Man On The Prowl is underrated

tomchristie22 wrote:
Keep Passing The Open Windows is surprisingly good in my opinion. Sadly condemned to obscurity though.

Not one of my favourites but at least they tried something different . It was let down by some very weak guitar rambling from Brian. Compare guitar in Windows to guitar in Spread Your Wings (a similar song imo) and the latter is much more confident and memorable.

I think the guitars are KPTOW's strong points...

I think after reading about Brian's disinterest and drinking in the 80s, it shows on some of the tracks. A shame.

Heavenite wrote:
Hi Sebastian
Interesting! I don't know much about the source of the stuff on Made in Heaven. The only one I have heard is that Mother Love was the last song Freddie worked on. A pretty amazing vocal to finish off with.

Maybe this could be helpful:

It's a Beautiful Day: recorded in 1980, Freddie was probably fooling around with some keyboards during Flash Gordon sessions.

Made In Heaven: recorded for Freddie's Mr. Bad Guy solo album, then reworked by Brian, Roger and John from a synthy pop song to a badass rock track.

Let Me Live: I believe Freddie's vocals were recorded for a song for The Works that was never really finished, and the other vocals were recorded later on for the MiH release.

Mother Love: like you said, Freddie's last vocal performance with some beautiful singing on the last verse by Brian since Freddie was well enough to finish. One of three tracks that Freddie recorded specifically for MiH.

My Life Has Been Saved: originally for The Miracle, but instead just became the B-Side to Scandal.

I Was Born to Love You: see #2

Heaven For Everyone: written by Roger and appears on The Cross album Shove It. On the album, Freddie appears as a guest vocalist, but on the single version, Roger is the lead vocalist with Freddie on backing vocals.

Too Much Love Will Kill You: originally for The Miracle, but then dropped.

You Don't Fool Me: another track recorded specifically for MiH. Apparently, Freddie recorded some vocals, but after he died the remaining band members were having trouble figuring out how to arrange it into a song when producer David Richards came up with some ideas and pretty much arranged the whole thing himself using Freddie's vocals.

A Winter's Tale: another track recorded specifically for MiH.

It's A Beautiful Day (Reprise): same vocals as the original obviously, with some cool instrumentals partially copied and pasted from the debut album's version of Seven Seas of Rhye put in at the end.

Yeah: the "Yeah!" that makes up this track appeared in Hot Space's Action This Day, but similar sounding Yeahs appear in The Game's Rock It (Prime Jive) and Don't Try Suicide. I'm not sure if these Yeahs are the same as the one in Action This Day and the MiH album or not.

[Untitled Track 13]: created with David RIchards doing a little experimenting and the other band members contributing some ideas.

Admittedly, my main motivation for creating that was boredom.

Gee thanks for that Waunakonor.
I'm sort of glad you were bored now. That's a helluv an explanation of all the ins and outs of Made in Heaven. Its really funny what a hotch potch of old ideas and a few new things that the album was. I really love that album. Note my site name below my nonexistant avatar is "Heavenite"

Just another question though. Can you tell me if the version of My Life Has Been Saved that is the b-side of Scandal is exactly the same as the one on Made in Heaven?

Probably the only other thing that I would mention is that around the time of Freddie's death in Australia, it was reported in the mainstream media maybe two days later that Queen had between 3 and 8 albums still in the can complete with video clips etc. For that reason I expected there to be a lot more posthumous material than just MIH.

Gradually I forgot about that until Brian and Roger announced that they were going back into the studio to put together another album. I then thought this must be it! Sadly it was not to be, although it still might have been nice to have an album of demos or some such thing that people had never heard before I think.

Maybe what was announced in the Australian media was publicity from some record exec or who didn't know his facts. Anyway, that's life I guess.

as far as i'm aware there are defintely two different version of MLHBS

here's some of the more obvious differences (aprt from mixing/editing chnages)

1. scandal version - guitar intro
MIH version - keyboard/synth strings intro
2. the outros of both use guitar, but the MIH version has a stronger keyboard presence
3. and finally, the freddie monologue "i'm in the dark, i'm blind, i don;t know what's coming to me" was removed from the MIH version - perhaps it woulda felt wrong...out of place, when (by 1995) everyone knew what became of him???

Hey thanks very much for that brENski

Now I'm going to check its been included in the extended version of Made In Heaven, which I've been meaning to buy. If it isn't on there, and I've noticed that some of b-sides aren't then I'll try and grab a copy of the Scandal CD single off Ebay.

Glad to help, Heavenite.

The B-Side version of My Life is a bonus track on the 2011 MiH remaster, so if that's what you're referring to by "extended version", then you're in luck. I just didn't mention that because I was trying to keep it simple. Freddie recorded the vocals around the time of The Miracle.

Personally, I actually like that version better. Both the guitar intro and Freddie's talking during the guitar solo both make the song more interesting to me, though you're probably right that the monologue would be out of place.

3 to 8 albums worth of stuff? Wow, that could have been really awesome.

Geez, this thread started out being about Man on the Prowl, then it became more about The Works in general, now I'm discussing Made in Heaven. For some reason, I just keep coming back to the thread.

Heavenite wrote:
Very interesting your comments there Greg. I guess for me if Fred was going to sing a soft one, then I preferred the vocal on something like Who Wants to Live Forever to the one on One Year of Love. Not that crazy about the falsetto vocal on Pain is So Close to Pleasure either, although Freddie was great at trying different things and I guess it was fair enough.

Interestingly you mention One Vision as being a song where Freddie used that belting style. I actually think his voice was still pretty much the same as it was on The Works on One Vision. Of course One Vision was released in advance of the album by a few months, so it seems to me that the change in style in Freddie's voice was first noticeable to me on AKOM. It definitely wasn't there on Mr Bad Guy the year before either.

Just on your points about Freddie using a mix/head voice sound, its rather ironic to me that as Freddie got sicker his voice came closer again to the way I had always loved it. I love just about all the vocals on Innuendo and Made in Heaven, whereas the vocal on Breakthru off The Miracle was another that I didn't enjoy as much because of the type of vocal that Freddie was now delivering. Having said that, I thought his belting style was perfect on songs like Party, Khashoggi's Ship and I Want It All.

One Vision has a mix of the more "belting" style (like on the "give me your hands-give me your hearts" lines), and then a more "normal" vocal style (the verses). Mr. Bad Guy was a mixture of the Works vocals with Freddie having a more powerful voice (I love his vocals on that album).

When Freddie's illness started taking a toll on his health, he had to modify his singing style a bit (singing lighter without excessive chest-heavy belting, plus he reduced his vibrato use/depth). What you got was Freddie sounding almost like his mid/late 70s voice (with better vocal technique). Innuendo is one of my favorite vocal albums from Freddie!

Anyway... Man On The Prowl....

...Is a catchy song!

Funny you say that, I bet after you heard the album for the first time that was probably the one that stuck in your head.. not just because of the WTF ending...

After a few more listens it starts to disappear....

The ending always confused me on that song. Why they would end right in the middle of Fred Mandel's piano is beyond me!

the"yeah" in MIH it is by action this day

Thanks for the response Waunakonor. Sounds like its time to get the remaster then.
Thanks to you to Gregsynth. Its an interesting topic, the changes in Freddie's voice. The fact that Freddie started to beome more like late 70's Freddie, certainly helped me in liking those later albums. That was the definitely the voice I really loved, although he definitely knew how to crank out a rocker in later years.

Back to Man on the Prowl, its a good song in my opinion, just not a standout on The Works. CLTCL on piano somebody said.