Were all four members really equal and essential?

^Some of that has to do with Freddie being the only one who died young, and was thus immortalised. But most of it is indeed connected to Freddie's immense 'star quality'. He's in the league of the greats, like Presley, Sinatra (arguably not a great musician, but had a lot of star quality), Lennon, Jackson... he's on a different level than Brian, Roger and John.

I wonder if Brian's as annoyed as McCartney about the way Freddie (and Lennon, respectively) became 'elevated' in the public consciousness because of dying.

Having said that, back when Freddie was still alive, he already had tremendous support from the fans and he'd earned a lot of respect for his musicality. It's not like he died and people just discovered he was that good. Some critics did, yeah, but the majority knew that all along.

The difference is Brian hadn't fallen out with Freddie - and Paul had with John.

Back to the original question - were they all essential?

Anotherone bites the dust, I want to break free - two massive hits from John Deacon
We Will Rock You, The Show Must Go On - one massive hit and one important song from Brian
A Kind of Magic, Radio Gaga - two massive hits from Roger
Bohemian Rhapsody, We Are The Champions - two massive hits from Freddie.

As songwriters they were all essential, I think.

As temperaments they were all essential - Freddie the massive creative force, Brian the detailed brain, Roger the rock force, John the pop sensibilities and the business head.

It's true that different members seemed to have more input at different times, but I think it really was that all four of them contributed fairly equally.

Freddie's Mr Bad Guy showed that he had a lot of creativity but not a lot of discipline. His work with Montserrat and Mike Moran was much better.
Brian's solo projects are decent but very bogged down in detail at some points
Roger's solo projects are, well, sometimes I think they are great, and other times I think they are a bit raw and wandering.
I don't know anything about that Biggles thing John did. I haven't heard it.

But you get the idea of what I'm trying to say.

Yeah, they were all needed.

I am listening to the Immortals now. It's not so good, but it does sound like the transition between Magic and the Miracle...

I think Freddie and Brian together would have found success in a band together without the other two. Musically at least. Roger brought that wonderful backing and harmony vocal plus the right sort of personality, the glue as a previous post called it, to keep those two together when the stresses of their different approaches became too much for each other to bear. Take Freddie out and you get Smile with a different lead singer. Good but without a good dose of luck it's not good enough.Take Roger out and it works for a while but maybe crumbles when Freddie and Brian come to blows by the late seventies! Take Brian out and you lose much of the detail and texture that contributed to the unique and successful Queen sound. It becomes the Freddie Mercury Band as Roger wasn't strong enough in the early days to contribute as much as Freddie. Hell even in the later days some of Roger's lyrics are embarrassing. Roger's songs often needed Freddie's input to take them to the next level (eg. Kind of Magic, Radio Ga Ga). Same for John actually. Another One Bites The Dust doesn't happen without Freddie as its champion and replace Fred's incredible vocal on I Want To Break Free with anyone elses and it ends up sounding pretty naff. Especially with that weird sounding solo....

if Queen hadn't happened Freddie would have found some way of creating a vehicle for his talents and would have had a successful musical career. Brian would probably have been a very successful career guitarist in one or more of the many heavy rock bands of the seventies and beyond. Beloved and respected by fans and rock critics in the way guys like Ritchie Blackmore and Tony Iommi might be for example. Same goes for Roger on the drums for a rock band. I think John could have landed a decent pop band but without decent vocals of his own or much encouragement from another band member his contribution would not have been enough to find success. He was very lucky to find a band like Queen which suited his personality and offered enough musical flexibility and encouragement to allow his talents to flourish.

[QUOTE] [b]thomasquinn 32989 wrote:[/b]

My two cents:

What makes Queen great is the chemistry between four different members. Each contributed to the overall sound that we recognize as "real Queen", but it is difficult to pinpoint what and how much each member contributed, and to what extent they influenced and modified each other's musical behaviour. Having said that, I do have a couple of observations, but they are not free from subjective notions.

Freddie Mercury needed a counterbalance in the form of one or more other competent, creative musicians who did not greatly defer to him or were afraid to go against him but who did appreciate his talents and understand his quirks. When he went his own way entirely, his music lacked focus and sometimes became sloppy and lazy - he seemed a bit cavalier about what he did. Brian, John and Roger (I think in that order, in this particular case) would probably have been very important to allow Freddie Mercury to shine in this way.

Brian May, on the other hand, needed, I think, the occasional "let's go already!"-push when he was about to get bogged down in details and nudges out of his musical comfort zone to avoid ending up doing the same thing over and over again, slowly improving on it, but also getting really boring for anyone who wasn't him. I think he needed Freddie more than he needed John in this sense, though I think Roger was probably also pretty instrumental there.

Roger Taylor made sure the others didn't forget they were in a rock 'n roll band. That doesn't mean they should stick to the straight-up stuff, after all he brought a fairly unique way of playing to Queen, but everything had to be firmly rooted in that rock 'n roll tradition. When things were veering off too far into musical theatre, pseudo-opera or disco/funk, he generally pulled them into a more rock-oriented direction, but I get the impression that he either went back on that or didn't get his way from about '82-'86.

John Deacon is to some extent an enigma. I'm pretty sure he understood the practical side of amplification better than anyone, even Brian, and that was of course an important part of what Queen's sound was (his pre-amp...) and his bass playing is original and solid, but I also get the impression that John was the most musically flexible and adaptable of the four. He was also, probably, the least rock 'n roll-oriented in the group, and that would certainly have encouraged Freddie, Brian and to a lesser extent Roger to stray further from the rock 'n roll foundations. I think John could've been a great success with any number of other bands, and I also think that he would have been recognized as an essential part of any band's success in retrospect, but I'm not sure any band other than Queen would have recognized him for what he was worth from the start, and in fact I'm not sure if the other three members of Queen knew fairly early on how lucky they were with John, or if it only began to dawn on them several years later.

I find it very hard to, in a reasoned way, imagine how each of their musical careers could have looked without the other three guys. I think Freddie Mercury would have had little trouble finding a band that would appreciate his voice, but I don't know what sort of music he would've made, and how ambitious he would have been. He might well have gotten complacent or he might've been pushed out of the way by a lead guitarist with a very strong personality. Brian, although a great guitarist, is far from a typical one. I don't think he'd have had an easy time finding a band that complemented his sound and approach. I don't think John Deacon would have had any trouble finding a band and being a valuable addition to it, but I'm not sure if he'd have actively pursued a full-time musical career. I can totally picture him as a very happy and totally competent studio engineer who contributed the occasional awesome bass line. Roger Taylor, finally, is the one I think could most easily have been a succesful drummer in another band, PROVIDING he had the luck to join a band that had top-rate songwriters and excellent instrumentalists and vocalist(s), as he could not have managed on his own.

Much of this is probably fairly obvious, and most of the rest is probably fairly speculative and subjective.[/QUOTE]

Excellent post. I agree with most of your points. For me it's the combination of Queen that makes it unique. Each member, however talent he might be, is "only" one of the greatest singers out there, or one of the greatest guitarists etc. The alignment of these 4 brings out the best within them. It's like in cryptography: it's the combination, not the individuals, that makes it hard to decrypted.

But there were indeed many good arguments in this thread about how much each member of the band has contributed.

I don't agree with Costa86 though about "Freddie was always going to be big - somehow... He just had that much talent". Talent doesn't work like that. We know several genius in history that died before people recognised them. Talent is not just a born gift, it's rather a potential that needs an environment to develop. In Freddie's case, it's the creative push and appreciation from Brian and other members (but mostly Brian), as thomasquinn said, that made his potential flourish.

[QUOTE] [b]hobbit in Rhye wrote:[/b]

For me it's the combination of Queen that makes it unique.
[/QUOTE]

Of course, that's never been denied. Not just the four members, but also they would've sounded radically different with different producers, engineers, roadies, etc.

To say that John, for instance, was not the most essential member is not the same as claiming he was irrelevant, replaceable or unimportant.

All of them were important, essential, relevant, irreplaceable ... but probably not in mathematically-exact equal amounts.

[QUOTE] [b]hobbit in Rhye wrote:[/b]

I don't agree with Costa86 though about "Freddie was always going to be big - somehow... He just had that much talent". Talent doesn't work like that. We know several genius in history that died before people recognised them. Talent is not just a born gift, it's rather a potential that needs an environment to develop. In Freddie's case, it's the creative push and appreciation from Brian and other members (but mostly Brian), as thomasquinn said, that made his potential flourish.
[/QUOTE]

100% correct.

Listen to Freddie's band from 1969 - granted, we haven't heard a lot, but what we've heard is pretty awful.

Smile, on the other hand, had much of the Queen sound developed in 1969. It took the marriage of their sound to Freddie's ideas that the entire thing took off. And having Deacon not only as bassist but as the electronics and business smarts guy rounded things out. They were truly a collective.

Every note we hear from 1974-77 is the creative peak of this combination of people painting on a single canvas, with no goal other than creating great music. This era of the band is a truly wonderful thing that would never be replicated.

[QUOTE] [b]The Real Wizard wrote:[/b]


Every note we hear from 1974-77 is the creative peak of this combination of people painting on a single canvas, with no goal other than creating great music. This era of the band is a truly wonderful thing that would never be replicated.
[/QUOTE]

In my opinion, the "back to basics" News of the World album(released in late 77) should not be considered part of this 74-77 creative peak.

[QUOTE] [b]The Real Wizard wrote:[/b]

Listen to Freddie's band from 1969 ... Smile, on the other hand ...
[/QUOTE]

While I agree in principle, you've got to consider that Ibex's recordings were home ones, Smile's were done at a professional recording studio, with a top progressive producer, some really excellent engineers, etc.

I'm not denying there was a lot of the Queen sound in Smile already, but the comparison's neither on equal footing nor long-term precise, as we cannot possibly know what would've happened had they never met. Theorising is fun, of course, so go for it!

Had Travolta kicked it in 1979, he probably would've been remembered as a music superstar. Since he's survived at least 36 years more than that, there's been enough time for his acting career to eclipse his shrinking music projects and if he died today, the overwhelming majority of people would remember him as an actor or as the man who mispronounced Idina Menzel's name as Adele Dazeem.

So who knows? Maybe Smile could've grown to be the biggest band in the world ... or maybe they would've disbanded in 1970 (which is exactly what happened). Maybe Wreckage would've been on the same league as Led Zeppelin, maybe they would've been far closer to the average pub band playing a couple of Zeppelin covers (which is basically what they were).

For the comparison to be fairer, we should listen to what Smile were doing when they were as raw as Ibex ... or we should see what Ibex would've accomplished with access to 16-track studios, top producers, top equipment and top engineers. That, also, would be fun to hypothesise.

[QUOTE] [b]Panchgani wrote:[/b]

In my opinion, the "back to basics" News of the World album(released in late 77) should not be considered part of this 74-77 creative peak.

[/QUOTE]

I disagree. The fact it's 'back to basics' doesn't take away from its creativity. It's not easy at all to be that concise and at the same time retain their cleverness, or even rise above it. 'We Are the Champions' has enough sophistication and subtlety to compete with the likes of 'Black Queen' and 'Master-Stroke'. Granted, it hasn't got the loud shrieks and the hippie panning effects that get so many people to basically ejaculate in excitement, but it doesn't mean it didn't take as much skill and/or work as those two. Same if we compare 'All Dead' to 'Prophet's Song': shorter, less 'peculiar' and arguably less epic, but wow, what a wonderful work of art; so much attention to detail, so much craftsmanship; it might not have that 'canon' that which thousands of fans worship, but the guitar bit in the middle is just as beautiful and 'compositionally-advanced.' Brian managed to put all those elements onto a shorter track which was at the same time more memorable and easier to relate to. That is as much a creative peak as whatever they did in the write-about-fairies-abuse-the-delay-shriek-like-a-velociraptor era, which was also quite extraordinary in its own way.

I'd make my case for 'Jazz' to be included on that golden era as well. Maybe production was sub-par, but there's some top songwriting and performing there.

Bumped.

I just have one thing to say. It has been 24 years since Freddie died, and Queen has not been able to come up with one entirely new and original album as 'Queen'. In 24 years! (The only noteworthy item - No One but You.)

[QUOTE] [b]noorie wrote:[/b]

I just have one thing to say. It has been 24 years since Freddie died, and Queen has not been able to come up with one entirely new and original album as 'Queen'. In 24 years! (The only noteworthy item - No One but You.)
[/QUOTE]

Well by the end of the 70's they weren't producing entirely original albums! From then on a small number of songs reflected past glories, and an even smaller number trod new paths.

The argument that they haven't produced anything original in the last 24 years could be used to prove that with two members missing they did indeed rely on each member as a true collective of talent.

Bumped.