Brian May Or Roger Taylor Solo, Who's Better?

matt z wrote:


Roger has a ton of (I don't know the count) mostly excellent rock records. (Excepting the last. Haven't bored myself old enough to bother listen to it)

Plus the stuff with THE CROSS.

(Was he trying to be like "the crass" and ride on the coattails of the post punk movement? )

I'm struggling to see how you can asume that Fun On Earth would bore you, when you haven't even listened to it?

Also to associate The Cross as a 'post punk movement' is odd (to me); the 'Post Punk movement' essentially kicked off around 1980 ish (The Specials, early Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet, Adam Ant, The Jam etc..) and had migrated into more polished pop and electronic driven stuff by about 1983/84. The Cross' first album was in 1987, a diffferent era altogether in musical terms, and is effectively a good pop album with elements of RnB, rock and electronic music - not really in any way assimilated to 'post punk' sounds.

Oh I listened to bits. Never as a whole. Maybe I expected too much. I WILL listen to it in a sit down mode now. What I'd heard was like listening to the "Who's" ENDLESS WIRE.

Sorry. Maybe I judged it too quickly


As for the CROSS I just mean the name. Im just curious as to whether there was an intention to be "raucous" in choosing the name.

It's not like he was looking for a religious name. I'm just curious about the connotations with the name. THE NAME.

It was to make YOU Cross. :-)

Roger easily, though I do also like Brian's work. I just think Roger is way more diverse and adventurous with his music, while Brian likes to stick to what he knows. I *love* Strange Frontier. Don't get me wrong, I think Happiness? and Fun In Space are great, too, but Strange Frontier, to me, is way better than what Queen was doing at the time.

thomasquinn 32989 wrote:Don't get me wrong, I think Happiness? and Fun In Space are great, too, but Strange Frontier, to me, is way better than what Queen was doing at the time.

Bingo!
the title track, Man On Fire, Killing Time and the Dylan cover - nice tunes.
in a nutshell, though i tend to prefer the first LP.
No Violins / My Country / Good Times Are Now and the reggae feel of Future Management - quality.

These two albums are more evidence of Roger having the "George Harrison Syndrome" - tons of excellent ideas but no room within the confines of the group - and they certainly beat the likes of The Works, AKOM and Hot Space into a corner

^absolutely

Well we also know that he (apparently) recorded Strange Frontier with a completely different set of tunes originally and then aborted it, for whatever reason (and we've heard some unreleased stuff from this era, but not sure whether they were from the final recording sessions or the earlier ones). The scanned lyrics of unreleased songs on his website show this, of course. I'd love to hear how far he got with the other songs before re-recording. This also shows that he must have been sitting on a lot more material than we think, even at this point.

They could have probably put out a CD of unreleased material with The Lot, which would have been nice for the die-hard Roger fans out there, like myself.

matt z wrote:

What I'd heard was like listening to the "Who's" ENDLESS WIRE.

Sorry. Maybe I judged it too quickly

Personally I think Endless Wire rocks! (although I will skip "In The Ether" every single time....)

Sebastian wrote:

people on streets wrote:

Day dop wrote:

Of all the solo albums Barcelona and Mr Bad Guy are the better ones.

I agree.

Barcelona's not a solo album, it's a duets album, not the same.

As for Brian vs Roger, I pick the latter.

Excellent nitpicking.

Regardless, of all the albums outside Queen, those two remain the better ones imo, followed by Back To The Light.

I just can't hear Roger's stuff... Too weak... Love Brian's solo work! Hopping he would release another album soon! It sounds like Queen minus the vocal. Some great guitar tunes!

Viper wrote:

I just can't hear Roger's stuff... Too weak... Love Brian's solo work! Hopping he would release another album soon! It sounds like Queen minus the vocal. Some great guitar tunes!

I Wanna Testify, No Violins, My Country, Man on Fire, I Cry For You, Touch the Sky, Foreign Sand, Old Friends, Pressure On, A Nation of Haircuts, Is It Me, No More Fun, Sunny Day

^ all excellent. These tunes give Roger an identity outside of Queen, but he just didn't get the marketing behind it. A shame, really.

Some of Brian's solo work hasn't aged well, but a lot of it is still excellent - Resurrection, China Belle, Wilderness, Another World. Great tracks, all of them. And of course, Last Horizon is one of the prettiest melodies he's ever come up with, which is clearly why he still plays it to this day. Any four bars of that piece are more melodic than the entire catalogs of guys like Vai, Satriani and Johnson. They have chops and little else. Brian stands supreme.

But of all the Queen solo stuff, only four tunes are in public consciousness - The Great Pretender, Barcelona, Living On My Own, and Driven By You (and maybe Last Horizon since Brian has played it at all the Q+ shows). At least, in the UK and Europe. Aside from hardcore fans, nobody in America knows this stuff.

The Real Wizard wrote:

[. Any four bars of that piece are more melodic than the entire catalogs of guys like Vai, Satriani and Johnson. They have chops and little else. Brian stands supreme.

Ack!!! Now that I must take exception to..................I haven't listened to a whole lot of Vai or Johnson I admit..............but I've heard just about everything Satriani has done............he's melodic as hell AND has mega-chops!!!!! Just listen to something like Always With Me, Always With You..........or Flying In A Blue Dream.........

I also kinda jumped at that part of his comment... hehe.

The King Of Rhye wrote:

Just listen to something like Always With Me, Always With You..........

That is indeed a gorgeous piece. Loved it for years. But even on that one he still doesn't have May's gift for melody.

or Flying In A Blue Dream

No. There's absolutely no melody. It's him noodling in lydian mode and then aimlessly shredding for three minutes.

The 80s guitar movement ran the instrument into the ground, after centuries of building up to becoming the dominant instrument by the 60s. Eddie Van Halen was the peak, and it all went downhill from there. Eddie made being technical cool and accessible, and nearly everyone after him missed the point. They built on the chops, but lost the audience. Everyone likes Eddie, but with rare exceptions, only guitarists listen to Satch and his ilk. This easily paved the way for grunge, in the same way prog paved the way for punk 15 years earlier.

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