Queen without a member during the 1980s

What Queen had a member leave the band during the 1980s? Whether it was Freddie, Brian, Roger or John, then would we have had The Works, A Kind of Magic, The Miracle and Innuendo as they are now?

Maybe we wouldn't. Not a big loss though, cept for Innuendo (the song). :)

Roger Taylor became increasingly irrelevant to the band in the mid-late 80's, due to his drumming duties being reduced to 2 - 3 numbers per album, and that he didn't do much of the songwriting for the albums (not so much that he was vital to the band anyway). So I think they could've done without him, or maybe Deacon. This is all speculation of course.

[QUOTE] [b]Oscar J wrote:[/b]

Roger Taylor became increasingly irrelevant to the band in the mid-late 80's, due to his drumming duties being reduced to 2 - 3 numbers per album [/QUOTE]

Completely untrue:

The Works has Rog drumming on six numbers (thrice more than 2 and twice more than 3)

Magic has Rog drumming on five or six numbers (ditto).

Miracle has Rog drumming on six or seven numbers (far more than 2 - 3).

Not to mention he contributed to synthesisers, backing vocals, songwriting and the occasional guitar.

Well, it felt a lot less since his drumming on those albums were so insignificant. But as usual you have problems with seeing past numbers (guess I shouldn't have mentioned any). Many of those songs have drum machines with occasional overdubs by Roger. Furthermore the drum parts he actually played were so standard pretty much any drummer could have played them (bar Innuendo and Was It All Worth It and maybe one or two other songs).

The Works has some (albeit uninspired) acoustic drum work on it, but I didn't think of that one primarily as that's more early-mid 80's than mid-late 80's.

Magic has Princes of The Universe and WWTLF with raw, acoustic sounding drum performances. One Vision has some drum work by Roger, but has a lot of programmed drum samples on top. The rest of the album sounds like they have programmed drums mostly.

The Miracle has two songs in which the drums sound completely real and acoustic. The rest either have drum machines or drum samples trigged on top of Rogers performances (or if it's the other way around).

Innuendo has completely real drums in one track (the title track), programmed drums on a lot of them, and those weird triggered samples on the rest. Roger chips in some real overdubs throughout, but nothing too major.

Wouldn't you agree this is a significant decrease in terms of drumming duties compared to, say, their early-mid 70's stuff? Both in terms of number of songs performed, but in particular: the extent and complexity of the drumming work and therefore the rehearsal time, which I would assume might have been several times longer.

Queen: Roger drums on all 10 tracks.

Queen II: Roger drums on all but two tracks. 9/11, if you will.

SHA: Great (!) performances on 11 out of 13 tracks.

Etc ...

[QUOTE] [b]Oscar J wrote:[/b]

But as usual you have problems with seeing past numbers[/QUOTE]

No, I haven't got any problem with seeing past numbers. However, if a claim's number-based (such as '2 - 3 tracks per album') then numbers are what I'll use to see if said claim is correct or not ... and in this case, it's not.

[QUOTE] [b]Oscar J wrote:[/b]

(guess I shouldn't have mentioned any).[/QUOTE]

Probably not.

[QUOTE] [b]Oscar J wrote:[/b]

Many of those songs have drum machines with occasional overdubs by Roger.[/QUOTE]

'Many' is not the same as 'most' or the same as 'all but 2-3 per album.'

[QUOTE] [b]Oscar J wrote:[/b]

Furthermore the drum parts he actually played were so standard pretty much any drummer could have played them[/QUOTE]

That's a completely different point, and one I actually partly agree with.

[QUOTE] [b]Oscar J wrote:[/b]

Magic has Princes of The Universe and WWTLF with raw, acoustic sounding drum performances. One Vision has some drum work by Roger, but has a lot of programmed drum samples on top.[/QUOTE]

But still most of OV is real drumming (though fairly basic for Roger's standards indeed). Samples are mostly in the mid part, which is a bit of a patchwork quilt.

[QUOTE] [b]Oscar J wrote:[/b]

The rest of the album sounds like they have programmed drums mostly. [/QUOTE]

'Gimme the Prize' has real drums; 'Don't Lose Your Head' and 'A Kind of Magic' are more of a blend, with some machines and some (probably looped) real drumming. I do agree the songs John wrote or co-wrote are more machine-led, unfortunately.

[QUOTE] [b]Oscar J wrote:[/b]

The Miracle has two songs in which the drums sound completely real and acoustic.[/QUOTE]

Let's see: 'Khashoggi's Ship', 'Was It All Worth It', 'The Miracle', 'Scandal' ... that's more than two. Add to that things like 'I Want It All', where there is some programming but most of it is still real. I think, again, only John's co-written songs plus 'Party' are chiefly machines. Roger's songs have a mixture of acoustic and programmed. But he still played. Of course, he didn't do as much as in the 70's, but he did play on way more than '2-3 tracks per album.'

[QUOTE] [b]Oscar J wrote:[/b]

Innuendo has completely real drums in one track (the title track)[/QUOTE]

'Don't Try So Hard' drums are also completely real. 'Bijou' could technically count since the percussion there (some cymbal rolls) sounds authentic. The rest consists of blends between Rog and machines, but Rog is predominant on most cases (e.g. 'Show').

[QUOTE] [b]Oscar J wrote:[/b]

Wouldn't you agree this is a significant decrease in terms of drumming duties compared to, say, their early-mid 70's stuff?[/QUOTE]

I'm not arguing that point. I'm arguing the use of '2-3 tracks' when he clearly played on loads more.

Canada's far smaller than Russia, but that doesn't make it a tiny country. A 6 ft 8 in tall person is shorter than record guiness holders, but they're not by any means 'short' or a 'dwarf.' A 300-lbs man is far lighter than mordibly obese extreme cases, but they're not by any means slim or underweight.

Rog's drumming in the mid-to-late-80's is far less prominent than in the 70's, but it's far more than '2-3 tracks per album.'

.

I think Gimme The Prize is very much a mix between some real drums and samples. One Visions drum sound is triggered throughout the song as far as I can tell, though the base performance is probably Rogers. So yeah, 2 or 3 cases with mainly Roger behind the kit, 4 if you're generous.

The Miracle might have real drums, though it's quite hard to tell because of the mixing. It might be looped as well, with some overdubs thrown in. Scandal sounds programmed mostly. I Want It All probably has a mix of real and triggered drums, a bit like The Show Must Go On. I guess one can count that, which would make 3, possibly 4 if The Miracle is a complete Roger performance throughout.

Don't Try So Hard has real drums indeed. And as you say there are some more songs with a Roger + drum machine blend, but I think that might mostly be Roger adding occasional drum beats and fills over drum parts already programmed in demos and embryo versions of the songs.

I would say I'm not too far off, depending on how generous one wants to be when counting. Nevertheless the main point was that his drumming duties were significantly reduced, with the "2-3" figure being more of a guesstimate than an anally retentive analysis.

"Canada's far smaller than Russia, but that doesn't make it a tiny country. A 6 ft 8 in tall person is shorter than record guiness holders, but they're not by any means 'short' or a 'dwarf.' A 300-lbs man is far lighter than mordibly obese extreme cases, but they're not by any means slim or underweight. "

Nice straw men.

Queen sure had a lot of hit singles in their later years with absolutely no contribution from Roger:

Radio Ga Ga
One Vison
A Kind of Magic
The Invisible Man
Breakthru
Innuendo
These Are the Days of Our Lives
Heaven for Everyone

Yep Roger was useless ...

[QUOTE] [b]Oscar J wrote:[/b]

I think Gimme The Prize is very much a mix between some real drums and samples. Scandal sounds programmed mostly.
[/QUOTE]

I think they're both real. It'd be nice to analyse them both in more detail and of course I'll be glad to concede if I'm wrong, just as I'll be glad to keep my stance if I'm right.

Not everything that doesn't sound 'in your face' is programmed.

[QUOTE] [b]Oscar J wrote:[/b]

I would say I'm not too far off, depending on how generous one wants to be when counting.[/QUOTE]

There is indeed a subjective component there ... if you wanna disqualify everything that's got even a few bars of programmed drums (e.g. 'I Want It All' or 'The Hitman') then perhaps we can get closer to your '2-3' guesstimate, but that would still be, in my opinion, a misrepresentation of what his drumming consisted of. There's a big difference between a song that's completely Roger-free (e.g. 'One Year of Love' or 'My Baby Does Me') and one where there might be some machines but Rog still played a lot (e.g. 'Show Must Go On' or even 'Khashoggi's Ship').

I wonder how many 70's songs we would absolutely suspect to be full of drum machines (even though they were not) had they been released in the 80's or 90's...

[QUOTE] [b]Oscar J wrote:[/b]

"Canada's far smaller than Russia, but that doesn't make it a tiny country. A 6 ft 8 in tall person is shorter than record guiness holders, but they're not by any means 'short' or a 'dwarf.' A 300-lbs man is far lighter than mordibly obese extreme cases, but they're not by any means slim or underweight. "

Nice straw men.[/QUOTE]

I don't really see them as straw men, since they are illustrating my point: I absolutely agree with your point on Roger's drumming having been diminished both in terms of actual playing (seconds or measures per album would be a far more accurate quantifier than counting 'songs', since that certainly depends on whether you wanna count or dismiss all of it based on subjective measurements), but I disagree that he did as little as '2-3 tracks' per album, and that was my point.

The same can be applied to Brian's guitar or John's bass ... they played a lot less (in terms of layers or bars, etc), but that doesn't mean that, as some people say, 'Hot Space' only features Brian on two or three songs.

Piano duties were indeed largely reduced compared to the early days (e.g. 'Jazz' has piano on six songs, and on five of those it's the main instrument of the backing track, whereas 'Innuendo' only has piano on, indeed, '2-3 tracks', and none of them is a piano-based song, it's just an overdub), although as with guitar, drums and bass, the rate of reduction (is that even a term?) was not as dramatic as some may think at first.

To answer the original question, I think it's obvious that if any band member had left (been replaced) then none of the albums that followed would have been what we now have.

Looking at how the mid 80's albums developed and sounded, rather than trying to imagine a replaced band member, maybe the real question should be what if a different guy was sat in the produces chair?

Seems like your focusing on the wrong instrument.
Apart from Roger's drumming, his voice is more significant. The band would suffer from missing the high end of the spectrum on backing vocals/harmonies.

I wonder why did Roger stop drumming in the 80s?

[QUOTE] [b]luthorn wrote:[/b]

I wonder why did Roger stop drumming in the 80s?[/QUOTE]

He didn't. He still played on the majority of tracks.

People here aways seem to think Roger did nothing on the later albums....

Like many of us through the 80's we all became somewhat obsessed with drum machines and synths, it was just another way of making music that was exciting at the time, Roger aways considered himself a musicain over a drummer at least by that point that was his stance anyway, so I think he wanted to experiment with machines and make Queen recordes sound more like a lot of the stuff that was coming from the radio at the time, in a way you had to be there to understand it, looking back it appears he stopped playing drums, but in reality he had more to do with those albums than he had in the early days. more writing, more guitar more singing and more production work.

Queen without Roger Taylor from 84-91 would have been quite a disaster. He had the main idea for some of the biggest hits like AKOM, Radio GaGa, Breakthru, Heaven For Everyone, These are the days of our lives. In this period Freddie actually didnt have lof his own hits. But he did some work on AKOM and Radio GaGa f.ex.