") or three members. Many of the songs were recorded in stages, from what I understand, with each person laying down his different vocal and instrumental parts on different days. The only constant on a song would be the composer himself, working the song to his vision, which the occasional collaboration. So, again, it doesn't bother me that the three reworked and rebuilt older solo tracks to create Queen sounding songs.
Looking at the final result, I think Queen did an admirable job putting together an album whose themes of hope, life and introspection all fit together as well as anything they'd done before. It should, in my opinion, be taken as a whole album, rather than a collection of songs, where the whole is greater than the some of its parts, which is also true of Queen as a band.
Another level the album works on, for me, is to represent the entire career of these four men, where even when they were apart (their solo projects) they were united and never stopped being Queen, as three of their major solo efforts are covered here (Mr. Bad Guy, The Cross and in a roundabout way, Back To The Light), not mention the snippets of other solo and Queen tracks sprinkled throughout. They even nod to their non-album efforts, in 'My Life Has Been Saved."
At the end of the day, so to speak, I let this album wash over me. It's lush production and powerful sound marking the end of an era not with pain and loss, but with the band, all four original members, giving it their all!
brENsKi · Member since
i agree with much of what you said...except the messages of hope life death etc....smacks a little of cash-in
there were other more complete songs and better ones to boot....esp better than reworking solo stuff....but they didnt fit the life n death theme.....
but there's stuff on there that's very sentimental...and i can't make out if it's genuine or not...like for instance the track 13 thing....the whole "afterlife journey to heaven thing"...add to that the quote i heard about them "not wanting to be the one who played the final queen note" (the reason for it dragging on so long)....if this really was the case then why NOBY two years later?
Do you know what? Freddie said "i'm a musical prostitue my dear" and i think he'd have approved of them cashing in on his memory...cos that was his ethos....make money while you can...
but the product is inferior...the reworkings are mediocre....the Cross HFE (with Freddie's lead) is much better than the Queen one, as are the solo IWBTLY and MIH (hate the flash gordon ost guitar on MIH)....and, finally (i dont like Brian's vocals...but his TMLWKY is much better than Queen's...
as i said before...quality 5/10, sentiment 10/10
dysan · Member since
It's an album I never bothered with until much later. I liked it, but agree with much that has been said already - there's no getting away from the sentiment and the facts, and the rehashes were too many. It would've been bolder to maybe release the unheard tracks as a different project (guest vocals on other members solo stuff perhaps?) and the rehashes of older tracks were pointless. I don't see it as a Queen album.
brENsKi · Member since
i love this topic...cos it has some real debating points in it.
for me, in 95 when it came out....with Freddie dead and no real chance of any queen albums i lapped it up.....but i very soon found myself only listening to the "new" tracks....i grew to dislike the reworks...cos they didn't feel natural - and, if i'm honest...i felt robbed...."you took four years to lift Freddie's vocals from his original solo masters and drop them on a Brian/Roger re-arrangement...well i'm not taken in by it"...these days i see it more as desperation than a con-job on their part... with hindsight it appears they were desperate that we wouldnt forget Queen so "get something, anything new(ish) out there before the cash-cow breathes it's last"
there's soemthing about HFE (cross version with FM vox) that feels "just so"...that version of that song could not be bettered...cos that's the vision of the writer at the inception of the song....
much the same applies to MIH (sorry for banging on but those "flash gordon ost" guitars do my head in)..... IWBTLY is a fekkin travesty and a cruxifiction of a great pop song...the orignal sounded full of life, the rework sounded "forced"
basically, MIH is a concept album....but you can't make a concept album with bits and pieces....the great concept albums...all flow and have a seemless quality to them...MIH sounds like it was cobbled and joined and taped togeher...to make it look and feel like a concept...hence the horribly twee "track 13".......
Silken · Member since
brENsKi wrote:
there's soemthing about HFE (cross version with FM vox) that feels "just so"...that version of that song could not be bettered...cos that's the vision of the writer at the inception of the song....
much the same applies to MIH (sorry for banging on but those "flash gordon ost" guitars do my head in)..... IWBTLY is a fekkin travesty and a cruxifiction of a great pop song...the orignal sounded full of life, the rework sounded "forced" ==================
I think that the MIH versions of the older songs are much better, but I guess it depends on which version you've heard first.
brENsKi · Member since
Silken wrote: brENsKi wrote:
there's soemthing about HFE (cross version with FM vox) that feels "just so"...that version of that song could not be bettered...cos that's the vision of the writer at the inception of the song....
much the same applies to MIH (sorry for banging on but those "flash gordon ost" guitars do my head in)..... IWBTLY is a fekkin travesty and a cruxifiction of a great pop song...the orignal sounded full of life, the rework sounded "forced" ==================
I think that the MIH versions of the older songs are much better, but I guess it depends on which version you've heard first. +=============================================
i agree with you 100% on this...there's something warm about hearing a song when it's new - the way it was written, conceived etc
