Who Needs You

yeah Freddie said John wrote songs with a "motown" feel in them :D

i think this song is wonderfully light and refreshing, but that's what queen was all about. When you bought an album you had no idea what you were going to get. That has to be Brian on the solo, john couldn't have been that good.

I love that song- especially the maracas! Woohoo!

Yo I love this song! a real versatile vibe to what Queen was in total, and I think they all was proud of this masterpiece! cos they certainly did justice to my ears. Big up Queen for opening there their minds to fullfill ma musical genres to the best it can ever be performed!! yay!!

Believe me, John played the rhythm and Brian played the solos.
Anyway you can always send Brian an e-mail and wait for him to answer.

"Also, didn't the song originally start off with a reggae arrangement rather than the latin feel it has?

It'll be great if that version ever turns up, as reggae's about the only genre not present in the Queen ouevre."

What is your source? I would die to listen to a reggae version of that song. And songs like wny make me miss Deacon.

What I find weird is that, if John played the rhythm, that's all he did in his own song. And it's weird, considering Fred put like 5 or 6 vocal tracks, Brian put electric choir of guitars, and both Fred and Brian did percussion. If we add Brian playing the solos then we find that all John did in his own song was a strummed rhythm.

I don't mean it's impossible (in 'If You Can't Beat Them' all he does is the bass), but it's weird. Consider 'If You Can't Beat Them' was arranged by all the band, but this one is clearly all John.

'ouevre' - never thought that word would appear on Queenzone. Well done young fella.

Who Needs You is a classic.

You have very strange reasoning to believe that John did the solo! If any at all. My goodness.
"What I find weird is that, if John played the rhythm, that's all he did in his own song." ... "we find that all John did in his own song was a strummed rhythm."
What's strange about that? So he left the bulk of the work to others, but led the direction of the song. Sounds easy to accept...

Peace,
Adam.

Brian played the solo, I read it somewhere a number of years ago and as our Brit friends put it so deligthfully, I can't be arsed to look it up. Besides lead is harder to play than rhythm, I'm sure John came up with the song on rhythm and Brian contributed the more difficult lead, can't imagine it other way round.

Thanks to all that replied!
Hehe.
Well I know that John wrote it. I love the acoustic guitar. Perhaps it was Brian that played it. Still I wonder what kind of acoustic guitar. Spanish? Puerto Rican quatro (it has 8 strings, and the sound is similar to a Spanish guitar)? Or just plain acoustic guitar?
I LOVE this song, it just has a wonderful tropical (fuzzy feeling of home, because I live in the Caribbean) feeling for me. :)

Perhaps its time to ask Brimi, now I'm kinda scared...what if he bashes me? :-P LOL

> You have very strange reasoning to believe that John did the solo

It's not that weird if you think about it. Note that John's songs kind of have in common that he has an instrumental show off, in a similar way Brian's tracks tend to have him on piano, lead vocals or all the harmonies, and Roger's tracks have him playing guitar and singing or co-singing (not all, but plenty of them).

In Misfire John played 'almost all guitars', in You're My Best Friend played piano, in You And I acoustic guitar, so I find it logical that he would be the "main charachter" of 'Who Needs You' unless the song is arranged by someone else (like happened with Roger and 'Radio Ga Ga').

You have to be awfully skilled to play solo guitar and i just don't think john had because you would have heard more of him playing lead. Lead guitarist are show offs......believe me ......in Queen only Brian could be that skilled at lead quitar

I was under the impression that most of the accoustic playing on WNY was by John including the solos. Brian played harmonies on the Fireplace. John is that good as well. He played almost all the guitars on Misfire so why not on WNY.

"You have to be awfully skilled to play solo guitar and i just don't think john had because you would have heard more of him playing lead. Lead guitarist are show offs......believe me ......in Queen only Brian could be that skilled at lead quitar"

I'm 100% sure John could play that solo (i'm not saying he did play it!)
John could also play Classical Gas, and it's harder than the Who Needs You solo