Posthumous Queen Releases Part 2

This is a continuation of my previous blog post on "posthumous" Queen releases, i.e., ones that came out after the death of lead vocalist Freddie Mercury.

No-one But You (Only the Good Die Young)
This 1997 recording was the last newly recorded release to involve bassist John Deacon, who subsequently retired from music. The song was written by guitarist Brian May and was originally intended for a solo project, but when drummer Roger Taylor heard it, he suggested it could be released as a Queen song. Taylor also helped with the arrangement and suggested some changes to the lyrics. While Freddie Mercury himself was of course not on the recording, since he had been dead for six years, and so some might argue it isn’t a true Queen song on the basis that only songs with the full four man lineup are real Queen songs, there are also good arguments for including it as a legitimate part of the group’s canon. First of all, there were actually quite a few Queen songs that didn’t include the full band on the recording or that one or more members played a very minimal part on, including some without Mercury himself. May and Taylor, who handle the vocals here, of course sang lead vocals on a lot of their own compositions on the band’s classic 1970s albums and occasionally on later tracks. While Mercury usually did some backing vocals or even co-lead vocals and sometimes played piano on a lot of these, there were a few he seemingly didn’t appear on at all, so his absence on a “legitimate” Queen song is not unprecedented. What’s more, since the song was inspired by him and the lyrics are largely about him, he is arguably present in spirit (using the phrase loosely). As for the song itself, it is a very solid effort with a good melody, arrangement, and lyrics, and the three band members’ playing is up to their usual standards. It may not be one of their best songs ever, but it is still quite good and makes a nice farewell to Mercury, as well as a suitable swan song for Deacon as an active member of the band.

Queen + Paul Rodgers and The Cosmos Rocks
In 2004, Brian May and Roger Taylor teamed up with Paul Rodgers, formerly the vocalist for Free and Bad Company and the man behind hits such as “All Right Now”, for a concert tour and eventually a studio album named The Cosmos Rocks (released in 2008). They used the moniker “Queen + Paul Rodgers”, inevitably exciting debate among Queen fans about whether it was right to use the Queen name for the combination. This was not the first time the “Queen +” appellation had been used, as the EP featuring George Michael’s performance with May, Taylor and Deacon at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert had been billed as by “Queen + George Michael”, a one off live cover of “The Show Must Go On” with Elton John (Deacon’s last live performance) was released under the name “Queen + Elton John”, and May and Taylor did a cover of “We Are the Champions” with Robbie Williams using the name “Queen + Robbie Williams”, and other performances with guest vocalists had been similarly billed. The recording with Robbie Williams had generated some controversy, not least because Deacon made a statement critical of the combination, but May-Taylor-Rodgers grouping was the focus of even more intense discussion because it was not merely a one-off performance.

Of course no vocalist could replace Mercury in the sense of being exactly like him, and someone who attempted to imitate him would inevitably ring false. On the other hand, there is no reason that May and Taylor shouldn’t want to perform together as much as possible, and it is no surprise that their performances should focus on their work under Queen’s name, as most of their own best songs and recordings were originally performed by Queen. It is true any combination without Mercury or even Deacon can’t be considered Queen in the classic sense. But while May and Taylor’s decision to use the Queen name was obviously motivated in part by commercial considerations – not nearly as many people would turn up for a concert if they used the name Smile (May and Taylor’s pre-Queen band) or some other new name, or even their individual names – they were half of the classic band, they were performing Queen songs and the addition of “+ Paul Rodgers” (or “+ guest singer” for other combinations) to the name helped to distinguish the new grouping from the original group. So I don’t have any real objections to May and Taylor using the name, though I would still make some distinction between their performances with Rodgers and others and the classic four-man group.

As for the merits of the Queen + Paul Rodgers combination, it has been said with some fairness that while Rodgers is a good singer, he wasn’t necessarily a great fit for some of Queen’s material. I think there is something to this criticism. I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with radically different reinterpretations of songs, and in that sense it was interesting to hear Rodgers’ take on Queen’s songs, but many of them did sound less like Queen than they might have with a different vocalist. Adam Lambert, who May and Taylor have toured with more recently as Queen + Adam Lambert, seems to be a much better fit in this sense, since Lambert is stylistically much closer to Mercury while still being his own man (George Michael was the best guest vocalist at the tribute concert for much the same reasons). I tend to agree with the critics who have said Rodgers sounded best on the heavier tracks but sounded a bit out place on some of the other material. But since my goal here is to talk about new material released under the Queen name after Mercury’s death, I will just focus on The Cosmos Rocks, specifically the songs that struck me as being more Queen-like in my admittedly limited experience with the album.

Basically, while I enjoyed some of the songs that were written mainly by Rodgers, it is the ones written chiefly by Taylor or May that sound the most Queen-like, especially the ones the latter two sing lead on. This is not surprising, of course, as not only did May and Taylor write around half of Queen’s songs between them, they also sang prominently on quite a few of them. The standout songs for me were “C-lebrity”, “Small”, and “Say It’s Not True” (written by Taylor) and “Some Things That Glitter” and “We Believe” (written by May). These songs struck me as worthy of addition to the Queen canon, or at least as good candidates for inclusion. Some of the other songs were let down by weak lyrics – Taylor was particularly inconsistent in this area, writing good or even great lyrics on the above songs and terrible lyrics on others – and others just didn’t make much of an impression on me, though perhaps my view of them will change when I listen to the album more (for that matter, my favorable impressions of the songs mentioned might also change on closer listening).

Queen Forever
This compilation, which came out late last year, is the most recent Queen release and the first since Made in Heaven to feature previously unreleased material recorded with Freddie Mercury. Unfortunately, the new material is limited to three songs. The rest is previously released Queen songs. While these are of course mostly very good, they are unnecessary for fans like me who have the albums already, with the possible exception of a few songs like “Lily of the Valley” which on the original albums opened or close with segue-ways to other songs, making it difficult to separate them for purposes of making mix tapes or compilations. It would have been better to have released the new material with some demos or other unreleased material, if at all possible, or perhaps as an EP. Regardless, here’s my take on the new songs.

Let Me in Your Heart Again
This song, written by Brian May, was the only song that was completely new to me. It had been previously released, but only on an album by Anita Dobson, then May’s lover and later his wife. Queen had attempted a recording for the 1984 album The Works but abandoned it, and those initial efforts served as the basis for this recording. It’s a pretty good song, though not a great one, and qualifies as an authentic Queen song, if not a classic.

Love Kills
This song was familiar to me and most fans as a Freddie Mercury solo track. Supposedly it was also considered for The Works but rejected before being released by Mercury as a solo track from the soundtrack of Giorgio Moroder’s restoration of the classic film Metropolis, and apparently all four members of the group, including Deacon, appear on it. If it had been on The Works, it would have been the first Queen song to have been co-written by someone outside the band (in this case Moroder, who wrote it with Mercury), with the only later examples being “All God’s Children” (written by Mercury and Mike Moran) and “Too Much Love Will Kill You” (written by May with Frank Musker and Elizabeth Lamers). The version on Queen Forever is much slower than the Mercury solo version. It’s a decent track, though I haven’t decided whether I like this version or the Mercury solo version better. In any event, both versions fall into the “good but not great” category.

There Must Be More to Life Than This
This track, a version of a song written and previously released by Mercury on his first solo album Mr. Bad Guy, was the most widely discussed new release on Queen Forever because it is a duet between Mercury and Michael Jackson. It was one of (supposedly) three songs Mercury and Jackson recorded together in the early 1980s, but unfortunately this was the only one May and Taylor were able to get permission to release. I’ve previously heard a pirated recording of this song with just Jackson on vocals as well as a duet version, and I’ve also heard a pirated version of the Jackson song “State of Shock” sung by Mercury and Jackson (I’ve never seen or heard any version of the third song, said to be called “Victory”). It was one of the better songs on Mr. Bad Guy, and this is a reasonably good version as well, though it’s a little hard for me to think of it as a Queen song.

Though some of the songs discussed above (including "No-one But You" and the songs from The Cosmos Rocks) only seem to marginally qualify as Queen songs, they are all pretty good and if assembled together could make a decent Queen album, though a somewhat short one. In any case, while it is probably too much to expect any more releases of unreleased material by the classic Queen lineup, I hope May and Taylor continue to make music, including perhaps some new recordings together (it might be interesting to see what they could do with Lambert, for example). The old Queen may be gone forever now, but as the song says, "the show must go on".