The Real Wizard wrote:
But now that the cat's out of the bag...
A piece of previously unknown Queen history is here:
All the other tracks on the acetate are identical to the debut album, which means the band weren't happy with Keep Yourself Alive as it was. It is clearly the last track they finished for the album. The acetate can therefore be reasonably dated as early 1972, and the studio version of KYA can possibly be dated as late as June 1972.
So the stories of there being 4 or 5 studio versions of the song are indeed true.
The fact that not a single person was interested in discussing the evolution of Keep Yourself Alive and the debut album means this place is all but dead.
People just come to grab music and leave, almost like it's a dogmatic interest in the "feeling" of getting new things without actually caring about what it is. That makes this more like stamp collecting than a keen interest in understanding where the music came from.
In fact, when the latest Queen remasters came out in 2011, some people actually complained that the studio outtakes of songs like Football Fight and Sail Away Sweet Sister weren't good enough for them, despite having yearned and begged for such things for years.
If an early version of Dazed And Confused were to emerge with even just a different vocal track, the Zeppelin forums would have had ten pages of discussion dissecting every single note of it by now. This is a completely different version of Keep Yourself Alive capturing it half way between the De Lane Lea demo and the album version, and not a word about it. This is akin to the scientific community discovering a fossil of homo erectus from a period previously unexplored. Those folks would be declaring a national holiday.
Maybe it's just what the culture of Queen fans has evolved to become, or perhaps anyone who would have had something to say doesn't post here for the reasons I've mentioned above. Either way, it's a sad state of affairs.
If anyone from QP is watching, what impetus is there to release a boxed set if a gem like this leaks out and there is so little reaction? If the hardcore niche of fans doesn't care, why would the man on the street? He's happy with the Greatest Hits album and the We Will Rock You musical. Brian May knows this better than anyone, and that's why the re-releases and the musical are a great success.
It's been a good decade overall, and methinks it's time to hang up the gloves.