The Deacon/Mercury Funk Dance Thing Revisited?

I have always felt that the songs You Don't Fool Me, My Baby Does Me and Rain Must Fall come from a similar place and have a bit of slow dance/funk feel to them. Now I know that Dave Richards put You Don't Fool Me together retrospectively and I don't know who wrote the other two tracks, but I just find that there's a similarity in the feel to these songs. To me they seem like a far more restrained version of the funk tracks found on Hot Space.

I must admit that these sorts of songs are not my favourites. Much prefer the rockers like Party and Khashoggi's Ship found on Miracle and the excellent harmony tracks like Let Me Live and My Life Has Been Saved off Made in Heaven. But does anyone else find any similarity in the feel of these tracks at all? And if so, whether they might have been the vestages of the Hot Space dance/funk era that went so horribly wrong for Queen coming back to rear its head again, allbeit in a far more restrained fashion?

Rain Must Fall is Deacon (music) and Mercury (lyrics). My Baby Does Me is chiefly Mercury (both lyrics and music) with some contribution from Deacon. The YDFM chord progression is lifted from Freddie's solo track Living on My Own (in a different key, though).

BTW, John was not as responsible for Hot Space as a lot of people believe. Granted, Back Chat is his and Cool Cat is half his, but:

Staying Power - Not his.
Dancer - Not his, and he doesn't even play in it.
Body Language - Not his.
Action This Day - Not his, and he's probably not even there.

Hi Sebastian
Thanks for that info on the songs off Miracle and Made in Heaven. I never knew for a fact that they were compositions of Deacon and Mercury, so it sounds like my hunch wasn't too bad at all.
I also just went and checked the writing credits on Hot Space, and from that I noted that the other half of Cool Cat was Freddie, as was both Staying Power and Body Language. Now that certainly doesn't explain Dancer or Action This Day, but it certainly seems that a reasonably high percentage of the dance tracks on Hot Space are attributable to Deacon and/or Mercury.

And I should clarify that while I am not that crazy about the more recent slow dance/funk tracks off Miracle and Made in Heaven, I actually got to really like the first three tracks off Hot Space and they have been my favourite tracks off that album for many years now.

[QUOTE] [b]Heavenite wrote:[/b]it certainly seems that a reasonably high percentage of the dance tracks on Hot Space are attributable to Deacon and/or Mercury.[/QUOTE]

Yes but by that same logic, a reasonably high percentage of the dance tracks on Hot Space are attributable to May and/or Mercury, or to Taylor and/or Mercury.

Hmmm, good point Sebastian!

I guess the counter arguments would be John Deacon did 1 and a half tracks, which was slighly more than Bri and Roger who did one each. Another point is that according to the current Wiki review, Back Chat is supposed to be the funkiest track on the album, and that was the song that John wrote on his own. And thirdly of course, we know from what's been said that it was Freddie and John that were pushing the thing, whereas Brian and Roger are reported to have been largely opposed, even though it seems they did in the end come to the party with their own funk tracks, allbeit kicking and screaming.

But that was the end for Brian and Roger, whereas Freddie and John were still contributing those sort of tracks at the other end of the decade. Mind you, on The Cross's first album Shove It, Roger also seems to have succumbed to the prevailing dance scene.

Rain Must Fall reminds me of Misfire.

The percussion loop on the intro of Rain Must Fall is very, very similar to Deacon's No Turning Back with The Immortals - so similar in fact it's almost like an alternate take of it

Also remember the one that started bringing the funk, e-drums and (probably?) synths into Queen was Roger Taylor. Namely, Fight from the Inside and Fun It. I don't recall much of I wanna testify but I believe it had some similar vibe to it, didn't it?
He also had a ton of synths on his 1981 solo album. Not drum machines (that I know of), though.

Agree although Roger was seemingly influenced by some new wave stuff in the 80's he and brian seem to be the rockers. prenter clearly pushed fred towards dance/pop and john has always preferred that pop sound. i prefer queen the heavy rock band and hate hot space and the poppy sounds on the tracks you mentioned above. I would love to have seen them headline donington in the old monsters of rock with def leppard, Thin lizzy and van halen what a show that would have been.

From watching Days Of Our Lives and The Great Pretender, it is perfectly clear that the band was very close to breaking up in the early eighties, as there was a Freddie-camp and a Brian/Roger-camp. John was always interested in the Motown/Funk/Dance stuff, so he more or less naturally sided with Freddie, who was very supportive of his songwriting. In hindsight it is the influence of all four that made Queen such an eclectic band, and I shudder to think what would have happened if Freddie had gotten the permanent upper hand. I don't dislike Mr. Bad Guy, but one is more than enough. Í for one am glad that Blondie and Curly managed to get back a rocking foot in the door.

[QUOTE] [b]Heavenite wrote:[/b]we know from what's been said that it was Freddie and John that were pushing the thing[/QUOTE]

No - the recent GP documentary clearly has Fred saying that he forced THE OTHER THREE. There are also comments from John saying that he disliked the album (e.g. Popcorn 1986, where he claimed it was the worst moment of their careers) so no, John was NOT 'pushing the thing.'

[QUOTE] [b]Heavenite wrote:[/b]whereas Brian and Roger are reported to have been largely opposed[/QUOTE]

Another big lie... nobody forced them to write Dancer and Action (LPDA and CAG, while not 'dance', were also very light and very un-Queen, including the lack of guitar solos).

I wouldn't go as far as to call LPDA 'un-Queen'. It sounds a lot like a Queen track which could have come of The Game or something. And it does have a guitar solo, so I'm not sure what you mean there.

Sebastian wrote:
Heavenite wrote: "we know from what's been said that it was Freddie and John that were pushing the thing"
No - the recent GP documentary clearly has Fred saying that he forced THE OTHER THREE. There are also comments from John saying that he disliked the album (e.g. Popcorn 1986, where he claimed it was the worst moment of their careers) so no, John was NOT 'pushing the thing.'
Heavenite wrote:"whereas Brian and Roger are reported to have been largely opposed"
Another big lie... nobody forced them to write Dancer and Action (LPDA and CAG, while not 'dance', were also very light and very un-Queen, including the lack of guitar solos).
Hi again Sebastian
Fair point on John and Freddie. Based on the evidence you present, Freddie was the one pushing the album.
But the question I would still ask is whether what John Deacon said in 1986 was relevant to how he felt at the time they were making the album. Did he really need to be pushed like the other two or was he much more amenable to that type of music than Roger and Brian?
The other two certainly did succumb to the pressure Freddie was applying but I agree they certainly weren't forced to write those dance songs, as you say. It was ultimately their choic, as it also must have been John's choice at the time (of course).
Re LPAD and CAG, they are definitely much more stark tracks than you normally got on a Queen album, but I agree with tomchristie that they would not have been too much out of place on The Game, given that album was also a much starker effort than what came before it and what came after Hot Space.

The John interview from '86 might be admitting it was the worst point of their career, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he disliked the album. Freddie loved it but it was still their worst moment from a career point of view, so the two aren't mutually exclusive.

The recent Great Pretender documentary features Fred clearly stating he had to force THE OTHER THREE, which pretty much clears it up: Roger, Brian *and John* were 'forced' to jump into the bandwagon.

John was, reportedly, the biggest R&B/funk fan in the band which, if anything, gives his dislike for the album even more sense: who's gonna complain the most about Fred's biopic? The die-hards and/or experts who can and will realise if/when there's an inaccuracy. Same here: a musician who knows at least a bit about funk is more likely to get outraged by a feeble attempt to 'cover' the genre than one who doesn't.

Freddie was usually very good at telling which kinds of things had hit potential, so it must have been hard for him to have been so wrong twice (HS and MBG).