Roger Taylor of Queen

Last week, Brian May of Queen turned 65. This week is the birthday of his bandmate Roger Meddows Taylor, born July 26, 1949, who is turning 63. May and Taylor are not only the only members of the band to remain active – Mercury died in 1991 and Deacon retired in 1997 – but they were also the first two to start playing together, starting in 1968 when Taylor joined Smile, the group started by May and Tim Staffell. So May and Taylor have been playing together off and on for well over 40 years, and judging from recent appearances they’ve made, they still enjoy doing so.

Like May, Freddie Mercury, and John Deacon, Taylor was not only highly skilled in his chief instrument, but he could play several others, including guitar and keyboards. Also like May, he sang lead vocals on a number of Queen songs, chiefly ones he wrote himself. In fact, his vocals were featured even more prominently than May’s. Even though he wrote fewer songs in the group’s early days, he sang almost all of the ones he did write, unlike May, who only sang a small proportion of his songs. Furthermore, while both he and May did a lot of the backing vocals, Taylor sang the high harmonies, which gave his voice a prominent role even on songs where lead vocal duties were entirely handled by Freddie Mercury. Examples of this include the high notes on songs like “In the Lap of the Gods” and “Bohemian Rhapsody”. At least one reviewer that I read remarked that Taylor had a better voice than the lead vocalists for many other bands; of course with Freddie Mercury available, he didn’t use it as often as he might otherwise have.

Taylor was also a talented songwriter. In fact, Queen is one of very few groups in which every member wrote hit songs for the group. As I noted in my article on Brian May, in the group’s early years, the songwriting was dominated by May and Mercury. Taylor wrote at least one song on each album from the beginning (unlike John Deacon, whose first composition appeared on Queen’s third album), but it wasn’t until the late 1970s that he (and Deacon) started writing two songs per album. Also, though Taylor wrote some excellent album tracks such as “Tenement Funster”, “Drowse” and “Sheer Heart Attack”, he didn’t write any of the group’s hit singles (though he did famously get his “I’m in Love with My Car” onto the B side of “Bohemian Rhapsody”, thus earning a lot of royalties). But in the 1980s, Taylor was writing as much as Mercury or May – sometimes even more – including hits such as “Radio Ga Ga” (the song that Lady Gaga got her name from), “A Kind of Magic”, “The Invisible Man”, “Breakthru” (except for the opening section, written by Mercury) and “Heaven For Everyone” (though this song was originally written for his band The Cross and only later reworked for release by Queen). He was the main writer of Queen’s holiday song “Thank God It’s Christmas” (with some help from May) and he was the primary lyricist on the hits “One Vision” and “Innuendo”. He also wrote the hit single “C-lebrity” from the Queen + Paul Rodgers collaboration, as well as the album's other single, "Say It's Not True". In fact, Taylor wrote or was at least one of the main writers of the title track and/or lead single for all but one of Queen's albums starting with 1984's The Works (though I should note that on his first two hits, "Radio Ga Ga" and "A Kind of Magic", Mercury helped to polish the songs to bring out their hit potential). There was a noticeable change in Taylor’s songwriting style in the 1980s when he started using keyboards to compose, as the resulting songs were often very different from the guitar-based songs he wrote in the 1970s (though he continued to compose on guitar in the 1980s and afterwards). Like May, Taylor occasionally has addressed social and political issues in his lyrics, such as on “One Vision”, “Heaven for Everyone” and “Say It’s Not True”, as well as some of his solo tracks.

Taylor also has had the most prolific solo career of any of the members of Queen. He has released four solo albums and a long-delayed fifth one is supposedly nearing release (a single from it was released back in 2009). In the late 1980s, he also formed a band called The Cross in which he played rhythm guitar and sang lead vocals, and he wrote almost all the songs on their first album, though he contributed much less to their second and third albums. None of the other members of Queen released nearly as much solo material (unless the 10-CD Freddie Mercury box set is included, but most of that consisted of demos and unfinished material). However, except for a few songs here and there, I haven’t heard much of Taylor’s solo material, so my list of his best songs (including a few which others had a hand in writing, but Taylor wrote the vast majority of) is taken from his work with Queen, including the Queen + Paul Rodgers collaboration between Taylor, May and vocalist Paul Rodgers. In the future I may do an updated list incorporating some of his best solo tracks.

The Best of Roger Taylor
(All songs written by Roger Taylor and performed by Queen except where otherwise noted)
Tenement Funster (Lead vocals by Taylor)
I'm in Love with My Car (Lead vocals by Taylor)
Drowse (Lead vocals by Taylor)
Sheer Heart Attack
Fun It (Lead vocals by Taylor and Mercury)
Rock It (Prime Jive) (Lead vocals by Taylor, except opening section sung by Mercury)
Action This Day (Lead vocals on some lines by Taylor)
Radio Ga Ga
Thank God It's Christmas (Written with assistance from May)
A Kind of Magic
Breakthru (Intro written by Mercury)
These Are the Days of Our Lives
Heaven for Everyone (First recorded by the Cross, later re-recorded by Queen; lead vocals on Cross single version by Taylor)
C-lebrity (Queen+Paul Rodgers)
Say It’s Not True (Queen+Paul Rodgers; lead vocals by Taylor, May and Rodgers)

Modern Times Rock 'n' Roll (Lead vocals by Taylor), Coming Soon (Lead vocals on some lines by Taylor), The Invisible Man (Lead vocals on some lines by Taylor), Small

Brian May of Queen

Brian Harold May, born 65 years ago on July 19, 1947, is a musician, an animal rights activist and the holder of a PhD in astrophysics. He is best known as the guitarist for Queen. Queen was a highly versatile band that performed songs in a wide variety of genres. But two distinguishing features that were present in most (though not all) of the band’s songs, making them instantly recognizable as Queen songs. One was Freddie Mercury’s voice, and the other was Brian May’s guitar. In addition to his guitar playing, Brian May, like the other members of the group, wrote numerous songs and also occasionally played keyboards. His singing was a key part of the vocal sound for which Queen was famous, mostly as a backing vocalist for Freddie Mercury, but on some songs or parts of songs as a lead vocalist. He was largely responsible for ensuring that the band remained connected to its hard rock roots, as he contributed most of the band’s heavier, guitar-oriented songs, though he also wrote a few of the group’s best known ballads, and made occasional forays into other genres, such as the Dixieland-style “Good Company” and the vaudeville-style “Dreamers Ball”. May also was the first member of the band to address more serious topics in his lyrics on songs like "White Man", "Put Out the Fire" and "Hammer to Fall", though Roger Taylor likewise included some social commentary in his later lyrical contributions.

Brian May played in a number of groups in his youth, before founding Smile in 1968 with his school friend Tim Staffell on vocals and Roger Taylor on drums. Smile evolved into Queen in 1970 after Staffell left and Freddie Bulsara, who soon took the stage name Mercury, took over on vocals, soon after which the group settled on John Deacon as their bassist. As noted above, May’s guitar was a key element in the group’s sound from the beginning, especially the complex guitar harmonies he created on many tracks. Notably, many of his guitar parts were played on his Red Special, an electric guitar made by May and his father when May was in his teens. At the time Queen’s career took off, May was close to finishing a PhD in astrophysics, but he abandoned it for his music career, only completing it in 2007. In recent years he has also been active in promoting animal rights, particularly in fighting for a ban on fox hunting and the culling of badgers.

On the group’s 1970s albums, May and Mercury dominated the group’s songwriting, with May averaging about four songs per album, including hits and major album tracks like “Keep Yourself Alive”, “Now I’m Here”, “‘39” (the only song I know of to deal with time dilation, an effect of Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity”), "The Prophet's Song", “Tie Your Mother Down”, “We Will Rock You” (which remains one of Queen’s best known songs), and “Fat Bottomed Girls”. An example of his versatility as a composer can be seen in his songs for 1975's A Night at the Opera, which included "sci-fi skiffle" ("'39"), hard rock ("Sweet Lady"), progressive rock ("The Prophet's Song") and Dixieland trad-jazz (the aforementioned "Good Company"). In the early 1980s the songwriting was split more evenly, but May still wrote at least two songs on each album, among them tracks such as “Save Me”, “Flash”, “Hammer to Fall” and “Who Wants to Live Forever”. On The Miracle and Innuendo, the last two albums released in Mercury’s lifetime, all of the songs were credited to the group as a whole, as were several songs on the group’s last album featuring Mercury, Made in Heaven. Nevertheless many of these songs were largely or entirely written by one member of the band, including several, such as the hits “I Want It All” and “Headlong”, which were written by May. May also wrote the last new Queen song on which John Deacon played, a tribute to Mercury called “No-One But You (Only the Good Die Young)”, several songs on a collaboration between May, Taylor and vocalist Paul Rodgers, and the majority of the tracks on his two solo albums, Back to the Light and Another World. At the beginning of his career, he wrote several original songs that were performed by Smile, one of which was later recorded by Queen as a non-album B-side, and co-wrote several more with Tim Staffell (one of these, retitled "Doing All Right", appeared on Queen's debut album). There was also one original song on his first solo venture, an EP called Star Fleet Project, one of the other two songs being a cover of the theme song from a Japanese cartoon (the eponymous Star Fleet) and the third a lengthy jam with the other musicians involved, including Eddie Van Halen. May has also released a soundtrack album and a live album. Oddly enough, despite writing more songs for Queen than anyone else in the band except Freddie Mercury, fewer of his songs reached the top 10 in the UK, the only one officially attributed to him to do so being "Flash" (aka "Flash's Theme), though "I Want It All", written entirely by May but officially credited to Queen, was a number 3 hit (in the UK, "We Will Rock You" was technically considered a B-side to "We Are the Champions", so it did not hit the charts). This may be because May's songs were less pop than some of those the others wrote. However, many of his songs have been among those with the greatest staying power, particularly "We Will Rock You", which may actually be the most widely-known Queen song of all, at least in some parts of the world.

Since May has written too many songs for me to list them all here, I have instead picked some of the best and most widely known of his compositions. As usual, this list is not exhaustive. There are many good songs that I didn’t include, and there are some songs that I didn’t even consider because I’ve never heard them (e.g., the songs on Another World) or because May was not the sole writer of the song (e.g., “One Vision”, “The Show Must Go On”, “Too Much Love Will Kill You”, the solo track "Resurrection", and “Mother Love”). May was the chief writer of “The Show Must Go On”, for instance, but Deacon and Taylor wrote the main chord sequence and Mercury decided on the song’s theme with May and helped write the first verse, so May can’t be given all the credit – otherwise I’d have included it, as it is one of the best latter day Queen songs.

The Best of Brian May
(All songs performed by Queen except where otherwise noted)
Keep Yourself Alive (Lead vocals on bridge by May and Taylor)
Procession
White Queen (As It Began)
Brighton Rock
Now I’m Here
Dear Friends
’39 (Lead vocals by May)
The Prophet’s Song
Good Company (Lead vocals by May)
Tie Your Mother Down
Long Away (Lead vocals by May)
Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together)
We Will Rock You
It’s Late
Fat Bottomed Girls
Dead on Time
Dragon Attack
Save Me
Put Out the Fire
Las Palabras de Amor
Hammer to Fall
Who Wants to Live Forever (Lead vocals on first verse and part of bridge by May)
I Want It All (Lead vocals on bridge mostly by May)
Headlong
No-One But You (Only the Good Die Young) (Lead vocals by May and Taylor)
Back to the Light (Brian May solo track; vocals by May)
We Believe (Queen+Paul Rodgers)

Honorable Mentions: The Night Comes Down, Some Day One Day (Lead vocals by May), Sweet Lady, White Man, All Dead All Dead (Lead vocals by May), Leaving Home Ain't Easy (Lead vocals by May), Sail Away Sweet Sister (Lead vocals mostly by May), Flash’s Theme (Lead vocals on several lines by May), The Dark (Brian May solo track), Love Token (Brian May solo track; vocals by May), Just One Life (Brian May solo track; vocals by May), Still Burnin’ (Queen+Paul Rodgers), Some Things That Glitter (Queen+Paul Rodgers)

Ringo Starr Turns 72

Having done a birthday article on Paul McCartney last month, it’s only fair that I do one for his fellow surviving ex-Beatle, Ringo Starr, who was born as Richard Starkey 72 years ago on July 7, 1940. Ringo is held by many in less regard than the other Beatles, to the point where some seem to believe that he had little real talent and that if the Beatles had had another drummer they would have been just as successful. It is unquestionably true that Ringo didn’t have anywhere near the songwriting talent of John Lennon or Paul McCartney, or for that matter George Harrison, and as the Beatles’ reputation is founded in large part on their songs, in this sense he was less important. But it can be argued that he played a vital role in the band’s overall chemistry, and many critics and fellow musicians have said that his drumming skills are underrated.

I don’t feel qualified to judge Ringo’s drumming, but if excellent drummers like Phil Collins (who called the drum fills on “A Day in the Life” “very complex”) praise what he did with the Beatles, than it can’t be all that bad. It certainly works well with the songs, and his drumming on tracks like “Rain”, one that is often cited as having some of his best playing, sounds pretty good to me. He wasn’t a flashy drummer, but then the Beatles’ songs didn’t really call for flash. He did what the songs required, which is what counts, and he was clearly a better drummer than Pete Best, the group’s original drummer (even if the way the other Beatles went about firing Best was rather low). Of course as the drummer for the Beatles he influenced many drummers who came after him. His importance to the band’s chemistry was even more obvious. So while Ringo might not have been the band’s most talented member, he was far from dispensable. John Lennon even asserted that Ringo’s talent was such that he “would have surfaced with or without the Beatles.”

Ringo’s vocal skills were fairly limited, but he was effective enough on the songs he was given to sing, which included a few classics like “With a Little Help from My Friends” and “Yellow Submarine.” He only wrote two songs that were released by the Beatles, “Don’t Pass Me By” from The Beatles (1968) and (with a little uncredited help from George Harrison) “Octopus’s Garden” from Abbey Road (1969), which might not be considered classics but are still pretty good songs. He first received a composing credit for helping on the lyrics to “What Goes On” from Rubber Soul (1965). In earlier years, he generally sang covers, such as “Act Naturally” from Help (1965).

As a solo artist, Ringo had more difficulty sustaining a steady career, which was not surprising since his songwriting skills are limited and his singing, while pleasant, is unexceptional. He did release several very good singles in the immediate aftermath of the Beatles’ split, the first being “It Don’t Come Easy” (credited to Ringo alone, though George almost certainly helped – there’s even a bootleg version with George on lead vocals), which was one of Ringo’s best songs and was backed by the highly entertaining “Early 1970”, a humorous tune written by Ringo about his fellow Beatles and himself. The second single was “Back Off Boogaloo”, another rare solo Ringo composition, and almost as good as “It Don’t Come Easy”. He followed these with his one excellent solo album, 1973’s Ringo, which might well deserve a place among the top 10 solo Beatles albums (in fact if it weren’t for extra competition from Paul’s post-Anthology solo albums, its position in the top 10 would be guaranteed). That album also was unique in that it was the only post-breakup album to feature all four of the Beatles, and one song that had three of them, “I’m the Greatest”, on which Ringo was joined by John (the writer of the song) and George. It also included one of the best solo Beatles songs, “Photograph”, written by George and Ringo. This one is a real classic; I’d place it alongside “With a Little Help from My Friends” as one of the very best songs Ringo sang lead vocals on. There were a number of other standout tracks on the album, such as the abovementioned “I’m the Greatest”, a cover of Randy Newman’s excellent “Have You Seen My Baby”, George and former Beatles roadie Mal Evans’ “You And Me (Babe)”, Ringo and Vince Poncia’s “Oh My My” and “Devil Woman”, George’s “Sunshine Life for Me (Sail Away Raymond)”, Paul’s “Six O’Clock”, Ringo’s own “Step Lightly”, and the album’s other number 1 hit (along with “Photograph”), the oldies cover “You're Sixteen”.

But after Ringo, things went downhill. Its follow-up Goodnight Vienna was not bad, and included a few good songs such as the title track (written by Lennon), “Snookeroo”(by Elton John and Bernie Taupin) and the novelty “No No Song”. But it was not as consistent as Ringo, and the albums after that were even weaker, usually only having a one or two decent songs at best. His career petered out in the early 1980s, though it revived in the 1990s, and several of his albums since then have gotten decent reviews. I haven’t heard any of them in their entirety so I can’t say how they compare with his 1970s ones, but the few songs I’ve heard have been pretty good – one standout track that comes to mind is “Never Without You”, his George Harrison tribute from 2003’s Ringo Rama. Ringo, like Paul, the only other surviving Beatle, remains active today, and while his recent releases may not be as consequential as Paul’s, they are by most accounts enjoyable enough. In any event, Ringo can certainly take pride in the important role he played in the Beatles.

I have made a list of 25 of the best songs with Ringo on lead vocals, both with the Beatles and as a solo artist. Obviously there are other songs that could go on such a list (as I mention above, I haven’t even heard most of the songs from his later albums), but this covers most of the really great ones.

The Best of Ringo Starr
Matchbox (Perkins/Jefferson)
Act Naturally (Owens)
What Goes On (Lennon/McCartney/Starkey)
Yellow Submarine (McCartney/Lennon)
With a Little Help from My Friends (McCartney/Lennon)
Don’t Pass Me By (Starkey)
Octopus’s Garden (Starkey/Harrison)
It Don’t Come Easy (Starkey/Harrison)
Early 1970 (Starkey)
Back Off Boogaloo (Starkey)
Photograph (Starkey/Harrison)
I'm The Greatest (Lennon)
Have You Seen My Baby (Newman)
You're Sixteen (Sherman/Sherman)
Oh My My (Poncia/Starkey)
You and Me (Babe) (Harrison/Evans)
(It's All Down To) Goodnight Vienna (Lennon)
Snookeroo (John/Taupin)
No No Song (Axton/Jackson)
Wrack My Brain (Harrison)
Private Property (McCartney)
Weight of the World (O'Doherty/Velez)
After All These Years (Starkey/Warman)
Never Without You (Starkey/Hudson/Nicholson)
Fading In Fading Out (Starkey/Hudson/Burr)

Honorable Mentions: Sunshine Life for Me (Sail Away Raymond) (Harrison), Devil Woman (Poncia/Starkey), Six O’Clock (McCartney), Cookin' (In the Kitchen of Love) (Lennon), A Dose of Rock 'n' Roll (Groszmann), Give Me Back The Beat (Starkey/Hudson/Burr/Dudas/Grakal)

Note: Aside from those in the list above, the only other songs that I know of which Ringo received sole credit for writing were "Down and Out" (Starkey), “Step Lightly” (Starkey), and “Call Me” (Starkey).