Driven by You

Brian claims he was wary of appearing to "cash in" on Fred's death so he asked Fred (on his death bed) for his permission to release Driven by You. Brian claims Fred gave his approval, making a joke along the lines that Fred's death will be great publicity for the single.

My question is ... does anyone believe this? Brian is known for telling err... mis-truths when it suits him, not just memory lapses, but lies (PR was Fred's favourite singer, Its a Hard Life never performed live until Queen & Tom Chaplin sang it in 2011 at the Princes Trust concert, that his "Respect" campaign was apolitical). The Fred/Driven by You story came from Brian. Is there any evidence to support it?

Incidentally, this single release was the source of Rog and Brian falling out for a bit so if the Fred bit is true you might think Rog would know about it from other insiders, or that Brian would've told him.

Brian does tend to make stuff up to suit the situation, like when he said Freddie loved Waynes world....
Obviously it's just my opinion but yeah, Freddie spent more time talking to Brian on his deathbed than Delboy's mum*.



*From the British sitcom “Only Fools and Horse” The character of Delboy would often manipulate his brother by tell him stuff his mother said on her deathbed.

I'd suppose the single was scheduled for that week anyway and it was just a coincidence Fred died one day before it officially hit the shops. There was no way to foresee that with such accuracy.

"Incidentally, this single release was the source of Rog and Brian falling out for a bit so if the Fred bit is true you might think Rog would know about it from other insiders, or that Brian would've told him. "

Any more information about this?

I wonder were Queen asked rather than Brian himself to do it , seems like a strange choice just to ask Brian rather than the whole band , I’m sure it would have been a massive hit

In regards to the Wayne's World thing, principal photography is often complete the year before a film's release. In this case, from 2 August 1991 to 24 September 1991.

This correlates with Brian's claim of having been sent the Bohemian Rhapsody scene(not the entire movie) and he and Freddie finding it very funny and agreeing to let them use the song.

Queen was already dead at that point. To my belief Freddie gave his permission to do whatever they want to do around summer 91`.
The music business turned Brian - like many others - into a professional liar.
It sounds hard I know. We can call him a teller of fairy tales if you like ;)

I have often wondered about it myself. I don't know if I believe it or not. I hope Brian wouldn't lie or exaggerate something like this.

I could've sworn it was released in 1993. Having checked I now realise it wasn't but also MANDELLA EFFECT

Brian and Roger were on breakfast TV together two days after the release of Driven by You. they didnt appear to have fallen out then

I very much doubt Freddie would be awake enough in his last two months to have time to sit and watch clips of Wayne's world and approve them.

It's probably what did for him.

Single releases were scheduled some weeks (and sometimes even months) in advance, so Driven By You would have been in for it's Nov 91 slot for a while. My recollection is that as the date approached, and considering Freddie's ailing health, he says he offered to pull/delay the release but Freddie would have none of it. Sounds feasible to me.

Him seeing the Ford ad on tv would've been a nice touch in that fan fiction last week.

I would tend to side with Brian here, the singles are/were pre set with dates long in advance, where did we hear that Brian and Roger fell out at this point? I always thought that was during the first work Roger and John did on made in Heaven that Brian later wiped...

I don't believe he tells lies, I thik like a lot if not all of us he sees things from his POV and doens't always understand the other perspective, he does forget stuff but hey who doesn't I cant remember what my band played live two weeks ago let alone 20 years, so I cut him slack on some of this stuff, as for Rodger being Freds fav singer, I suspect what he really meant was 'one of' or a singer he admired, many did back in the day and I'm sure Freddie would have been one of the first to recognise Rodgers for the rock singer he was, he's more of a pub rock singer than I think he gets noted for, but he was a very high profile guy back in teh early 70's so I dont see why Freddie wouldnt have at least talked about him. Brian then twists that to make a point, we all do that on occassion, and honestly if we all have every comment recorded for all time we might also see much of what we say is less than accurate