I been listening to a lot of Queen lately... they really were absolutely amazing.. all four could write great songs! all four were great players and songwriters....and the harmonies and vocal arrangements...
I think if you asked me what was the greatest band and defined greatest band in a certain way.. I'd say Queen..
Freddie Mercury's death still affects me big time even today...listening to "The Show Must Go On" i got so many goosebumps yesterday...its such a powerful performance and knowing he knew he has but months to live and was so sick when he sang it... geeze...he really belts it too.. what a bravura performance....
When Queen came to town without Freddie I wanted to be there but in the end I just couldn't...maybe if Deacon had been there too... but it just felt wrong....
the last album, Innuendo, they went out on such a high note......I loved the album from the minute it came out. it was such a return to form after the lame The Miracle... it really was their first ALBUM that worked so well in over a decade because A Kind of Magic suffers from having so many songs that were for the Highlander soundtrack...
Freddie died November 1991... I remember just being floored.. there was so much talk about how he "hid" things.. I always thought it was 100% his business what he did.....
Wayne's World came out in early 1992.. kind of a shame Freddie didn't live to see it...
there are some individuals that even if you don't know them you value so much..Freddie is one of them for me...
I was glad last year Google paid some sort of tribute to him with that doodle.... I guess in about a week will be the 25th anniversary of his death.. November 24th.. 25 years...
After listening to John Deacon and Roger Taylor playing the chord sequence that later on would be the basis for almost the entire song, Brian May sat down with Freddie Mercury and the two of them decided the theme of the song and wrote some lyrics. May wrote down the rest of the words as well as the melody, and added a bridge with a chord sequence inspired by Pachelbel's Canon.
Demo versions featured May singing, having to sing some parts in falsetto because they were too high. When Brian May presented the final demo to Mercury, he had doubts that Mercury would be physically capable of singing the song's highly demanding vocal line, due to the extent of his illness at the time. To May's surprise, when the time came to record the vocals, Mercury consumed a measure of vodka and said "I'll fucking do it, darling!" then proceeded to perform the vocal line.[2]
For the record, May sang most of the backing vocals (including the very last line) and played Korg M1 synthesiser as well as guitar. Producer David Richards suggested the key-shift in the second verse.
? "'The Show Must Go On' came from Roger and John playing the sequence, and I started to put things down. At the beginning, it was just this chord sequence, but I had this strange feeling that it could be somehow important, and I got very impassioned and went and beavered away at it. I sat down with Freddie, and we decided what the theme should be and wrote the first verse. It's a long story, that song, but I always felt it would be important because we were dealing with things that were hard to talk about at the time, but in the world of music, you could do it."[4] ?
? Brian May ? 1994
The lyrics are full of allusions, metaphors and other figures of speech, making it somewhat difficult to understand. Thinly disguised tragedy ahead is announced. In the end, the text refers to the determination, the furious desire to live ("I have to find the will to carry on with the show") in spite of vanishing strength ("inside my heart is breaking").[5] From the perspective of harmony, the song begins in B minor; then there is a modulation to C# Minor as if the song implied a hope (an increase of tone); but eventually it falls back to B minor.[6]
Jim Hutton, Freddie's partner who was with him for the last 6 years until his death, mentions the lyric that refers to the use of make up[7] during his last days:
? To me, the most autobiographical line was: 'My make-up may be flaking but my smile still stays on.' That was true. No matter how ill Freddie felt, he never grumbled to anyone or sought sympathy of any kind. It was his battle, no one else's, and he always wore a brave face against the ever-increasing odds against him.[8]
