Freddie's Sources of Inspiration

QE2. wrote:Brenski I do contribute to all the threads on here until you in all your glory disapprove of my opinions..

no. your first reply in this thread was to declare it doomed. that's not contributing.
prove you contribute. listing to the piano track in the top post - it's nicely cued up at the relevant part.

tell me whether you can hear similarities (not identical) just similarities in Millionaire Waltz

Definitely strong similarities and movement around 11.30.

I could see it as plausible Freddie picking up ideas from something like this more than from sitting through an entire classical concert or opera.

Yes i can hear hints of Freddie in that clip, and he was the only one in Queen who would have thought of something like that in the band.
Freddie always brought a lovely piano piece to many Queen albums but sadly this stopped after Jazz on the track "In Only Seven Days" which yes was written by John Deacon but Freddie's piano
contribution was delightful.

red** wrote:Yes i can hear hints of Freddie in that clip, and he was the only one in Queen who would have thought of something like that in the band.

not really. you're discounting Brian's "Good Company" and "See What A Fool I've Been", Roger's punk influenced "Sheer Heart Attack" and Deacy's Nile Rogers "AOBTD". Everyone is influenced by something else, everything comes from somewhere else. Go dig out those McCartney quotes about how the Beach Boys "Pet Sounds" influenced the Beatles.

while we're on it, Freddie wasn't the first to go all vaudeville/music hall, Brian wasn't the first to go country, and Queen weren't the first heavy rock band to do dance/funk/soul.
listening to Sgt Pepper and The White Album and the Freddie/Brian "musical divergences" boxes are ticked already.

The dance/funk/soul thing, well, you'll be surprised who beat Queen to it: Zep, Beatles, Purple, Eagles, Doobie Bros, ELO, 10cc - even f**king Kiss! I suppose the point i'm making is that almost nothing is pioneering or original, it's just "more of the same" and the key is how you make your "more of the same" stand out from the others.
Diverting a little - been having a discussion about the Killers the other day, and a friend said "yeah, their influences are 80s electronica and new wave", but i countered that i'm sure i'd heard a song from the 70s that was very Killers. going to try dig it out.

back on topic:
thank you for joining in the discussion properly. it's a shame you didn't just listen to it from the off - instead of the negatives. you'd have maybe gained more from including yourself in something positive.
personally, i discovered that arrangement by accident. it was nothing to do with Queen, just someone talking about old movies etc. - and wasn't remotely interested in playing it, and after hearing 3 or 4 minutes i was feeling a bit "huh, so what?" and started fast-forwarding, a few clicks later and the player stopped on 11 mins...then i heard that part and couldn't believe what i was hearing.

it's nice after all these years to "discover" something "new" with even the remotest of Queen "links". i then shared it for those who'd never heard it before...seems like most!

Brenski Firstly i have never come on this site to be nasty, when others like yourself decide to leave the odd sarcastic comment that is the start
of the touch paper getting lit for me and i dislike people deciding that only there opinions are valid and mine are torn to shreds and been told my
opinions are stupid or wrong, we all have opinions and this is not a court round up so people should just chill out on here.
I have trudged through some nasty times on here because of the people who decide to an interesting subject, in fact some of my threads have only
had one page on discussing a topic and the other 24 pages have been fighting because someone wants to be petty by dismantling the whole topic,
sad times indeed and there are some big headed characters on here who think this site belongs to them so they decide to play moderator,
Lets just say no one on here should be bigger than anyone else and we are here because we love Queen what ever shape or form of the band that you prefer
but that is still personal to you. People still have a right to moan about the current line up and why not they have spent lots of money on Queen over the years so are entitled to
express how good or bad they are now and i for one are one of those people.
Now getting back on track for this thread, i cannot see how Sheer Heart Attack has anything to do with the B&W film music but i can see it somewhere in The Millionaire Waltz and yes Freddie loved all that stuff
I am not bothered if other artists got there before Queen because Queen are different to other bands they are so much more polished and glossy and as far as i am concerned they did it better than most bands.

red** wrote:Brenski Firstly i have never come on this site to be nasty, when others like yourself decide to leave the odd sarcastic comment that is the start
of the touch paper getting lit for me and i dislike people deciding that only there opinions are valid and mine are torn to shreds and been told my opinions are stupid or wrong

so you keep saying. have you ever thought about not attacking people who disagree with you?
you talk about "sarcastic" replies - but almost every reply that you make aimed at any current Queen project, ends with you saying something really derogatory about AL.
many of us don't like the current Queen arrangement, but we either don't get involved in it, or we make constructive comments. Every single comment you have made will criticise AL by use of words like "c*nt", "tw*t", "fat" and other similar insults.
you claim your opinions are valid - but they never can be while you use your own vernacular. nobody will take anything you say seriously, if your first approach is to disabuse others with those methods.

red** wrote:Now getting back on track for this thread, i cannot see how Sheer Heart Attack has anything to do with the B&W film music but i can see it somewhere in The Millionaire Waltz and yes Freddie loved all that stuff.

i think you've missed the point a little. i was replying to your comment:
[color=blue]he was the only one in Queen who would have thought of something like that in the band.[/i][/color]
and my reply was that all of the band members (not just Freddie) came up with ideas in different musical genres or taking different musical directions - including Roger's "Sheer Heart Attack".
and, fwiw - some of Queen's biggest hits; Radio Ga Ga, AKOM, Innuendo, These Are The Days of Our Lives, One Vision - sounded like nothing else Queen had done before - and were ALL Roger's ideas.

red** wrote:

Yes i can hear hints of Freddie in that clip, and he was the only one in Queen who would have thought of something like that in the band.
Freddie always brought a lovely piano piece to many Queen albums but sadly this stopped after Jazz on the track "In Only Seven Days" which yes was written by John Deacon but Freddie's piano
contribution was delightful.

Freddie was not the only one in the band to bring something new/inventive to the band.

If your talking waltz time signature Roger Taylor did it before Freddie.

If your looking at Freddie's songs like Millionaire Waltz. Brian's guitar work bring almost as much to the song as Freddie's writing

I agree with you about Freddie's piano work, a lot of that and Queens uniqueness was lost when they started recording stock musical styles like Another One Bites The Dust, although neither disappeared completely.

As to the original subject of the thread.

I think Freddie's colonial background probably led him to hearing a lot of this style of music when he was growing up together with those old films. And that particular clip does sound very close.

Freddie brings flamboyance and camp to Queen music and that was the huge appeal to many of his massive hits.
Yes Brian's guitar work on Millionaire Waltz is fantastic and styled the band together with the big production and overblown harmonies,
others may have done it first but it was Queen that made it there own!

red** wrote:Freddie brings flamboyance and camp to Queen music and that was the huge appeal to many of his massive hits.

i don't think that "flamoyance" and "camp" are the huge appeal of hit records. Neither element attracted me to his songs. Personally, it was melody, lyrics, and a good tune.

You would not get the good tunes if Freddie was not Freddie meaning he was a gay flamboyant man and that was embedded in his core as a human being.
A straight man could never have been as creative as Freddie was.

red** wrote:You would not get the good tunes if Freddie was not Freddie meaning he was a gay flamboyant man and that was embedded in his core as a human being.
A straight man could never have been as creative as Freddie was.

sorry, but i disagree. you are defining "as creative" as an innate characteristic only found in gay artists - more precisely; one gay artist. that's an utterly closed mind you have there.

firstly, creativity is the imaginative ability to have original ideas or make things. being gay and flamboyant is not a prerequisite.

secondly, lots of straight musicians are as creative as Freddie was. there's so many ways to be creative - and they ALL count equally, (maybe not to you - but to the world at large, definitely).
3½ Beatles were straight (there was a rumour about John), Zeppelin, Purple, Jeff Lynne, Rush, Kate Bush, Floyd and many others - all straight, and all as creative as Freddie. Maybe not in a way that even registers on your chart, but in the real world of creativity - definitely.

thirdly, and more importantly - some of (IMO) Freddie's best tunes had nothing flamboyant or gay about them. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Somebody To Love, Love of My Life, Liar, Seven Seas of Rhye and many more, were - if anything - androgynous, in that they could be written by either gender about either gender.
Need further proof? Take Freddie's supposedly "campest, most flamboyant" song - Don't Stop Me Now. Freddie knew the importance of being ambiguous, keeping it androgynous - hence one verse ending
"I wanna make a supersonic man out of you"
and another ending:
"I wanna make a supersonic woman of you"
point being; DSMN - despite most people's differing interpretations, was not "gay" "bi" or "straight" - it was a huge, vague, grey, question-mark. and deliberately so.

You protest too much .

But you have already accident agreed with Red. Deliberately vague, Freddie knew the importance so as not to alienate the commercial market of listeners , but without doubt a lot of these came from Freddie’s core. He did not care about making a supersonic woman.

AlbaNo1 wrote:You protest too much .
But you have already accident agreed with Red. [color=blue]Deliberately vague, Freddie knew the importance so as not to alienate the commercial market of listeners[/color] , but without doubt a lot of these came from Freddie’s core. He did not care about making a supersonic woman.

re: the highlighted section ^: maybe initially, but later on i don't think he cared who knew what about him. someone who wishes to maintain the ambiguity does not willingly appear in videos like IWTBF and IAHL, and then there's the Body Language vid - it may feature lots of females, but it's set in a bathhouse "mockup" and much of the imagery is anything but vague.

i think that part of my point was made a little clumsily.
i was trying to say that sexual orientation doesn't make for creativity, and lyrical androgyny is more creative.

it's easy to write: "my girl's mad at me" and similar - because the only perspective being used is that of the writer.

but being gay/bi/lesbian doesn't necessarily give a song-writer an advantage or more innate creativity. it's something a song-writer either has/doesn't have - regardless of sexual orientation.

BTW "gay" and "flamboyant" are largely unrelated.

Brenski Look at Bohemian Rhapsody rumoured to be about his sexuality, that song would not exist if Freddie had not been gay!
Secondly i disagree about other Queen songs Freddie wrote like Somebody To Love, he was desperate for a boyfriend to love but as we know Freddie always said let the listener interpret what they think
the song is....... Don't Stop Me Now is indeed about sex so the rumours go but again that is up to the listener to decide.
Freddie's sexuality lit up Queen like a floodlight he made the band vibrant and gave them character of been regal and importance.
Straight artists are dull in comparison.