John Deacon of Queen

Last month saw the birthdays of Brian May and Roger Taylor of Queen; this month, on August 19, the group’s bassist John Deacon turned 61. Deacon was the last member of the group to join, May, Taylor and Freddie Mercury having tried out a number of other bassists before recruiting Deacon. In addition to his bass-playing ability, his skill with electronics (which he earned a degree in) quickly proved useful to the band, and he also ended up handling a lot of the group’s financial matters. On bass, he contributed some highly melodic playing to both his own songs and those written by other members of the band. While bass was his main instrument, he also was a good guitarist, playing the instrument on a number of his own compositions. Brian May pointed out that on “Another One Bites the Dust”, it was Deacon who played the fast strummed guitar, and when May played the part in concert, it was one of the more difficult parts he had to play. Deacon also occasionally played some keyboards, most notably electric piano on “You’re My Best Friend”.

John Deacon was the last member of Queen to start composing for the group, with his first composition, “Misfire”, appearing on Sheer Heart Attack (released in 1974), the group’s third album. For the next three albums, he (like Roger Taylor) wrote one song apiece, before both he and Taylor started contributing two songs per album for the rest of the 1970s and into the 1980s. “You’re My Best Friend”, his contribution to Queen’s fourth album A Night at the Opera (released in 1975), was a top 10 hit in the UK, even though it was only his second song for the group (Roger Taylor didn’t have any hit singles for Queen until the 1980s). “Spread Your Wings”, from 1977’s News of the World, was also a minor hit. Like Taylor, Deacon was contributing equally in terms of songwriting by the early 1980s, writing songs such as “Another One Bites the Dust”, a No. 1 hit in the US, and “I Want to Break Free”, a big hit worldwide. He also collaborated frequently with Freddie Mercury, the two of them writing songs like “Cool Cat”, “Friends Will Be Friends”, “Pain Is So Close to Pleasure”, “Rain Must Fall” and “My Baby Does Me” (by some accounts, they were also the primary writers on “The Miracle”, though Mercury contributed the most and the other two also helped). In addition to these songs, Deacon wrote the bass line hook that opens the UK No. 1 collaboration between Queen and David Bowie “Under Pressure” – and so also the sample on which Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” was based (interestingly, Taylor said that after Deacon had come up with the bass line, they and Bowie took a break, after which Deacon had forgotten it; fortunately Taylor remembered it). Deacon’s songs were mostly melodic pop rock or funk, with a strong influence from black American music apparent in much of his writing.

Although he wrote many songs for the group, including a number of big hits, John Deacon was the only member of Queen who never sang on record, and for that matter rarely in concert (and his microphone was kept at low volume on such occasions). This may not mean he was a particularly terrible singer, just that his singing ability couldn’t match that of the other three, who were all quite good (and in Mercury’s case exceptionally so), though he himself said “I can't sing; it's the one thing I wish I could do, because it would make songwriting so much easier!”. In contrast to the others, particularly Roger Taylor, Deacon also released almost nothing in the way of solo work. He played on a number of songs by other artists and very occasionally produced or co-wrote songs for others, but his only real solo venture was when he formed the band The Immortals to record “No Turning Back”, a song which he co-wrote for a movie soundtrack in 1986.

After Mercury’s death, Deacon worked with the others on the album “Made in Heaven” and played with them on a few other occasions, making his last live appearance in January 1997 with May, Taylor and Elton John performing “The Show Must Go On”, and in October of the same year joining May and Taylor to record May’s song “No-One but You (Only the Good Die Young)”, after which he retired from music. He declined to join May and Taylor in their collaboration with Paul Rodgers, and he didn’t even show for their induction into The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, but he is said to still be in contact with the others (though unsurprisingly there are rumors that their relations are not as warm as is official stated). He evidently doesn’t feel the same irresistible urge to keep performing that May and Taylor do, though his participation in Queen during Mercury’s lifetime was in most respects (except vocals) the equal of the others, even if he was the most reticent in public (he himself said that on one occasion he was too shy to meet Prince Charles and Princess Diana before Live Aid, so he sent a roadie in his place). Still, he seemed largely content with the work he did with Queen, without feeling much need to venture out on his own. It is also possible that since in some ways Mercury was closest to him in musical tastes (aside from the songs they wrote together, supposedly it was Mercury’s support that helped overcome the others’ reservations about “Another One Bites the Dust”), he felt he would be consistently outvoted if he continued to work with May and Taylor, whose tastes lean more to hard rock. Regardless, he can certainly look back with pride on what he accomplished as a member of Queen.

The following is a list of John Deacon’s most notable songs with Queen – in fact if the “honorable mentions” are included it has all the songs solely credited to him. It includes a couple for which Freddie Mercury received a co-writing credit but which by several (admittedly vague and secondhand) accounts were mainly Deacon’s work, at least in terms of the music. It also includes one song that was credited to Queen but according to several reasonable credible sources was written by Deacon (this song, "My Life Has Been Saved", was originally a B-side to a single off 1989's The Miracle and was later reworked for 1995's Made in Heaven).

The Best of John Deacon (as performed by Queen)

You’re My Best Friend
You and I
Spread Your Wings
Who Needs You
In Only Seven Days
Another One Bites the Dust
Need Your Loving Tonight
Cool Cat (Written with Mercury)
I Want to Break Free
One Year of Love
Pain Is So Close to Pleasure (Written with Mercury)
My Life Has Been Saved (Credited to Queen)

Honorable Mentions: Misfire, If You Can't Beat Them, Back Chat, Rain Must Fall (Written with Mercury, credited to Queen)

Album Review – Rings Around the World by the Super Furry Animals

Album Title: Rings Around the World
Artist: Super Furry Animals
Release Date: July 23, 2001

Alternate Route to Vulcan Street
Sidewalk Serfer Girl
(Drawing) Rings Around the World
It's Not the End of the World?
Receptacle for the Respectable
[A] Touch Sensitive
Shoot Doris Day
Miniature
No Sympathy
Juxtapozed with U
Presidential Suite
Run! Christian, Run!
Fragile Happiness

All songs written by Super Furry Animals

It may seem from the artists I have mentioned in my blog so far (the Beatles, Queen, Randy Newman, Bob Dylan, Genesis, the Police, etc.) that I am stuck in the past as far as my musical tastes are concerned. There is some truth to this, for a number of reasons, e.g., I have been living in Asia since the mid 1990s and so get a little less exposure to new artists in the English-speaking world, I am interested in music history and so tend to look back more than forward, and I get enough variety in my listening pleasure out of all the older artists I listen to, so I can’t really be bothered to investigate newer artists. But there are a number of newer – or at least post-1990 – artists that I listen to, such as Radiohead, Muse, the White Stripes, Shakira, Amy Whitehouse and Outkast, just to name a few. One of my favorite (relatively) recent artists is the Welsh band Super Furry Animals. They are one of the few who I have liked sufficiently to make an effort to collect nearly all of their albums.

One thing that is interesting about the Super Furry Animals is that there is no real consensus among fans and critics as to which is their greatest – or most important or most significant – album. In this sense they are more like, say, Genesis than Queen, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan or the Beatles, all of whom have one or a few albums which are almost universally cited as their best. For SFA, as they are sometimes called, several albums have been called both their best album and their worst by different reviewers (opinions of Genesis albums, particularly the 1980s ones, are similarly varied). I myself like all of their albums to one degree or another, and I would have trouble picking one as my favorite. So for my first SFA review, I will just do the first CD of theirs I bought, their 2001 album Rings Around the World.

Rings Around the World was the Super Furry Animals’ fifth studio album, but it was their first on a major label. Several publications called it “near perfect” or their “best album to date”, though NME said it was “their worst”, even if that still meant it was better than a lot of other bands’ work, and Allmusic, despite a generally positive review, considered it less inventive than their previous albums. It was chosen by Mojo as the best album of 2001, which is where I first heard of it (and the band). My curiosity sparked by the Mojo review, I download MP3s of a few of the tracks off a P2P service. I liked them a lot, and so I went out and bought the CD (incidentally proving that music sharing can actually increase music sales – I wouldn’t have bought the CD if I hadn’t been able to download and listen to some songs first). While as I noted above I have since bought most of their other releases, some of which I like at least as much as this album, I still enjoy this one a lot.

As a number of reviewers and SFA themselves have noted, with a major label budget the band could indulge themselves, resulting in an eclectic, glossy production which ran a wide gamut of sounds and styles. While some critics and fan seem to feel the lush production meant the album had less of an edge than some of their independent releases – and I can understand their point of view, as lo-fi albums like Mwng appeal to me just as much as this one – I like complicated productions if they are done well, as I think is the case here. It gives the album a great deal of variety, which is something I always like in music. One of my favorite tracks, “Receptacle for the Respectable”, actually goes from prog rock to melodic pop to death metal in four and a half minutes, and also features Paul McCartney chewing celery in homage to his doing the same on the Beach Boys’ song “Vegetables”. Though no other single songs cover such a wide range in styles, there is still plenty of variety to be found elsewhere on the album. Another standout track, “No Sympathy”, starts out with acoustic guitars and Crosby, Stills and Nash-style harmonies (though it’s hard to imagine CSN singing “you deserve to die-ie-ie-ie…”) and then breaks down into jagged techno. The hit single “Juxtapozed with U”, another track I particularly enjoy listening to (though I know some fans of the band don’t care for it), is a very catchy “plastic” soul tune. Influences cited for the title track, “(Drawing) Rings Around the World” (which I also like a lot, though it is perhaps a tad repetitive) include Status Quo, the Beach Boys (clearly a big influence on the album as a whole) and ELO. Other notable tracks include “Presidential Suite”, which has an entertaining set of lyrics about the foibles of Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin attached to a chorus with a great melody, the 1960s pop-style “It's Not the End of the World?”, and the sharply ironic “Run, Christian, Run”.

One of the great strengths of this album, and for that matter of much of the Super Furry Animals’ work, is the strong melodies, most of which are the work of lead singer and chief songwriter Gruff Rhys (though the others have also written some quite melodic tunes, particularly on 2005’s Love Kraft). All of the songs mentioned above have excellent melodies – in fact, all the songs have good melodies, and many have very good if a bit wacky lyrics. The album’s eclecticism helps keep things interesting, especially since you never know when things will take a sudden left turn. On this album in particular SFA's influences are readily apparent, and yet they manage to update and adapt them in a way that sounds fresh. While this may not necessarily be the best or most representative Super Furry Animals’ album, I can attest to the fact that it’s a good place to start.

Note: I didn’t attempt to do a song-by-song review this time around, though maybe some day I’ll come back and tack one on.