Episode 1 Queen - Days of Our Lives

This programme contains some strong language.

There's been a lot of rumours that Queen are going to split up. What do you think?

SHOUTS OF "No!" They're talking from here.

CHEERING

INTRO TO: "One Vision"

Hey!

There really wasn't much sex... Well, there wasn't much drugs.

You wouldn't be able to do that now.

# One man

# One goal

# One mission... #

For that moment, we kind of owned the world.

-Where's the modesty gone?

-There isn't any.

# One solution... #

A lot of the press took against them.

# Yeah, one God... #

England doesn't think we're cool.

But I don't want some arsehole critic to tell me that.

You might as well paint a target on your head and go, "Shoot me!"

I think when you go all the way up, the only place is to come down.

Sun City - I wish I'd never heard of the place!

# I'm gonna tell you there's no black and no white... #

When the band came under pressure, there would be a walk-out, a separation, a row.

# One worldwide vision... #

We were at a crucial point. We might have had to break up.

The arguments were creative, then it would become personal. Of course.

There is an inward jealousy.

They're all waiting to see if my album is going to do better than the last Queen album.

Freddie took to the gay scene like David Attenborough making a wildlife programme.

I just want to pack in as much of life and having a good time as I can.

'London - the Imperial College of Science and Technology,

'meeting place for space scientists from 50 nations,

'specialists who will help develop the equipment which has taken mankind to the new age of space exploration.'

-We've got Brian May on guitar.

-APPLAUSE

I was studying Physics as an undergraduate here, but Astronomy was always my thing.

And so I did the Astronomy post-graduate for a PhD.

When we were at school, me and my mates had a group called 1984.

When I left for university, the singer we had, Tim Staffell,

and myself decided to put a new group together called Smile.

We've got Roger Meddows-Taylor on percussion.

There was a noticeboard here where you would pin items

of interest to musicians, so I put a notice saying "drummer wanted".

"We need Ginger Baker/Mitch Mitchell type drummer."

I booked this little jazz club room here and Roger brought his kit and I brought a guitar.

That was the first time we played together.

# When she was done

# She hung them up... #

Something happened, I have to say. We thought, "There is some kind of special sound to this."

# Goodbye, April Lady... #

I guess we had the same sort of sound in our heads.

# Goodbye, April Lady

# You've done a lot for the folks in this town... #

-Freddie Mercury on vocals.

-APPLAUSE

Freddie came from a colonial background.

He was born in Zanzibar and he went to boarding school in India.

I first met Freddie at Ealing Art School in 1968.

There was a piano down there

and Freddie would do this flowery style on the piano.

It was very Mozart and effective, but unique. You'd never seen anybody play the piano like that before.

The first time he sang, I knew straight away that that voice was going places.

# The minute you walked in the joint

# I could see you were a man of distinction

# A real big spender

# Good-looking, so refined

# Say, wouldn't you like to know what's going on in my mind...? #

I used to follow Smile a lot. We were friends. I used to go to their shows.

Freddie was waiting in the wings, literally, and advising us on what to do.

He would say, "You're brilliant, but you should do this and this..."

-What did you see in what Brian and Roger were doing with Smile?

-Nothing!

I think he had in the back of his mind some idea about maybe working with us.

Freddie told everybody that he was going to be a pop star and we didn't take it that seriously.

He was sitting over there one night. I walked in and he put his head in his hands, looking really depressed.

I said, "What's the matter with you?" He said, "I'm not going to be a pop star."

And very slowly he stood up and he said,

"I'm going to be...a legend."

# Hey, big spender

# Spend a little time with me... #

Although we had a lot of successful gigs and we played colleges, pubs

and clubs up and down the country, we just never got anywhere.

Smile made a single which did nothing at all,

then Tim, our singer, got an offer from someone else called Humpy Bong.

So Tim sodded off to that.

Freddie got us. He said, "Come on, you can't give up. I want to sing."

So we decided that we'd take the plunge.

And it was then that I sort of thought about the name Queen.

-Why Queen?

-I don't know. At the time, it was outrageous.

So here we have the main hall.

In 1973, this is where Queen played.

This is really the first proper, advertised gig we ever did

and it's certainly the first review we ever got by Rosemary Horide of what was then Disc.

From the very beginning, Freddie was absolutely remarkable for stagecraft. He had a presence

unlike anything I'd seen. I'd been a music journalist for a long time.

Freddie, even from those days, had an ability to work an audience and they would eat out of his hand.

He could turn his hand round like that and do that and the audience would stand up.

# I have sinned, dear Father

# Father, I have sinned

# Try and help me, Father

# Won't you let me in?

# Liar!

# Oh, nobody... #

It was the first moment when I thought, "Something's happening here and people know what we're about."

When they came along, there had been a denim rock movement,

if you like, with Status Quo, Uriah Heep.

I think Queen were an incredible breath of fresh air in rock music.

They had brilliant songs.

Freddie Mercury was an absolutely charismatic front man.

# Liar... #

Brian May was just this brilliant guitarist and Roger Taylor was a phenomenal drummer.

And you had that guy that played bass.

We spent a couple of years looking for a bass player. It was very hard to find the right guy.

Then we found John.

-Deacon John on bass.

-APPLAUSE

I came along as a bit of an outsider at first.

It did take me quite a few years to grow more into the group

and find myself at home, really.

Before we signed to a record label, we actually signed to Trident Productions,

a management company run by the Sheffield brothers who had a studio in the middle of Soho.

Recording our first album, we were all students finishing off our degrees.

We had to do it in what time was available

because the studio was being booked up all the time.

We had to go in sometimes at two in the morning

and sometimes finishing at six in the morning, all those weird times that nobody wanted.

You know, you could see the working girls at night through their lace curtains,

so while we were mixing, we'd have a little bit of diversion.

The album came out and sort of resoundingly crashed. It really didn't do much.

When you make your first album, you go into the record shops and think, "We're in the record stores now!"

You go in and say, "Have you got the new Queen album then?" They go, "What?" It's a long haul.

PIANO INTRO

GUITARS JOIN IN

With Queen II, I couldn't believe how much work we put into that.

We felt we were evolving our own sound.

We were pioneering this sort of multi-tracking thing.

It gave you a tremendous palette.

You could get massive choral effects with just three of us singing.

# Voice from behind... #

We really got into production and went completely over the top.

There's a track called March Of The Black Queen.

# I'll be a bad boy, I'll be your bad boy

# I'll do the march of the Black Queen... #

It's very long. It's in about 11 different sections and the complexity of it is staggering.

I mean, the tape was literally transparent.

The 16-track, two-inch tape, the oxide was almost completely worn away.

We'd gone over it so many times. It literally was transparent.

# Walking true to style

# She's vulgar abuse and vile Fi-fo the Black Queen tattoos all her pies... #

It was really only with Queen II and Seven Seas Of Rhye

that we had the breakthrough.

We realised that the easiest way of getting a hit album is to have a hit single

that has some musical validity.

The key to that was the stroke that was pulled in getting them on Top Of The Pops

when Bowie dropped out and it absolutely broke that single.

It was a very underwhelming experience the very first time

because there was a strike on at the BBC.

# Fear me, you lords and lady preachers... #

So it was shot in the weather studio.

# I command your very souls, you unbelievers

# Bring before me what is mine The seven seas of Rhye... #

It was great fun to be at Top Of The Pops because it was all happening.

You felt like you were in a sense becoming part of public consciousness.

# I will destroy any man who dares abuse my trust... #

Top Of The Pops was incredibly uncool.

It was rubbish because nobody was actually playing.

There was about 75 teenagers who were herded about the studio

and a bunch of ageing disc jockeys presenting you.

Pan's People were there, these very glamorous girls dancing. It was a lot of fun.

The BBC had a set of plastic cymbals that went "duh" when you hit them, so they didn't make any noise.

I think that sort of says it all, really.

We had slightly mixed feelings about Top Of The Pops because it wasn't very cool,

but it was the great vehicle for selling records, so what can you say?

It had a big impact. Our record went straight into the top ten.

So obviously, the impact was huge.

# Storm the master marathon I'll fly through

-# By flash and thunder fire and I'll survive

-I'll survive, I'll survive

# Then I'll defy the laws of nature and come out ali-i-ive Then I'll get you... #

We had this song called Seven Seas Of Rhye, but it's a universal truth that more groups break up

because of songwriting arguments than anything else in the world. Your songs are your babies.

The person who has written the song tends to be the one person who sees that one song all the way through

from the idea they have in their head at first, the final production, the sounds and the mix...

Most of the time, I have a clear picture of what I want.

I sort of have a lot of... say, Roger's parts

and what Brian should do and things... There are rows, of course.

I've probably never spoken about this before, but The Seven Seas Of Rhye was Freddie's idea.

He had this lovely little riff idea on the piano and all the middle eight is stuff that I did,

so we worked on it together, but when it came to the album coming out, Freddie went, "I wrote that."

And we all went, "OK." It didn't seem like that big a deal.

Freddie said, "I wrote the words and it was my idea, so it's my song."

The sort of unwritten law was the person who brought the song in would get the credit for writing that song

and the money for writing that song.

Much, much later in Queen history, we recognised this fact.

-# Here I stand

-Here I stand

# Look around, around

# Around, around, around... #

We were very lucky in that we hooked up with Mott The Hoople and we were their warm-up act.

-# Now I'm here

-Now I'm here... #

We went all around the UK with them and it worked out just perfectly.

-# Now I'm there

-Now I'm there... #

Then the guys from Mott said, "Would you like to do the same thing in America?"

# Just a new man

# Yes, you made me live again... #

After a few gigs, I started to feel weird.

Something was happening. I didn't know if it was my head or my body, but I started to feel odd.

Then I woke up one morning in Boston which was going to be the climax of the tour...

I woke up and I was yellow. The doctor came and said, "You've got hepatitis. You have to go home."

I still was amazed we managed to shepherd him through the immigration queue at JFK in New York.

The poor fellow could hardly stand.

I was taken on the plane shoulder to shoulder.

We were devastated the tour had been cut short. It was our first trip to America.

But we just ploughed on in the studio without him.

It was a bit of a long haul back to health.

I was getting over all this stuff and I saw Freddie battering out all these things, thinking,

"I've not got my shit together," and really starting to worry about it.

# She keeps her Moet et Chandon

# In her pretty cabinet

# "Let them eat cake" she says just like Marie Antoinette... #

Queen I and Queen II were full-on rock albums and I suppose it was only a question of time

before they put some clever melody into it and Sheer Heart Attack was that break-out album.

And Killer Queen where Mercury's vocals have probably never been better.

# She's a killer queen Gunpowder, gelatine

# Dynamite with a laser beam

# Guaranteed to blow your mind Any time... #

I do remember having a slight reservation about Killer Queen.

I thought, "Are we selling ourselves as something which has become very light?"

But every slice through that record

is a perfect vision. There's lots of little things which visit once only like that bell of the cymbal.

RINGING SOUND # In conversation she spoke just like a baroness

# Met a man from China Went down to Geisha Minah

# Then again incidentally if you're that way inclined... #

Killer Queen always felt a bit special. It was very sophisticated and it was very Freddie.

As the albums have progressed, our songwriting has progressed and we ventured into different areas.

# Dynamite with a laser beam Guaranteed to blow your mind... #

I like writing different songs. We don't like to repeat the same formula.

It had a slightly Noel Coward... You know, that kind of element in it.

When you took the lyrics apart, you thought, "How incredible is that!" Because they were so clever.

# Drop of a hat, she's as willing as Playful as a pussycat

# Then momentarily out of action Temporarily out of gas

# To absolutely drive you wild

# She's all out to get you

# She's a killer queen

# Gunpowder, gelatine Dynamite with a laser beam

# Guaranteed to blow your mind Any time

# Oh, recommended at the price Insatiable an appetite

# Wanna try?

# You wanna try... #

We were doing a lot of major tours in Japan, America.

We were headlining by now and doing very well and selling loads of records and not seeing any money.

We decided to go with the production company, rather than with the record company.

The deal was that we made the album for the production company and they sell it to a record company.

It's probably the worst thing we did.

The deal that they were on just meant that they weren't going to make any money out of what they did.

And the way it came to a head

was with the song Death On Two Legs.

# You suck my blood like a leech

# You break the law and you breach

# Screw my brain till it hurts

# You've taken all my money

# And you want more... #

They were living in bedsits.

I think Fred was more comfortable. He had a living room and a bedroom.

Often I would go to do an interview and buy a couple of bottles of wine

on my expenses because they had no money.

We didn't expect instant riches. We didn't get them!

Roger was breaking sticks because he hit the drums pretty hard.

The management's going, "Don't break any more sticks." We had no money.

One of the management group bought a Rolls-Royce and we thought, "Hang on, something's going on here."

It affected Freddie deeply and Freddie got to the point where he said,

"I am not delivering any more music. I can't."

To cut a long story short, we went with John Reid

who was Elton's incredibly successful manager at the time.

I remember saying, "You go away

"and make the best record you can. I'll take care of the business."

We had a good working relationship with John.

He was very fiery and feisty, but so were we. We weren't scared of him.

It was the first night I'd gone out to dinner with Freddie.

I said, "I'd just like to say, as I said to the other guys, I hope you know I'm gay and it's not a problem."

And he put his knife and fork down and said, "So am I!"

Freddie, when I first met him, wasn't out to the band

because he was struggling with his own sexuality anyway.

And Freddie was from a very, very traditional Zoroastrian background

and I think his family considerations were probably paramount.

I remember when we went into the studio to make A Night At The Opera, it felt like make or break.

We were not only poor, but we were in debt.

All the sound and lighting companies and the people we worked with hadn't been paid,

so we were at a really crucial point. We might have had to break up if that album hadn't done well.

It was an expensive album, enormous complexity on there.

Even now, I wonder how we did some of that stuff.

There was so much hunger there. We had so much we wanted to bring out.

It was all kept in and so we had all kinds of songs.

Bohemian Rhapsody was basically like three songs that I wanted to put out and I just put the three together.

I think the groundwork for a song like that was done at Ealing College.

Freddie had lots of bits of songs which we'd link together

and one of his bits, I just referred to it as The Cowboy Song and it went, "Mama, I just killed a man."

# Mama

# Just killed a man... #

The first thing I heard was Freddie playing "Mama, just killed a man..."

"What do you think?" "I love it. It's absolutely brilliant." Not knowing what was to come.

We ended up having to do it in six studios.

Because they were using all these studios, you didn't know what was going on.

You would have guitar parts in one studio and vocal stuff in another.

# Galileo

# Galileo

# Galileo, Figaro... #

Freddie would just turn up and go, "I've got a few more Galileos."

We were going round all these studios just hearing parts.

# Thunderbolt and lightning Very, very frightening me

HIGHER PITCH: # Lightning, very, very frightening, very, very frightening me... #

Only Fred had it in his head and he was making some of it up as we went along.

I thought, "I'll do as I please."

# Thunderbolt and lightning, very, very frightening me... #

Do as many multi-layer harmonies as possible. You know, go well over the top.

It really was tongue-in-cheek, but at the same time, "I bet you can't do this."

# He's just a poor boy from a poor family

# Spare him his life from this monstrosity... #

But the record company as a mass came to us and said, "This is too long. Nobody's going to play it."

I played it to Elton John at the time

and he said, "Are you off your head? You'll never get that on the radio."

I said, "It goes out in its entirety or not at all."

At the crucial moment, this young man called Kenny Everett came in,

loved the track, stole a copy of it and played it on his radio show.

Kenny played it 14 times over the weekend and of course it was a smash.

Then following that up with what, to my mind, was the first ever real music video.

-# We will not let you go

-Let him go!

-Bismillah!

-# We will not let you go

-Let him go!

-Bismillah... #

I'd never seen anything like it and I don't think anybody else had.

The video took Queen to another level

where they could really command the landscape.

-# Mamma mia, mamma mia

-Mamma mia, let me go... #

Night At The Opera was that landmark album that established them as a major force.

That was the context in which you could do something like the Hyde Park concert.

# So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye

# So you think you can love me and leave me to die... #

It was Richard Branson. "We think we can put you on in Hyde Park."

Thank you very much. Good evening, everybody.

CHEERING

Welcome to our picnic by the Serpentine.

I remember thinking, "Gulp!" We've carved out a place around the world,

but England doesn't really think we're that cool.

It was packed beyond belief and it was really like coming home to a heroes' welcome.

THRASHING GUITARS

# Ah, ah, ah, ah, ahhh... #

It was a thrilling experience to have that kind of contact with an audience in your own home town.

When it came to make Day At The Races, we just thought, "Let's just do what we do."

The added ingredient in Day At The Races is this feeling of freedom which we had

because we had escaped the old situation, we'd sorted out the money side, we weren't in debt any more,

we weren't struggling for our very existence, so there's a great freedom and joy.

# Ca-a-an

# Anybody... #

It was almost like we were still making A Night At The Opera. We just loved it. We revelled in it.

# Somebody to lo-o-ove... #

Freddie came up with a magnificent, little sort of foray into white Gospel, if you want to call it that.

# Ooh

# Each morning I get up... #

We really worked our harmonies on Somebody To Love.

# Take a look at yourself Take a look in the mirror and cry... #

Freddie's great inspiration for Somebody To Love was Aretha Franklin.

He absolutely loved Aretha.

He would like to have been Aretha Franklin!

-# Somebody!

-Somebody!

-Ooh, somebody!

-Somebody!

# Can anybody find me somebody to love...? #

From that point of view, OK, Bohemian Rhapsody, a big hit,

but a song like Somebody To Love is in my estimation a better sort of...

from the writing aspect, a better song.

# I work till I ache in my bones

-# At the end

-At the end of the day

# I take home my hard-earned pay all on my own

# I get down on my knees and I start to pray

# Till the tears run down from my eyes

-# Lord, somebody!

-Somebody!

-Ooh, somebody

# Can anybody find me... #

We were using the studio to its maximum capacity, painting a picture like on a huge canvas.

# Find me somebody to love

# Find me somebody to love... #

We had a gift. We had three voices which really blended instantly.

# Find me somebody to love... #

Freddie has this wonderful, crystal-clear, sharp vocal sound.

# Find me somebody to love, find me somebody to love... #

Naturally, I've got the powerful high voice.

He's got the dog whistle pitch, a very high voice.

# Find me somebody to love... #

And I had quite a warm sound.

-# Somebody!

-Somebody!

-Somebody!

-Somebody!

-# Somebody!

-Find me...

-Somebody find me somebody to love

# Can anybody find me... #

Put the three together and you have something which sounds sort of Panavision.

# Find me

# Somebody

# To-o-o love

# Find me... #

To keep their attention, you've got to really tempt them.

Like, "You can have a break. Have a coffee and biscuits."

While they're in a good mood, grab them and do another 50 million overdubs!

-# Anybody find me somebody to love

-Somebody to love... #

We used to call it the sausage factory in the end

because we got so good at it, we could just bang 'em out.

A Day At The Races,

as the follow-up to Night At The Opera, was clearly... It had a hard act to follow.

People who wanted to have a go at Queen could quite readily say, "It's not as good as the last one."

A lot of the press took against them.

Maybe if you got too successful too quick,

there was a resentment there that they hadn't made you, therefore they wanted to break you.

# Oh, take my breath away... #

Shortly after I started to manage them,

I had told all the band one of the ground rules is don't do any press without clearing it with me.

You open yourself up to all kinds of things. Usually, they turn on you.

I went out to dinner with Freddie in The White Elephant in Curzon Street.

Casually, he said, "I did an interview with David Wigg from the Express today."

I said, "I told you no interviews without clearing it with me." "Oh, never mind."

I said, "Well, fuck you! If you don't work within my rules, you don't work with me."

I got up and left and I left him there.

I came home, I went upstairs, turned on the TV and the next thing I knew,

a brick came through the window.

And I looked outside here and there's Freddie standing in the street, hands on his hips,

"Don't you ever fucking leave me in a restaurant..."

I said, "You'd better come in."

Queen didn't have particular respect

from the critics during the '70s, which is when they had so many hits.

And then punk happened in the late '70s,

which made the standard rock group seem passe.

# God save the Queen

# We mean it, man

# We love our Queen... #

The punk stuff, as opposed to what Queen did, they were coming from two different points of view.

It was anarchy on one side and monarchy on the other.

NME was one of the most vocal proponents of punk.

We were taking, if you like, music icons at that time

and we were rubbishing them, basically.

It was thought we should interview Freddie Mercury, in particular,

and they asked me to go over to a house in Knightsbridge owned by John Reid

and there's Freddie sitting on the patio.

The whole house was very ostentatious, it must be said.

We did an interview here with the NME

and, you know, we were very nice to the guy.

I had a butler, we gave him lunch.

There was a butler, there was a bodyguard.

There was probably other people going round with feather dusters and what have you.

Then the story slagged off Freddie.

Freddie Mercury, when the whole of the punk new wave movement was going on around him,

had focused in on something that was kind of a bit of an alien concept in some ways which was ballet.

I just feel that there are sort of balletic moments in our repertoire.

One of the things that he said to me

was that his mission in life was to bring ballet to the masses.

Well, when the NME piece came out, Freddie was furious.

They called him "a prat".

You'd be furious.

I think we realised that talking to the press gets you nowhere.

You might as well paint a target on your head and go, "Shoot me."

We all have our ups and downs and our limitations and we know there are certain things you can't do,

but I don't want some arsehole critic to tell me that.

I love posing.

That's for the press.

Well, this is Wessex Studios

where a lot of News Of The World was done.

We were recording here and The Sex Pistols were in at the same time.

Well, we met The Sex Pistols in Wessex Studios

and, uh...

I thought it was fascinating.

One day we were in the control room and Fred was sat at the desk.

And suddenly, we heard this voice and it was Sid Vicious who had come in.

And he was clearly the worse for wear.

Sid came in. Sid was a moron. You know, he was an idiot.

And he called in to the room, "Have you succeeded in bringing ballet to the masses yet?"

I called him "Simon Ferocious" and he didn't like it. I said, "What are you going to do about it?"

Fred went and took him by the lapels and pushed him out the door.

-He hated the fact that I could even speak like that.

-Right. Then...

So we went... I think we survived that test.

# Well, you're just 17 All you wanna do is disappear... #

I thought when we went into News Of The World, we couldn't reinvent ourselves as a punk band,

but we wanted it a little bit more simple.

We thought maybe these really grandiose things weren't quite what was happening then

and to be more of the time, we made a more straightforward record.

Once we had our audience, we felt so confident that they would be there for us

and not require us to be anything that they'd seen before.

Do a twirl?

They were very open-minded, Queen audiences, so we never felt constrained.

We Will Rock You and We Are The Champions had a very sort of definite genesis.

The way I remember this story is Bingley Hall.

We played this great hall in the Midlands and it was heaving.

Those gigs that you love, it's all sweaty and hot, everybody is jumping up and down.

And they were singing along.

# She's a killer queen Gunpowder, gelatine

# Dynamite with a laser beam Guaranteed to blow your mind... #

In those days, it was really new. You just didn't go to concerts where people sang to rock bands.

But on this particular occasion, they didn't stop.

And when we went off stage, they sang You'll Never Walk Alone to us.

I'd gone to sleep thinking, "What can an audience do?"

They're all crammed in there. They can stamp their feet, clap their hands and sing.

So I woke up with We Will Rock You in my head.

We went into Wessex with these ideas and that's what happened.

This area here was towards the middle of the main room

which is where the recording took place.

And this is where all the "boom-boom-chas" for We Will Rock You were done.

There were some boards lying around and I thought, "What does this sound like?"

RHYTHMIC STAMPING AND CLAPPING

We multi-tracked it a lot of times to achieve a sound of a big throng of people stamping and clapping,

a huge sort of rally of people.

# We will, we will rock you... #

STAMPING AND CLAPPING

# We will, we will rock you... #

I came up with We Will Rock You and Freddie with We Are The Champions. His thinking was very similar.

Basically, it is a participation thing.

I've been really cool and I'm just thinking in terms of the public/group thing.

# I've paid my dues

# Time after time... #

We had no idea it would become a universal, worldwide sports anthem.

Both of them did - Rock You and Champions.

In football or whatever sport, you've got two opposing teams.

Both can sing We Are The Champions, but in a rock show, there's only one team.

# I've had my share of sand kicked in my face

# But I've come through... #

It could be construed as a rather elitist thing.

# We are the champions, my friends... #

But it was really "we", the collective "we".

But if I were you, before we find out, let's get the sound... Let's get a real sound on the drums.

It's definitely a song of great unifying power.

# We are the champions

# No time for losers

# Cos we are the champions... #

Here we've got four tracks of vocals, one with the solo guitar, then that's the end bit solo.

I've listened to them. That's the only way we can do it.

Fred was very cheeky. It was about Queen being the champions

in a sense, the arrogance for which we were famous.

# We are the champions

# We are the champions

# No time for losers

# Cos we are the champions. #

APPLAUSE

Only Queen could come up with the title "We Are The Champions". Where's the modesty gone?

Well, there isn't any. No modesty whatsoever.

After the slaggings-off we get from the English music press, who cares? We've got nothing to lose, you know?

Anyway, it's only a song, isn't it? Fuck 'em!

In those days, it was do the album, do a video, tour America.

One, two!

It was regarded as the sort of grail of the rock scene.

America was meaning more and more to us,

and when you smell success in America, you go for it.

We looked at what was going on in the States at the time.

The music was very much dominated by the cool West Coast

kind of rock with The Eagles and Steely Dan and Fleetwood Mac.

And to some extent, Queen, I guess, didn't fit that mould.

They were bigger, more glamorous, more extravagant than,

I think, anything that existed in the States at the time.

They really didn't know what to make of them.

Why would you call your band Queen

when there's obviously four guys in it?

That was puzzling.

We were all in one station wagon,

then we were all in one limo, then it was two in one limo

and two in another, then it was one each.

But it was really only because the entourage grew,

it wasn't anything to do with not wanting to talk to one another.

We did stay pretty connected,

we didn't disappear to our dressing rooms.

Generally, we found a big place where we could all get ready together

and we would kind of joke around. We had a good kind of camaraderie.

This is called a miracle, folks!

I've lost my shoe!

Oh, but I don't do my own.

Dave! Do, do, do!

I went to see the Queen show and I had never seen so much luggage

and crew and amps and lighting.

And I said, "This is not rock'n'roll, this is a show.

"This is a production. This is Broadway".

MUSIC: "We Will Rock You"

The audience participation elevated the shows to something really special.

And I think we put a bit of distance between us

and some of our contemporaries like that, because it was such a great two-way event.

This was a coronation for Freddie Mercury in this town.

# We will, we will rock you tonight

# We will, we will rock you

# Buddy you're a young man, hard man, shouting in the street

# Gonna take on the world someday

# Mud on your face, big disgrace

# Waving your banner all over the place

# We will, we will rock you... #

It had always surprised us that it took so long

to break Queen in the States.

It sounds like it happened quickly, but it didn't, it happened over a period of about eight years.

We worked very hard at it.

At no point did you think, "We've made it," cos we hadn't.

This is, um, a Mercury composition

from "A Night At The Opera"

and it's something which a few people asked us to do last time.

So this is for those people. This is "Love Of My Life".

The 1977 US tour was pretty much a sell-out. And midway through,

we actually played two nights at the legendary Madison Square Gardens

in New York, which is a sort of landmark for any artist.

It was a watershed for me.

It was a mythical place, of course, big deal for us to play.

And my parents, from the beginning... Well, my dad, really.

My dad had really been against the whole business of me being a rock star.

It's curious, because he helped me build the guitar.

If it hadn't been for my dad slaving hours and hours making this homemade guitar,

I probably would never have got to this place.

He really felt that I'd thrown my education away.

I mean, I was educated to a high level. So to suddenly to go off and join a rock band

with apparently no future, my dad really could not compute it.

He was kind of in tears, really, he just felt I'd thrown my life away completely.

# You don't know what it means to me... #

But anyway, we were playing Madison Square Garden and I said,

"Look, Dad, this is a big one for us, playing America,

"it's New York, it's the first time we've played this amazing place. Come over."

So I said, "Dad, you'll go on Concorde",

you know, it was my dad and my mum. And they came to the gig

and I remember to this day, this feeling that our feet

weren't really on the ground, there was so much electricity in this place.

# You don't know what it means to me... #

And we came off thinking, "Wow, that was really something,"

and then I went back with my dad

and my dad said, "OK." He said, "OK, I get it now."

# Oooh. #

Thank you, Madison Square Garden.

What's happening when we go back to London?

You're one of the few bands that actually haven't left Britain.

We're sort of an English band in a way, we've always lived there.

Well, London particularly. We've always recorded in England.

It doesn't change the fact that the taxman still takes a lot of your money!

I think at the time, we were paying 83%,

and plus, if you had any money in the bank which was earning interest,

another 15%, which makes 98% tax.

So we decided to record the next album, which was "Jazz", in France.

So that's what we did. In a tiny little village called Super Bear,

we started the process of making this album.

# Bicycle, bicycle, bicycle

# I want to ride my bicycle, bicycle, bicycle... #

Lots of sort of local colour got put onto that album.

# I want to ride my bike... #

We were sitting there and the Tour de France cycle race came through

and inspired Freddie to write "Bicycle..."

and for some strange reason, inspired me to write "Fat Bottomed Girls".

Although there might have been other inspirations there.

# On your marks, get set, go! #

Sadly, we weren't there for the filming.

I thought it was a hugely amusing idea.

# Bicycle, bicycle, bicycle... #

I remember the huge disappointment that none of us could be at the photo shoot.

Because we were exiled from England, so we couldn't go back in to see it!

I don't think you'd be able to do that now, would you?

Yeah, I don't think we would go there these days.

# Bicycle race! #

When it came time to launch the "Jazz" album,

we had the idea of having a massive party in New Orleans.

# Oh, you gonna take me home tonight... #

It was the so-called launch of that album,

and we had lots of girls and things,

there was a New Orleans band, it was a very over-the-top party.

# Fat bottomed girls, you make the rockin' world go round... #

We had a bit of a spiritual connection with New Orleans.

A lot of our friends came, of all sexes.

It was definitely fun.

When I opened up the door of my suite,

on the bed was a complete case of Dom Perignon.

And it was downhill from there.

# Heap big woman, you made a bad boy out of me... #

I remember I felt quite ill the next day.

The story about the dwarves with the cocaine

being strapped in bowls to their head for people to help themselves to at a party

is, I think, complete bollocks.

I don't know. I don't remember!

There was a man, he was actually a person of restricted growth,

who did lay under meats.

When asked what he did, he said, "I lie under meats."

And he's covered in sort of cold cuts and sort of, um,

chopped liver and stuff like that. You couldn't see him.

So people would approach the trestle table

and as they just reached out to scoop their meat,

he would just move, like that.

And that was his act!

# Tonight, I'm gonna have myself a real good time

# I feel ali-i-i-ive... #

It wasn't a pretence, we actually did live the life of a rock band.

Sort of living on the edge, in a sense.

# Turning inside out, yeah

# Floating around in ecstasy

# So don't stop me now... #

"Don't Stop Me Now" is a whole different trip, really.

It's become one of the most popular Queen songs of all time.

# I'm a shooting star leaping through the sky like a tiger

# Defying the laws of gravity

# I'm a racing car passing by like Lady Godiva

# I'm gonna go, go, go, there's no stopping me

# I'm burning through the sky, yeah... #

It's a song of sort of unfettered joy.

# ..Mr Fahrenheit

# I'm travelling at the speed of light

# I wanna make a supersonic woman of you... #

I've been quoted as saying I don't like the track.

I kind of do like the track, but I had mixed feelings,

because in a sense, it represented a sort of separatism.

It was very much Freddie's world

and reflecting what he was going through.

Freddie took to the gay scene in New York

like David Attenborough making a wildlife programme.

He'd report on what he'd seen with that kind of "Hey-hey!" attitude that he had.

There was this one particular place called The Anvil,

which seemed to have invented new uses for parts of the human anatomy!

He was never shocked.

He was eager to be involved in everything,

it was like he was a social field worker.

# I wanna make a supersonic man out of you... #

As far as I'm concerned, I just want to pack in as much of life

and fun and having a good time as much as I can.

# If you want to have a good time, just give me a call

-# Don't stop me now

-Cos I'm having a good time.

-# Don't stop me now

-Yes, I'm having a good time

# I don't wanna stop at all

# Da-da da-da dah

# Da da da-ha

# Da-da-da ha-ha-hah

# Da-da-dah... #

The album "Jazz" was not a complete flop,

it got to number 6 in the chart.

But "Don't Stop Me Now", which is a big favourite in Britain to this day,

in America, only got to the 80s.

The review in Rolling Stone was notorious.

And it shows you that Queen were not respected.

We were confused by that title.

Why would a rock band call their album "Jazz"?

It had a couple of great tracks on it,

but it had some weaker stuff on it.

Queen was maybe viewed

as the Indian meal that had gone cold in the refrigerator.

What's going to happen in '79 for Queen?

We're going to make more records, tour even more.

It's difficult to say. This has been our hardest working year.

We'd heard that there was this great studio called Musicland

in Munich, and we'd heard there was this great engineer called Mack.

And we got into this rather kind of indulgent way of just

bowling into the studio with no ideas, or very few ideas,

and just doing it from scratch.

"What you got?" "Well, I've got this."

MUSIC: "Crazy Little Thing Called Love"

# This thing called love... #

Fred did write the song in the bath, in about ten minutes.

# This thing called love... #

He said, "Get me a guitar".

And he sat on the sofa and started the chords

to "Crazy Little Thing..."

# Crazy little thing called love... #

Next, he said, "Tell them I'm coming over and we've got to go straight into the studio."

-# Like a baby

-In the cradle all night... #

I was very quick, had everything set up in pretty much no time,

and they put it down, and then the best bit was,

"Quick, let's finish it before Brian gets here, otherwise it takes a little longer!"

# There goes my baby

# She knows how to rock and roll

# She drives me crazy

# She gives me hot and cold fever

# She leaves me in a cold, cold sweat... #

That was the first number 1 across the board in America.

Billboard, Cashbox and Record World, I think.

We were still making a record,

we hadn't even nearly finished the album,

and we were going out in Munich and somebody came up and said,

"It's gone to number 1 in America." We were going, "Yeah! More drinks!"

So, "Crazy Little Thing..." completely cracked the charts in America.

But it wasn't easy to find the follow-up.

"Play The Game" charted outside the US Top 40.

But the next single was something very different.

One thing I always liked about Queen was they were four individuals,

all of whom brought something to the table, musically and in terms of songwriting,

and that includes the bass player, John Deacon.

MUSIC: "Another One Bites The Dust"

I'd always wanted to do something that was more sort of disco-ey,

which was very uncool at the time.

I mean, funk wasn't really in the vocabulary.

Let's go!

John was pulling us strongly in that direction, sort of funky direction.

And John got Roger to play

with tape all over his drums, which is exactly what Roger hated.

Roger hated his drums being made to sound dead.

I didn't really want to get into dance music. It wasn't my thing.

# Another one bites the dust... #

Freddie got deeply into it, Freddie sort of sang it until he bled,

cos he was so committed to making it sound the way John wanted it, which was like hardcore...

I don't know what you would call it. But it's more towards black music than white music.

# How do you think I'm going to get along without you when you're gone?

# You took me for everything that I had and kicked me out of my home

# Are you happy? Are you satisfied? How long can you stand the heat?

# Out of the doorway, the bullets whistle to the sound of the beat... #

Michael came to several shows, I think, at the Forum in LA.

And he loved Freddie. And he kept saying,

"You guys, you've got to put that song out." I wasn't particularly enamoured with it,

so I said, "No, you're kidding, that's never a single."

# Another one bites the dust... #

"Another One Bites The Dust" was never seen as a single.

It barely made it onto the album!

It got on the radio and it got heard by people that didn't even know who the band was.

# Ah, take it! #

Strangely enough, the record became huge because of the black audience.

One particular station in New York picked it up,

thinking that we were a black band,

and played the hell out of it, and it became a huge hit.

It was like number 1 in nine different charts.

I mean, even in the country chart! It's ridiculous.

And this thing just kept selling, to around three million.

It was in the Hot 100 for 31 weeks.

When an opponent would get knocked out in a boxing match,

you'd hear "Another One Bites The Dust" used.

It became an anthem of triumph.

# Yeah, ye-e-e-e-a-a-ah! All right! #

I think it's still the biggest record we ever had.

# Another one bites the dust, yeah! #

People pointing at the cars - "You guys are bad!"

"What does that mean?" "It means you're good!"

# Another one bites the dust

# Hey, gonna get you too, another one bites the dust... #

If you're successful in America, basically, you've made it.

We kind of became the biggest group in the world at that moment.

It's a fleeting moment, because someone else will come

and take over. But for that moment, we kind of owned the world.

MUSIC: "We Are The Champions"

The sales figures tell the story that the people wanted Queen

even when the press didn't.

Looking back on it now, I'd say Queen were never in fashion.

We were never a fashionable group, I don't think.

Maybe that was to our benefit,

that we didn't become the thing of the moment, a fashionable thing.

We were just popular, which got right up some people's noses!

Fred, how do you feel, playing and singing

-before 200,000 people?

-Haven't done it yet!

Every song, you felt, was, "They're stealing the show".

I like Queen very much, but I don't want to end up life living a quartet.

The band was pretty much on the verge of falling apart.

I think he had an idea that he might not be terribly well.

He said, "I'll come back and finish it off," and he never came back.

That was the last moment that I had with him.

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