'Days Of Our Lives' part 2

I have been looking forward to these documentaries but have been slightly disappointed, mainly with the emphasis on only 3 members of the band. Did anyone else get the impression that Brian and Roger didn't like John's music; both of them didn't seem to rate Another One Bites the Dust and Brian said he wasn't keen on I want to break free. There seems to be a bit of a divide between them and John, not sure if it's always been there.
Also I really didn't like the TATDOOL footage. They complained about the press showing Freddie in that photo but the colour footage of the video was even worse, for me anyway - had me blubbing.
The whole thing confirmed that there will never be anyone like Freddie and you need all four members for it to be Queen.

also I really didn't like the TATDOOL footage. They complained about the press showing Freddie in that photo but the colour footage of the video was even worse, for me anyway - had me blubbing.

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I also didn’t like it but there’s a big difference, Freddie let the back stage stuff be filmed, so he must have been okay with people seeing clips of it at some point, if you notice they only show clip of him in heavy makeup, chatting between takes it's basically just colour of what we already had. It’s not the same as having photographers stalking your every move and taking private photos.

They probably didn't rate his songs very well, like it said in the doc, for AOBTD, Roger's drums were completely taped over and muted, which is completely against Roger's policies, he's always stated he likes the 'Big' drum sound.
As for IWTBF, Brian, you can clearly see, was pissed off that John wouldn't let him do a solo, Fred Mandel did a synth solo.
They had completely different musical tastes, Roger liked Rock, punk and new wave, Brian is a very traditional rocker, he likes rockers and ballads, but John was into pop and funk. It usually took Freddie's support to get John's songs the way he wanted them.

Senna wrote: Some of the documentary annoyed me because it wasn't the way i remembered it, Paul Gambaccini's assertion that they were a spent force with one hit in four years before Live Aid is plainly wrong, the year before Live Aid they had three top ten hits and i think Hammer to fall got to no.11 plus they had just come off the back of their Works tour. They were still a huge band. It makes a good story... forgotten band steals the show but its not true.

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Yep. The Works was massively successful everywhere except the USA, where it was moderately successful. One of the reasons Live Aid went so well for Queen is that Radio Ga Ga had been so huge in the UK, and Hammer to Fall got a lot of airplay. There was no danger of Queen breaking up after The Works either. Maybe if the album had failed, but not afterwards. Still, it makes a nice story as you say.

Soul Brother wrote: Part 2 definitely felt much weaker than Part 1.  However you do have to look at these things in context and in the period covered in part 2 there was much more activity to cover.  It is simply not possible to cover this in any real depth within a 60 minute period and invevitably some things have gotta go.  This film was about Queen first and foremost so I think taking a tour of solo material was not really an option - I think it got the requisite mention and that was fine but the documentary is not aimed at Queen fans in particular so why use of 5-10 minutes on solo material?  However, Barcelona was worth some kind of mention perhaps though given the gravity that it has on the public conscious.  Have to say that the Hot Space period was covered very well - so well I was cringing in the couch more than an episode of Doctor Who - yes it was that bad!  On the whole though pleased with the 2 hours put together, don't think that Part 1 could have been bettered but I certainly would love to have had input into the second part.
Agreed. Not as good as part one, but still one of the better documentaries. The Hot Space recording stuff was really interesting.

Djdownsy wrote: They probably didn't rate his songs very well, like it said in the doc, for AOBTD, Roger's drums were completely taped over and muted, which is completely against Roger's policies, he's always stated he likes the 'Big' drum sound.

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I found this interesting, and as you say Brian clearly states that AOBTD has Roger playing on it.  However, someone posted a very good new interview with Mack on the forum a few days back, and he says that ANOBTD was done solely with a drum machine (that interview is well worth checking for Mack bitching a bit about Brian's studio ways!!).  I've always thought that it was Roger playing a few bars (his hi hat opening sound is just about there on the snare beat) but then this was sampled and looped.  perhaps Sebastian, or someone else with an in depth knowledge, may be able to tell me the exact truth of the AOBTD drum track??

Although they did play some music from the Flash soundtrack, (and less from AKOM), it did seem silly to not stick with their own rule of showing the album covers for each album in chronological order.  They jumped straight from The Game to Hot Space and gave the impressions that they two abums were concurrent, and again did the same with The Works to The Miracle, forgetting that in recording terms, AKOM to The Miracle was, at that point, the longest gap between albums and the Mircacle had HUGE publicity and public anticipation at the time (certainly in the UK).  Again, in line with a lot of others here I agree that to not even mention Freddie's Barcelona project when playing a good snippet of Star Fleet was just odd (or selfish?), and if solo stuff was to be adrressed then surely I Wanna testify or Fun In Space should have had a mention as the first true solo releases?

Part 2 was not quite as good as part 1 however, overall it was of a high standard in some parts excellent with These are the Days of Our Lives and Roger being 300 yards from Freddie's house when he died.

I was surprised at the lack of coverage on Flash Gordon and particulary A Kind of Magic as I thought they would look into every Queen studio album.

The footage of Freddie during the shoot of the video for These are the days of our lives is some of the most touching footage I've ever seen (for me personally).

Freddie looks really ill and he's watching himself in the mirror and on the monitor and you can tell he's worried about his looks. The wonderful thing is: he watches his own performance and appears to be very critical about it... He remained the ultimate perfectionist until the very end. 

I think his performance in that video is fantastic. It's honest and very touching.

I agree with the comment above to do with Freddie being critical of his own appearance at times during the making of tatdool, he knew what he was doing making the video he knew people would talk about it once released after he died

such a great man

The Cross/Barcelona projects are relevant IMHO. Part 2's main thrust is Queen had become an inefficient outlet for each person's interest. That's how Strange Frontier and Starfleet came into the conversation. Those solos were kind of test labs for what made up tracks on Innuendo, MIH, GH3 (headdesk), and central to the Miracle promos to make case for the band's "still burning" despite the big gap between albums.
It's not a big deal unless they want to keep the music at forefront as in Part 1, rather than repeat the proverbial idea of 80s Queen being creatively bankrupt in studio while having glories on the road (i.e. Magic tour; One Vision overplayed.)

cmsdrums said: I found this interesting, and as you say Brian clearly states that AOBTD has Roger playing on it.  However, someone posted a very good new interview with Mack on the forum a few days back, and he says that ANOBTD was done solely with a drum machine (that interview is well worth checking for Mack bitching a bit about Brian's studio ways!!).  I've always thought that it was Roger playing a few bars (his hi hat opening sound is just about there on the snare beat) but then this was sampled and looped.  perhaps Sebastian, or someone else with an in depth knowledge, may be able to tell me the exact truth of the AOBTD drum track??
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I agree completely, It's defo Roger. It's definately his open hi hat sound (I play drums like that, i know the sound) plus, ive seen several interviews were it's stated that roger played a few bars under protest, and it was looped. There's one where Brian says it was the days before drum machines, though i doubt this is true, maybe he meant before Queen used them.

Where exactly does Mack say it's a drum machine?

Watching it toward the end ... agony.   To see your friend and band mate like a lion on stage all his life ... and then still like a lion in the end (but more so from courage and heart).  Poor Roger, having to get that news on the way there.  He said in a radio interview that it took them about 5 years to get over Freddie's death - but still it hurts and is plain to see as in this documentary. I was suprised that Freddie told Jim Beach first about his illness and not the band and that Jim had to be in the position to withold the information.  The band went through so much together and their bond, even beyond death, is amazing.

Overall I thought the whole documentary was very good but I was surprised to here that even though Under Pressure was very successful single, the dynamic of making the record caused a bit of friction between Bowie and Queen, never heard anything like that before

There was a bit too much emphasis on the arguments for me and making it sound like Freddie was wholly responsible for Hot Space, surely it needs all 4 of them to agree on an album? Apart from them thinking Hot Space was a disaster it did ok in the charts though getting to number 4 which is not bad, or is that not the point?

Thought the behind scenes of Days of our lives was very moving

Roger is very much a hater of the press and we can see that on the doc!!!

Freddiefan91 said:  I thought the whole documentary was very good but I was surprised to here that even though Under Pressure was very successful single, the dynamic of making the record caused a bit of friction between Bowie and Queen, never heard anything like that before
There was a bit too much emphasis on the arguments for me and making it sound like Freddie was wholly responsible for Hot Space, surely it needs all 4 of them to agree on an album? Apart from them thinking Hot Space was a disaster it did ok in the charts though getting to number 4 which is not bad, or is that not the point?
Thought the behind scenes of Days of our lives was very movingRoger is very much a hater of the press and we can see that on the doc!!! 
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Oh yeah, like Brian said, he decided to not be a big factor in it as regards how he wanted the song, because there was so many of them fighting for their way. Bowie didn't even want to release it, he said it stood better as a demo.
Sure, Roger once said that Bowie was more pig-headed than the four members from Queen put together.
I agree about Hot Space, i mean, John was a big factor too, but of course, there's a total lack of mention of John isn't there.

And yeah, Roger does hate the press, i actually loved his excessive swearing to the press. But 'Dear Mr. Murdoch' still does it for me. :P