Death on Two Legs: A Financial Perspective

Well done for tackling this. I have a friend who was the Tape-Op on a couple of Queen ll tracks and who'd been working at Trident a while. He replied to a remark I made about the financial situation between the band and Trident c.'74/'75 by defending Trident saying they invested considerable sums in the band. Certainly they were investing big money in them at a time when no one else was but obviously knew the band were special.
Then I recently got told by someone close to the band for many years that the deal they signed was unfavourable to the band. Hence another source of resentment toward Trident when money began to trickle in.
Yes, they would have had to have been bought onto the Mott tour too. More money. Maybe in mid '75, the money wasn't coming in fast enough even for Trident when faced with the daunting thought of the cost of the next album, which undoubtably would have been a huge cost. Queen were always in a hurry as someone once said. And maybe other industry people of the time were saying to the band that Queen needed bigger handling from a more experienced organisation.
When they got sued over DOTL, I bet there was a row in the band over that - a great song but it cost them dear at a time when they already couldn't afford it. I'm sure Fred named them in an interview from the time which was pretty reckless but perhaps shows desperation on his part.
On a separate note and related to the financial relationship between Trident and band, I would love to know why / who was behind the notorious (at the time) 'Queen Hype' double page spread in the middle of Melody Maker, written at the time of the release of SSOR and having an obvious side swipe at Trident. The band were incandescent with fury at the time in other interviews reported a few days later and of course at the time you just couldn't get hold of the physical source of this fury because it was published a week before. So it took YEARS for me to finally get hold of this article: what an eye-opener! I even sent a copy to the archive because they didn't have it either. They sent it over to Brian and I bet it gave him a chuckle. But it made a serious attempt to discredit Trident and band at the time.

[QUOTE] [b]Planetgurl wrote:[/b]

So it took YEARS for me to finally get hold of this article: what an eye-opener! I even sent a copy to the archive because they didn't have it either. They sent it over to Brian and I bet it gave him a chuckle. But it made a serious attempt to discredit Trident and band at the time.
[/QUOTE]

Thanks for your Reply. I know people who are claiming that they have the complete 70`s Melody Maker Lineup in their attic.
But I`am afraid we will have to wait until their heirs will get a scanner running or put them on sale :(
The same goes for the DISC Magazine...:(

Yes, especially DISC. These are incredibly scarce. As I lot of my collection was "borrowed" and not given back, I lost a lot of UK music press articles. I would love to be able to collect back the Japan tour coverage by Rosie Horide from 1975 - that was a great feature on their first tour there...

What is the exact story regarding Freddie being sued because of the lyrical content of Death On Two Legs.

It seems strange that having been hauled through court they than featured the song in the live set for many years and featured it on live recordings. Also Freddie's intro to the song at many shows left no one uncertain as to the nature of the song.

One of the best topics on here for ages. Great read guys. Kudos to all.

[QUOTE] [b]Fireplace wrote:[/b]

[QUOTE] [b]matt z wrote:[/b]

Enjoyable speculation. Interesting things i hadn't read before as well.

Yet another reason the world would benefit from a book by John Deacon.

Might also clear up whether IWTBF is about band life (Brian/Freddie) or family life.... whether his balls did/did not pop out at the Wembley gig, where his solo album is, and background singing.

Thanks Sebastian. [/QUOTE]

You forgot to mention donating his bass to you...

[/QUOTE]

*giving his bass to me.

I figured it wasn't specifically a John topic, but thanks for remembering

Great thread.

Looking back, the basic element of the conflict was bad forecasting of Trident about Queen's future. You can argue that 'nobody knew what the future would bring' but it is Trident's job to predict who has talent and will make it or not. Looking at Queen's increasing success, both commercially and artistically, it has been a major blunder to not renegotiate these old contracts made before the first album was released. I think it has also to do with greed, maybe Trident were arrogant and underestimated Queen as individuals. Hence that the majority of artists were (are:)) not talented in facts and figures and that's why so many artists gets screwed over in the end. Queen were intelligent and competent enough at the time to value their status and future.
Maybe it has been John Deacon who alarmed the band about the financial status and therefor played an incredible important role for making sure the financials were OK.

[QUOTE] [b]Vocal harmony wrote:[/b]

What is the exact story regarding Freddie being sued because of the lyrical content of Death On Two Legs.

It seems strange that having been hauled through court they than featured the song in the live set for many years and featured it on live recordings. Also Freddie's intro to the song at many shows left no one uncertain as to the nature of the song.[/QUOTE]

Yeah - I'm certain you can't sue someone because you THINK something nasty has been written/sung about you. The lyrics aren't that explicit. Even if Freddie stated categorically in an interview who the song was about - surely any legal action would be about what was said or implied in the interview, not the song. Surely there would have to be explicit mention of his name or role as manager in the song itself or in the album liner notes?

I think it is more likely that the Sheffield's heard the song, realised it was about them, although not named in the song, tried to sue but failed as there was not real proof who it was written about.

Had the case been up held surely the song would have been removed from the album and not included in further live releases

I'm guessing, as I can't be sure, but isn't the whole Death on two legs legal story just folklore rather than fact.

A further thought on Trident. In the mid 70's they signed a band called Charlie. AOR big vocal harmonies . The deal was similar to the Qyeen arangment, Charlie were sined to Trident and Trident held their record deal. Trident put very little money into the band, they charted in the lower reaches of the US charts. Toured extensively both as head liners and support to Forigner (amongst others)

The band members were so badly ripped off that when not touring the states they were signing on as unemployed in the UK.

Eventually the band signed to Arista, booked a US tour but Trident refused to pay any money for the tour or to the band so they split. Their drummer joined Iron Maiden's road crew!

So maybe they invested the amount of money in Queen that they and some others claim. But isn't it strange that one very well known band and a little known or remembered band have a similar story to tell about Trident.

Maybe if someone is going to write about Trident's involvement with Queen, they should also look at Tridents involvement in the industry as a management company

Great points all throughout.

Trident failing to predict Queen would grow even bigger than they had in 'Sheer Heart Attack' times: yeah, in retrospect it'd seem like they were fools not to have realised that or done something to prevent losing their client, but back then it would've made sense either way. For all they knew, 'Killer Queen' had as many chances of being their peak as it had of being their stepping stone to something bigger. It could really go either way.

Legal story of 'Two Legs' being largely bollocks: it makes sense, too. A lot of the whole Queen mythology has been overblown. 'If it's worth doing, it's worth over-doing.' The more I superficially research their history, the more I realise they applied that philosophy to PR as well, as reflected by all those untrue stories about 'Bo Rhap.'

^ It didn't make sense to me: Queen were on their way up, there's no reason to think that 'Killer Queen' would be their peak. They were like 27, 28 years old at that time, still quite young. If a band is going up steadily, why should I think that they will go down right after this moment?


[QUOTE] [b]Sebastian wrote:[/b]
It seems that, as it happens in many companies (including the one I resigned from last week), the biggest problem is communication.
[/QUOTE]

Sorry to hear that.

Michael Jackson peaked at 24, ACDC peaked when the Youngs were 25 and 27, Led Zeppelin when their average age was 24, the Beatles released Sgt Pepper when two of them were 26 and two of them were 24.

In retrospect, yeah, they were on their way up, because we know how the story went. But it would've made as much sense to think that was their peak, as it could really go either way. There's a rumour somewhere that Freddie'd predicted 'Bo Rhap' would peak at No 3 in the charts; if that's true, then even he would've been pleasantly surprised to see it actually outsold 'Killer Queen.'

[QUOTE] [b]matt z wrote:[/b]

Might also clear up whether IWTBF is about band life (Brian/Freddie) or family life.... whether his balls did/did not pop out at the Wembley gig, where his solo album is, and background singing. [/QUOTE]

I've often wondered whether 'If You Can't Beat Them' has a similar misunderstood message about life in the band....or I could just be reading far too much into it