You And I

tomchristie22 wrote:

I'd say the only way to get any definitive answer on this is to ask Brian

It wouldn't necessarily be a definitive answer, either, since the Doctor's made loads of mistakes about his own band in the past. The overwhelming majority of what he says about Queen is true, obviously, but there's no way to know for sure, either way, if that's accurate or not.

That's the man who, after all, claimed, among others:

* They never played It's Late or It's a Hard Life live (the latter one before this century anyway).
* My Fairy King is on Queen II.
* Love of My Life is either on Sheer Heart Attack or A Day at the Races.
* He didn't play a Flying V on stage (until confronted with evidence he had, that is).
* Freddie didn't play Steinway pianos.
* Bo Rhap was recorded on sixteen-track.
* Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke was recorded at Wessex in the Opera/Races period (unless there's a long-lost retake?).
* Roger didn't write ballads.

onedunpark wrote:

Nothing short of scandalous that it never made Deep Cuts and more recently Forever, which was supposed to be on a broad theme of love. '39 / Drowse - really?

Hear, hear! Especially since you have You Take My Breath Away (Mercury), Long Away (May) and Drowse (Taylor) on Forever, they shoud've completed this foursome from ADATR with You And I (Deacon). Scandalous!

Maybe they felt it'd be one song too many.

Sunshine wrote:

I just was wondering how much influence Freddie had on this track. As far as I am concerned, John never wrote such a complicated track before or after this one.

"You're My Best Friend" and "Misfire" are hardly as complicated nor is "Spread Your Wings" or I"f You Can't Beat Them" and In "Only Seven Days".

It has key changes, tempochanges, lots of harmonies that says 'Freddie' allover.

I suspect Freddie cowrote or at least coarranged this song because it became a small masterpiece.

How are you thoughts about this track?

It´s always great to see a topic about the music of Queen.

Music is not about being difficult or easy. If people ask composers, their most successful ones come real fast. It´s about inspiration!
I can accept that "You and I" sounds very beautiful, but the intro to "You´re my best friend" is superb. To go from C to Dm while keeping the pedal note on C is just superb! These are the real decisions a composer must make.
This is for me what really matters. That sound alone is worth the price of ANATO.

In today´s music, your ears don´t get challenged anymore - at least the music that is "successfull" both on the charts, TV and radios.

The song "You and i" i know it isn´t hard to play - so, technically it isn´t difficult to perform. Was it dificult to write? It depends. If John could listen to it in his head, it was just a case of materialize into tape what he was hearing in his head. It might even come to him in his sleep, like in the cases of many other composers.

Freddie Mercury wasn´t the only inspired member in Queen, and inspiration comes in many ways. Freddie himself told on a radio show around 1976 that John was getting better at writing songs because of "You and I" and he even said something along the lines of him (Freddie) having to step up his game or something like that (it´s been a while since i heard it). Freddie never mentioned that he gave him any help, unlike what he said about "Radio GaGa" where he said he believed in the song and asked for Roger permission to play around with it while Roger was on vacation.

So, in this case i will accept that John wrote this song alone. And as Brian said, if the other members asked for help, that´s when they would help him with chords and so forth. Unlike Roger in TATDOOL, i don´t think John asked for any help with the structure of the song. Of course, during production everybody must have given their input, like it happened for all the other Queen songs.

And to be fair, i wouldn´t expect less than this from John. It wasn´t like John was extremely busy writing 50 songs a year. He was focusing on one or two songs per year, so i think he had plenty of time to come up with something completed and well thought, to present to the band.

People praise John as a genius but then they don´t believe that he can write a song alone?

"You and I" is very beautiful and i even believe that it was inspired in Freddie´s style of composition in ANATO, but i also believe that John wrote it. John said in 1977 that his favorite instrumentalist (guitarplayer?) was Bran May. For a guy to be this humble and honest, i wouldn´t rule out that Freddie could have become his favorite composer. In a way, it´s strange, but John always spoke very higly of Freddie´s input in Queen, even when he was still alive.

That's indeed a very good point. The few comments about John's songwriting (e.g., one from Mack on a German magazine in Y2K) suggest he did devote a lot of time into perfecting his songs until they were ready to be shown to the rest of the band. He had a year, or at the very least a few months, to work on it after 'Opera', so it's not too unbelievably that someone with his skills, dedication and availability at the time would've eventually honed his creation up to that level. Again, it's not like all he wrote was three-chord crap and he suddenly came up with a Rachmaninov concerto overnight.

At least a year: He could've had the idea long before (as seems to be the case with some of their other early songs).

By that logic, Fred and John had over a decade in the band and also as professional musicians and they came up with that work of musical genius, Cool Cat.

Holly2003 wrote:

By that logic, Fred and John had over a decade in the band and also as professional musicians and they came up with that work of musical genius, Cool Cat.

Yeah but it's not the same case.

Sebastian wrote:

Holly2003 wrote:

By that logic, Fred and John had over a decade in the band and also as professional musicians and they came up with that work of musical genius, Cool Cat.

Yeah but it's not the same case.

...

John and Freddie's songwriting abilities appear to have generally burned out after the Game was recorded in 1980.

Panchgani wrote:

Sebastian wrote:

Holly2003 wrote:

By that logic, Fred and John had over a decade in the band and also as professional musicians and they came up with that work of musical genius, Cool Cat.

Yeah but it's not the same case.

...

John and Freddie's songwriting abilities appear to have generally burned out after the Game was recorded in 1980.

I love Freddie´s and John´s songwriting in the eighties, at least after "Hot Space". I know many people don´t agree with me but Freddie´s "Mr Bad Guy" is brilliant - for my taste anyway! And i love Queen´s pop era. It sounds fresh!

A lot of those are actually quite good songs, but they got ruined by sub-par performance. They're not badly done, but coming from a band who not only could do much better, but also routinely did, they were a disappointment.

"but they got ruined by sub-par performance."

You wrote 'performance' when you meant 'production'

For John, I particularly enjoy Rain Must Fall, Pain is So Close to Pleasure, & I Want to Break Free.
For Freddie, I particularly enjoy Body Language, Made in Heaven, It's a Beautiful Day, The Kiss, Football Fight, Khashoggi's Ship, A Winter's Tale, & Keep Passing the Open Windows.

Other Freddie and John songs after The Game I consider to be unremarkable.

In contrast, for The Game & earlier, I would only consider the folllowing John & Freddie songs to be unremarkable: My Fairy King, Jesus, You're My Best Friend, My Meloncholy Blues, Jealousy & Play the Game.

Sebastian wrote:

A lot of those are actually quite good songs, but they got ruined by sub-par performance. They're not badly done, but coming from a band who not only could do much better, but also routinely did, they were a disappointment.

I think the problem was that they were losing the joy of working together as a group in the studio, at least for some time - that i´m aware of!
I remember Mack saying that he was most proud of Hot Space - of all the albums he´d produced for Queen - because he made it sound like a group record when in fact the band weren´t in the studio at the same time for most of it. And in some songs it showed!

But from just the composer perspective Freddie was still the stronger composer in the eighties. I´m not even going to adress production here, just the structure of the songs Freddie wrote after 1982. it was just superb songwriting!

My favorite must be "Friends will be Friends" - but great production on this one.
On the Works record "Keep passing the open Windows" might as well be the best song on that record, but i recognize it´s not the stronger single!

On Mr. Bad Guy he was just unstopable giving the fact that he was touring with Queen and producing that record at the same time - he even said that he was exausted by the end of it, and maybe that is the reason people complain about the production. I think Freddie just said - "Fuck it! Put it out like it is". His lifestyle was making him lose his focus on what mattered, but the inspiration was still there.

The reason i believe he gave up somewhere in the middle due to exaustation was the fact that Brian stated that when he was working on the track "I was born to love you" for MIH he had to fix the backing vocals of that song. Freddie was always a perfectionist with his vocals and backing vocals (LOML, YTMBA) so i don´t know if this was directed more at Mack than Freddie, because Mack should be on it helping Freddie. But i should say that i never found nothing wrong with that track, so i don´t have a clue what Brian was talking about!

The musicality behind "Love me like there´s no tomorrow" is more than what we get on the radio these days, during a day´s worth of music. The way Freddie played the piano, the sensitivity ... it´s just superb!
New artists are winning Grammys for their piano driven songs- when Freddie wasn´t nominated for such award - and their songs don´t have nothing - no melodies worth mention, no beautiful arpegios or chords, even the sound is shit ( i don´t think they use real Pianos anymore) - they simply don´t treat the Piano with respect.

That´s why i believe that a composer - more than a "regular listener" - listens to "Mr. Bad Guy" and he knows the genius behind it. It´s that knowing feeling they have, when they realise that the poorly received record has better compositions than the shit they are releasing today!

But i digress :-)

Panchgani wrote:

In contrast, for The Game & earlier, I would only consider the folllowing John & Freddie songs to be unremarkable: My Fairy King, Jesus, You're My Best Friend, My Meloncholy Blues, Jealousy & Play the Game.

And that´s why diversity in tastes is a good thing!

There are some gems in the list you´ve mentioned.

I think that in all Queen catalogue there is just one song that i really dislike. It´s "Don´t try suicide" - i don´t like the Police sound they were reaching for because it didn´t fit the Queen sound. The only good thing about it is that Mack captured the best Deacon bass sound ever with this track. And "The Game" is in my opinion the weakest Queen record.

But because this thread is about John Deacon, i must say that one of the biggest hidden gems in Queen´s catalogue is "In only seven days" - it ´s the perfect love song.