Queen Are the Champions

They all Want to Break Free...

2012-06-15T05:33:00.001-07:00

It's a pretty memorable image isn't it? Freddie Mercury with his vacuum cleaner & heels, the other members of Queen dressed in women's clothes for the I Want to Break Free video (1984). A concept that was reportedly proposed by drummer Roger Taylor, the video parodied the long-running British soap opera Coronation Street.

It's a look that's often imitated, with varying levels of success. Sometimes in public, sometimes in the safety of people's homes. Through the wonder of social networking, many people have shared these images or been cruelly exposed by their "friends". Here follows some of my favourites...

Katie Price

Ian Beale (Adam Woodyatt)

Marathon Man #1

Ming the Merciless mustache!

You hardly notice the mustache...

Check out his dual cyclone!

About as tidy as my kitchen...

Marathon Man #2

Brilliant Bohemian Rhapsody Cover

2012-06-14T04:39:00.002-07:00

The Braid's 1996 cover of Bohemian Rhapsody is one of my personal favourites. It's sung in a vocal style from the other end of the spectrum to Freddie Mercury's, but that's the beauty of cover versions...

The story of the Braid's version began back in 1995 in the mind of San Francisco musician Stephan Jenkins (Third Eye Blind), who had the idea of revamping Queens classic pop opera with a 1990's R&B sound. Good fortune and the incredible inbreeding of the San Francisco music scene led him to the two women who were the Braids: Zo Ellis and Caitlin Cornwell. The rest, as they say, is history.

With its sparse insistant beat, intricate musical fills and some irresistable diva-esque vocals, what could have been a laughable remake of a beloved rock favorite became an delightful and original worldwide smash. "Caitlin is the only singer I can think of who has enough power and nuance in her voice to do Freddie Mercury justice", Jenkins says. "When Mojo Magazine asked me to list the top ten singers of all time, it was easy for me to put Caitlin and Freddie Mercury on the list together".

The Braids Bohemian Rhapsody sold over 300,000 records around the world in 1996, a remarkable figure for a single from the soundtrack to a little-seen film (High School High). The single went gold in Norway, silver in France, and platinum in New Zealand, and was a chart success just about everywhere, from Holland, Norway and Italy to Sweden, Canada and Japan.

Top Ten Most Played Queen Songs Revealed

2012-06-13T04:45:00.000-07:00

As Great Britain celebrates 60 years of Her Majesty’s reign, the music licensing company PPL has revealed which of her namesake band’s hits are the most played by the British public.

The band Queen are almost as universally loved as Queen Elizabeth herself, formed in 1971, their style of glam stadium rock has influenced the work of many. They have had 18 number one albums and 18 number one singles making them one of the world's biggest selling bands.

Despite lead singer Freddie Mercury's untimely death in 1991, Queen have continued to perform with various guest vocalists including Paul Rogers and more recently, Adam Lambert. For the Queen's Golden Jubilee in 2002, lead guitarist Brian May famously played the National Anthem from the rooftop of Buckingham Palace.

The top ten most played Queen songs are:

1) A Kind Of Magic
2) Don't Stop Me Now
3) Under Pressure
4) I Want To Break Free
5) Bohemian Rhapsody
6) Killer Queen
7) Somebody To Love
8) Radio Ga Ga
9) We Will Rock You
10) You're My Best Friend

"Queen are undeniably one of the greatest bands Britain has ever produced," said Jonathan Morrish, Director of PR and Corporate Communications at PPL. "These really are classics and show how their music has been such a part of people's lives. These songs make the perfect soundtrack to a Jubilee party this week."

A Kind Of Magic was released in 1986 for the film Highlander and reached number three in the UK singles chart. The top ten tracks are compiled from PPL's exclusive data which includes TV, radio and online usage as well as songs played in bars, shops, restaurants, gyms and other public places that use music.

Freddie Mercury Cupcakes

2012-06-07T03:03:00.001-07:00

May I tempt you with a Freddie Fondant Fancy...?

Can Anybody Find me Graffiti to Love?

2012-06-07T02:34:00.000-07:00

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Graffiti is is writing or drawings scribbled, scratched, or sprayed illicitly on a wall or other surface in a public place. Some of it is truly Bohemian!

Freddie Mercury Birthday Cakes

2012-05-21T04:56:00.001-07:00

We all like a nice birthday cake on our special day, don't we? Being a Queen fan, I was interested to find some examples of Freddie Mercury themed cakes. Some appear to have turned out better than others...

This one seems to be nspired by Freddie's Live Aid performance...

This one is my personal favourite, too good to eat?

Another Live Aid outfit, but with slightly longer legs...

Nice effort, but if I was Janet, I would have been scared by Freddie's Banana fingers and Rabbit teeth...

Hmmm, more like a crime scene than a celebration. Even the mustache appears disappointed with the results...

What exactly is a Bohemian Rhapsody?

2012-04-06T12:39:00.000-07:00

BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs listeners recently chose Bohemian Rhapsody as their favourite pop song. It's the only number one about a murder trial to feature both opera and head-banging. But just who is Bismillah?

Freddie Mercury used a piano as the headboard of his bed. The double-jointed Mercury would awake with inspiration, reach up and back behind his head and play what he'd heard in his dreams. This was how Bohemian Rhapsody began.

Some 20,000 people bought the single every day in its first three weeks of release in 1975, it's been number one twice so far and it's played on a radio somewhere in the world about once an hour. It's also now been chosen as the favourite pop song of Desert Island Discs listeners.

It was no critics' favourite though - the Melody Maker dismissed it on release as "Balham Amateur Operatic Society performing The Pirates Of Penzance"

So what's going on?

The essential story is not pop's greatest enigma: a man confesses a murder to his mother, vainly pleads poverty in a trial and ends up resigned to his fate. But questions remain: who did he kill and why? And why does the judge talk funny?

Indeed, it's the language in the court scene that arouses most curiosity. There's a touch of Italian culture: Scaramouche is a buffoonish stock character in commedia dell'arte; Galileo was a Florentine astronomer found guilty of heresy by the Inquisition and Figaro is the title character of Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville, in which he helps true love to prevail.

Sticking with Spain, the fandango is a flamenco dance, which had appeared at number one eight years previously in A Whiter Shade Of Pale.

"Mamma mia", of course, means "my mother" in Italian - and was the title of the chart-topper which followed Bohemian Rhapsody - but it's also an exclamation in a moment of high drama. And that's how much of the song works. We don't need to be familiar with 16th-Century Italian theatre to know the "poor boy" is in some pretty serious trouble. The counsel for the defence tries to match the prosecution's ornate flourishes - "spare him his life from this monstrosity" - but it doesn't do much good.

Freddie Mercury, of course, enjoyed ornate language as much as spandex unitards and there's a sense of revelling in sound and phrase.

Senior Lecturer in English at UCL and Queen fan Matthew Beaumont says: "The architecture of Bohemian Rhapsody - and it is an architecture - is self-consciously, ostentatiously baroque. It is rich in ornate, curious details, occasionally Moorish in provenance. Also in soaring, sometimes dizzy-making, shifts of register and in a lachrymose emotiveness that is almost impossible to resist."

It's also impossible to resist seeking something autobiographical in the lyric. Paul Gambaccini told Kirsty Young: "Tim Rice has this theory that it's to do with [Mercury] coming to terms with being gay, and I think there's a lot in that - the resignation, the abandonment of a previous role." The allusions to persecution and secret love in Galileo, Figaro and the rest don't hurt this theory, but not everyone agrees.

In 2004, Queen's Greatest Hits became the first rock album allowed on sale in Iran. The cassette came with an explanatory leaflet which insisted the hero "killed a man" by accident, then sold his soul to the devil. On the night before his execution he calls God in Arabic - "Bismillah" - and so regains his soul from Satan.

Ben Elton has offered a re-interpretation in the musical We Will Rock You, where Scaramouche and Galileo become singing rebels in a future society where rock music has been banned by baddies.

For many listeners, though, Bohemian Rhapsody is "about" sheer sonic bombast, as captured on film in Wayne's World. But its ambition - and its length - were nearly its undoing. Record company EMI was reluctant to release it as a single until the band slipped a copy to DJ Kenny Everett, who played it on Capital Radio 14 times over the following weekend, persuading EMI, the BBC and other sceptics that the listening public could handle it.

Queen also regarded the song as a mini-showcase of their technical skill. "We felt that Bohemian Rhapsody probably captured more or less all the types of moods that we were doing," Mercury told Phonograph Record magazine in 1976. "So we thought: OK, this is what we want to present to the public and let's see what they do with it."

The public's choice of "Bo Rap" as a desert-island favourite is also, perhaps, a vote for kitsch. It's a song about love, loss and death that's undoubtedly silly. "We viewed it quite tongue-in-cheek," Mercury insisted, but that lets you take it to heart as seriously as you like. "It's fairly self-explanatory," drummer Roger Taylor told the BBC, "there's just a bit of nonsense in the middle."

It was also Taylor who made possibly the most inspired decision during the recording sessions. He locked himself in a cupboard until everyone agreed the b-side would be his song I'm In Love With My Car.

Though less celebrated, Taylor's track automatically sold a copy every time someone bought Bohemian Rhapsody - with according royalties.

Article originally published at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13761091

Rock Music History....in Zanzibar?

2012-04-03T16:06:00.003-07:00

In the midst of the tropical island paradise of Zanzibar, lies a significant piece of pop music history.

A walk through the narrow alleyways of the Stone Town, leads you to Mercury House No. 39, the building where the late rock star, Freddie Mercury spent most of his childhood.

Freddie Mercury was born as Farouk Bulsara on 5th September, 1946 to Parsi parents who had migrated to the East Africa island from India.

He was sent to boarding school in Bombay, India in 1955 and stayed there until 1963 when he returned to Zanzibar. It was in India that Farouk became Freddie. At the age of 17, Mercury and his family fled to the UK during the 1964 Zanzibar Revolution.

Together with guitarist Brian May, bassist John Deacon and drummer Roger Taylor, he formed the group Queen in 1970 and they would go on to enjoy unparalleled success for the next decade and a half with total worldwide sales of 300 million albums.

In 2008, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked him number 18 on their list of the 100 greatest singers of all time. Mercury died in 1991, from complications arising from HIV/Aids.

Zanzibar retains reminders of its ties to the rock legend including the apartment where he and his sister were born and raised.

Mercury House, which has since been converted into a hotel, is on the main thoroughfare of the islands - nestled between restaurants, souvenir shops and forex bureaus.

Besides a sign board at the entrance with a biography of Mercury and the sight of several tourists taking pictures of the building, there is little else to indicate that this is the street where one of the world’s most revered pop legends was born.

Located right by the seaside is Mercury’s, a restaurant built as a tribute to the late singer where a local group of musicians called The Coconut Band play a mix of Kiswahili and English classics every Saturday night.

With pictures of Freddie Mercury and other Queen memorabilia at every corner, this is a spot that seems very popular with tourists.

Man plays Bohemian Rhapsody - with his bare hands

2012-03-30T14:29:00.001-07:00

I'd like to shake this fella by the hand (after he's washed them thoroughly of course)....

Belgian Navy sings Don't Stop Me Now

2012-03-30T14:20:00.000-07:00

I think I'm going to change nationality and sign up for the Belgian Navy! Mind you, I didn't even know that Belgium had a Navy...

Freddie Mercury Vs Justin Bieber

2012-03-30T13:55:00.001-07:00

It's Wrestlemania 28 this weekend and to celebrate, here's a dream match for you...Freddie vs Bieber...I wonder who is the champion...?

Photo of the Week...

2012-03-30T06:37:00.001-07:00

Everybody's Mr Bad Guy...in the sunshine.

Queen Russian Nesting Dolls

2012-03-19T02:30:00.000-07:00

A matryoshka doll is a Russian nesting doll, a set of wooden dolls of decreasing size placed one inside the other. The first Russian nested doll set was reportedly carved in 1890. Traditionally the outer layer is a woman, The figures inside may be of either gender; the smallest, innermost doll is typically a baby crafted from a single piece of wood. Much of the artistry is in the painting of each doll, which can be very elaborate.

Feast your eyes if you will on these examples that I have found, themed around Freddie and the boys. Is it just me or are they a little bit...creepy?

Brian May & Dappy perform in the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge

2012-02-29T04:28:00.000-08:00

Adam Lambert On Working With Queen...

2012-01-25T05:16:00.000-08:00

Singer Adam Lambert says he's not taking over as the frontman for Queen, but adds “there's more stuff coming up this year.”

During an interview last week on Alice Radio's Sarah & Vinnie, Lambert dismissed rumors that he was preparing to take over as the frontman for the British rock band Queen, which currently includes Roger Taylor and Brian May. Taylor and May formed the band Smile, which Freddie Mercury altered to Queen when he joined. Mercury died in 1991 of complications due to AIDS.

“That was a rumor as far as taking over, touring with them,” Lambert said. “But I got to perform with them on the European Music Awards – it was amazing – and I think there's going to be some more stuff coming up this year. That's all I can say for right now. But the goal is to try to like do my thing and maybe do a little of their thing.”

When asked if he had brought his boyfriend Sauli Koskinen to the San Diego studios, Lambert, whose second studio album Trespassing will be released on March 20, answered that Koskinen was back home in Los Angeles.

“This is a two-day trip,” he said. “We don't need to hold hands all the way.”

(Source of article: http://www.ontopmag.com)

Brian meets Chickenfoot

2012-01-24T04:44:00.000-08:00

Rock band Chickenfoot recently undertook a short jaunt round Europe to promote their really quite brilliant Chickenfoot III album. Brian May recently met up with them and commented: "I had a great time with these guys last weekend. And boy - what an encyclopedia of how to play great rock music. Chickenfoot rock - all real, all brilliant musicianship … all power and passion." (brianmay.com).

Photos by http://christiegoodwin.wordpress.com/

If you are unfamiliar with Chickenfoot's music, take a listen to this:

Check out their website: http://www.chickenfoot.us/

Origami Queen

2012-01-22T15:58:00.000-08:00

Check out these insanely detailed and highly stylized, paper versions of Queen by People Too...

23 Queen songs in 9 minutes...

2012-01-21T15:53:00.000-08:00

Musician Gregg M was invited as a guest in a ‘Queen evening’ and felt that a simple cover version was not the way to go. Therefore he decided to create something new and challenging, in order to entertain the audience, Gregg says it was “Like a Human Jukebox, actually …. It took a while for me to figure out how to begin the monster and I worked it bit by bit. I separated it in several parts, each including 4 or more songs and then put the pieces together, just like a giant musical jigsaw puzzle. Two days later, and something like 20 hours of musical work of writing, rehearsing and demoing, I sent a draft to my singer (who’s with me in my band, The Sunchase, as well as my ‘twisted covers concept’, the Guest-Sessions) and we rehearsed it bits by bits some days later. We decided it would be more fun if we did not have any chart on stage so we worked really hard to remember everything and went onstage at ‘Le Zèbre’ in Paris the week after that.”

I hope you enjoy the Queen Mashup!

Further details for Gregg M and his music are available at ;
http://www.thesunchase.net/
http://www.onemonthonesong.com/

Why Queen's Hot Space Has Sadly Always Been Luke Warm

2012-01-20T07:51:00.000-08:00

Are you sitting down? It really hurts me to say this, but in my opinion, this is Queen's worst album. In summary 1980's disco music never really suited Queen at all...

I would love to tell you that Hot Space is a lost classic, its lowly reputation a result of snobbery, but it just isn't. The best example of this is when Freddie nearly gives himself an injury trying to make Hot Space work, with some fairly excruciating results. "Give ME your BOD-AAAAY! SEX-AAAAAAAY SEX-AAAAY BOD-AAAAY! Look at MEEEEEEE! Look at MEEEEEE!" he cries on the track Body Language...

Queen took most of 1981 off to work on the follow-up to their big 1980 hit album The Game. Fans were confident that the band's next release would follow in their winning tradition of classic albums. Unfortunately, this was the case. Unlike its predecessor, Hot Space is an inconsistent effort, marred by some unfocused song writing and material that was simply not as strong as their earlier work.

No-one can aruge with the brilliance of disco inspired "Another One Bites the Dust" on the Game album, but sadly Queen decided to dedicate the entire first side of Hot Space to dance/disco music, something that alienated rock fans. And while Body Language nearly cracked the U.S. Top Ten, the rest of the dance material was easily forgettable -- Back Chat, Staying Power, Action This Day and so on -- however, the album is not a total washout. The more rock-oriented second side does contain some great tracks, such as Put Out the Fire, Calling All Girls, Las Palabras de Amor, and the excellent David Bowie collaboration &"Under Pressure." But it was not enough to save Hot Space from a cruel critical and commercial fate. It's worth noting that to date worldwide, Hot Space has sold approx 5 million copies. Compare that however with A Night at the Opera, which has sold approx 11 million copies and you might just see the point I am trying to make in this post...

Out of Africa...

2012-01-19T05:09:00.000-08:00

This is a guest post by LESLEY-ANN JONES, an award-winning journalist and author with over 20 years' experience in London, New York and Hollywood. Please, please check out her book FREDDIE MERCURY: THE DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY which was revised and updated in 2011.http://lajwriter.blogspot.com

Freddie Mercury, a Parsee born in Zanzibar, was educated at St. Peter's School in Panchgani ('Five Hills'), Western India. This tranquil old town with its lush strawbery fields, quaint old bungalows and ancient Parsee dwellings was founded during the Raj, as a sanatorium and rest resort. Looking out across coastal plains, dense forest and the River Krishna, it is a popular destination for tourists, who make the five-hour journey from Mumbai to walk, ride and unwind away from the heat and dust of the Indian plains. Freddie Mercury loved it there - and found, years later, in the Swiss lakeside resort of Montreux, a similarly peaceful mountain haven which reminded him so much of his school days.

Ahead of publication of Freddie Mercury The Definitive Biography in India, I have just given this interview there about Freddie's 'Indian roots'.

Q: As a rock journalist who covered and followed Mercury for years, what went through your mind as you settled down to pen the opening lines of this biography?

A: I have always believed in leaving the writing of the opening chapter until last. It should serve, ideally, as an overview, as well as a prelude to what's to come. This time was no exception: I wrote the LIVE AID chapter first, then took Freddie's story right back to the beginning, to Zanzibar – and followed it from there. I had planned a summary of Queen's career and Freddie's life and times for the introduction – but then I heard from Roger Tavener. He had been the showbiz reporter on the Daily Express when I was covering mainly rock and pop for the Daily Mail. In the Eighties, we were 'bitter rivals', chasing the same stories and each other across the world. One evening in May 1986, we found ourselves in a bar with Freddie. The surreal night with him that ensued was something that we agreed not to write about at the time. We didn't analyse it, we simply decided not to compromise his privacy. Had our editors found out that we had thrown away that exclusive, we would have been fired for it – but we took a chance, and let it go. That felt right. Many years later, Roger Tavener (who has been living in Australia) came across his old notebooks, and got in touch with me, having heard through mutual friends that I was researching/writing this book. Some pennies dropped. Our collective memories of that unforgettable evening distilled into appropriate introduction to Freddie's story. It was a gift. So I decided to begin with that experience of him. I must say that I felt sad and deeply nostalgic for those 'good old days' as I sat writing it. That gush of memories made me miss Freddie very much.

Q: Did you find yourself feeling challenged at any point, that you perhaps hadn't done complete justice to a modern legend and his art?

A: I hope that I have done Freddie justice, and that I left few stones unturned. He was a remarkable, complex, complicated and in many ways unique individual. I have done my best to understand and explain him – as much as anyone can. Do any of us really know ourselves? I have written extensively about the 'two Freddies', but I think in fact that there were many more of him than that. He was all kinds of Freddies, to all kinds of people. I honestly believe that I got as close as I could to most of them, thanks to the generosity of those who had known and worked with him, many of whom agreed to be interviewed. I couldn't have done it without them.

Q: Which segment of Freddie's life was the most difficult to chronicle, and why?

A: Perhaps the hardest part of Freddie's life to chronicle was the concluding chapter of his life. I didn't see him again after the final Queen gig in 1986, so I had no first-hand experience. I had to rely on what other people who had been with him at the end could tell me – notably Jim Hutton, Freddie's last live-in partner, and Peter Freestone, Freddie's personal assistant. Both were immensely open and honest – at times painfully so. I tried my best to read between all the lines, and imagine what they must have gone through as Freddie slipped away.

Q: Mercury chose to keep his Indian roots under wraps once he moved to London. While researching this portion of the biography, what was the mood like as you interacted with friends, family and acquaintances, especially since most were aware of his choice?

A: When Freddie moved to London and immersed himself in the music and art scenes, during the late 60s, it was not common for rock stars to have exotic/ethnic roots. He had changed his first name from Farrokh to Freddie while at school in Panchgani, India – primarily because it was less of a mouthful, and because St. Peter's was the very model of an English public school. In London, he was Freddie Bulsara at college, and on occasions, when he auditioned for bands, 'Fred Bull'. I believe that it was not so much a case of him hiding his Indian roots as of him being inclined to close chapters as he went through life. As he left each stage, that was it, done – and on to the next. Freddie's father had a British passport, and Freddie had expressed enormous enthusiasm for a move to London when the Zanzibar revolution came. This was the perfect opportunity to reinvent himself in a thrusting, progressive part of the world which could not be more different from Zanzibar and India, where he had been born, brought up and educated. Freddie was always mindful of his family's religion and culture. He adored his parents and sister Kashmira, and did his utmost not to offend them. Certain ways in which he chose to live were not acceptable to the Parsee way of life. He retained his connections to India, however: his aunt Sheroo in what was then Bombay was very dear to him. The Taj Mahal remained his favourite monument on earth.

Q: How different would rock music have sounded, had Mercury and Queen been around today?

A: 'Bohemian Rhapsody' was Freddie's magnum opus. I believe it was his expression of the need to allow himself to live a homosexual lifestyle. It was him giving himself permission to leave the 'old' Freddie behind. He was killing him off ( 'Mamma, just killed a man, put a gun against his head, pulled the trigger, now he's dead, etc) although that original Freddie still haunted him ('I see a little silhouetto of a man …' etc). He could then move on to become the new Freddie. The lyrics were obscure, however, and he never explained them. Like any poet, he dismissed requests for explanations: 'if you see it, darling, then it's there'.
'Somebody To Love' was much simpler, and more direct: In this song, he expressed loudly and clearly the universal desire to find just one person in life to love, who will love us in return; a true soulmate, if there exists such a thing. The closest he came to achieving that was with his first love, Mary Austin. The relationship they shared endured for the rest of his life – on a non-physical level, at least. But he could not have Mary AND his gay lovers. This was his dilemma. The particular ideal that he longed for, then, did not and could not exist. Or did it? I believe he came pretty close to it with the German actress Barbara Valentin. She was his lover in every sense, and very different from Mary Austin. Barbara was prepared to share Freddie with gay lovers – and indeed, did so. But such a scenario is madness, and cannot continue for long. For the sake of sanity, Freddie walked away from it. It didn't stop him wanting it.
Freddie's death crystallised a moment in time for Queen and their music. With Freddie gone, their songs were preserved in perpetuity. Because of their quality, these songs have never aged. They sound as fresh and as ground-breaking today as they did when they were recorded and first released. Would Queen have gone on to record more and more music, had he lived? That's hard to say. The Rolling Stones have produced very little in recent years. When they tour, they churn out their greatest hits for the fans who flock to see them and relive their own past. By the early 80s, Freddie had come to hate touring. He loathed life on the road. He adored performing, however. His primary concern, during his final couple of years, was to leave the rest of the band with enough recorded vocals for them to go on playing and creating Queen songs. Would Queen's unique and varied sound have continued to evolve, as well as influence subsequent generations of bands? Most definitely. I don't think that rock music would have sounded 'different', as such. There would simply have been more Queen for us to enjoy.

Q: Was there another side to the enigmatic musician you discovered while writing this biography?

A: Another side to Freddie? As I said earlier, there were many. Perhaps the most surprising thing about him was that he was not in any way a rock diva. When he was not out there on stage, commanding the attention of perhaps 80,000 fans at a time, holding them in the palm of his hand, he dropped all the flamboyant behaviour and was simply a nice, modest guy. There was nothing 'tantrums and tiaras' about him. He did not draw attention to himself. He did not regard himself as a celebrity, but as a musician. He did not seek out the company of other artists, he let them come to him. He touched base with very few – Elton John was perhaps his closest 'famous' friend - and now, Elton is set to write about their friendship in his own new book about the AIDS epidemic.
Freddie's music spoke for itself. He never saw the need to blow trumpets. I loved him for this.

10 Things You May Not Know About Queen

2012-01-16T05:52:00.000-08:00

Perhaps the thing that gets lost in the noise about Queen, behind all the flashy stories of Freddie Mercury's personal life and the band's hit singles, is their recording and artistic prowess.

So, here are ten facts that you may not know about Queen, from their recording techniques to the secrets behind the band's famous crest logo...

1) It was reportedly Roger Taylor's idea for the band to dress up as women for the "I Want To Break Free" promo clip. You may remember the image of Mercury, with moustache in full bloom, hoovering the living room with a pointy, buxom chest working it's magic.

2) The Queen song "Sheer Heart Attack" doesn't appear on the album of the same name. It made News of the World a few albums later, which incidentally features Robots, not Rupert Murdoch on the cover.

3) When A Night At the Opera was released in November 1975, it was the most expensive studio album ever recorded. The band used six different studios to record it, and Mercury spent several months alone recording his vocals. Also, according to the band, they used no synths.

4) "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" was the only song Freddie wrote on a guitar. According to sources, he was relaxing in the bathtub when he thought of it.

5) The four members of Queen were all a bit, well...brainy...for example:

Brian May: PhD in Astrophysics
Roger Taylor: Degree in Dentistry & Biology
John Deacon: First Class honours degree in Electronics
Freddie Mercury: Degree in Art & Graphic Design

6) Queen's famous crest logo was designed by Freddie Mercury, who incorporated the band's collective zodiac signs (Leo, Cancer, Gemini). leo (Roger and John), cancer (Brian) and virgo (Freddie). On top of the "Q" is a Phoenix, the bird of classical Greek mythology, who rose from the ashes symbolizing immortality, resurrection and life after death. The phoenix was chosen as the symbol for the Mercury Phoenix Trust founded by the remaining Queen members after Freddie's death

7) Queen's Greatest Hits album has spent over 450 weeks in the UK Charts, and is the UK's best-selling album of all time. Having sold more than 25 million copies, it's one of the best-selling albums in the world.

8) Freddie Mercury's real name is Farrokh Bulsara and he was born on the island of Zanzibar in 1946

9) In 1981 during the Game Tour In Buenos Aires, Queen drew a crowd of 300,000—the largest single concert crowd in Argentine history

10) Freddie Mercury never had his teeth overbite fixed, for fear that it would affect his singing voice. He also had a recorded vocal range of three to four octaves...

When Black Sabbath star Tony Iommi met Queen axe legend Brian May

2012-01-09T04:53:00.000-08:00

ELO drummer Bev Bevan says that BLACK Sabbath guitar hero Tony Iommi is one of his best mates, and they love to meet up.

He also happens to be one of the greatest guitarists on the planet, the man who invented heavy metal.

There are few musicians who get even close to Tony’s level of skill, but Queen’s Brian May is one.

So it was a real pleasure to chat with the two of them backstage after Sabbath’s NEC gig in 1999.

And who’s that between the two guitar gods? Yes, that’s right, it’s Sharon Osbourne! I first met Sharon long before she married Ozzy because she is the daughter of our late manager Don Arden. You never know just who you’re going to bump into backstage at a Sabath show!

(Source: Bev Bevan's column in the Sunday Mercury Newspaper)

Freddie's Google Doodle voted amongst the top of 2011

2012-01-06T03:02:00.000-08:00

The Google Doodle celebrating what would have been Freddie Mercury’s 65th birthday was voted at number 19 in the list of 30 best Doodles of 2011. In a very rare and extraordinary tribute to Freddie, Google celebrated his 65th birthday by running a very special doodle on its homepage. The animated clip sought to capture the dynamism and diversity of Freddie’s career through an animation that was as colourful and playful as his stage performances.

The quirky tribute was created by Google’s in-house team of illustrators, animators and engineers. It was available for users outside of the US on September 5th, what would have been Freddie’s 65th birthday, and was on Google.com in the US on September 6th as a belated “Happy Birthday” to Freddie since his actual birthday fell on Labor Day.

You can still watch the full Freddie Mercury Google Doodle here...

Learn more about Google Doodles here: http://mashable.com/2011/08/03/google-doodles/

(some of this post uses some content first posted on BrianMay.com)

An Oak Table, Knitting Needle & Bicycle saddle bag - All found in Brian May's Guitar

2012-01-04T05:41:00.000-08:00

The Red Special, - Brian May's famed and much-nicknamed guitar ranks as one of the most fabled tools in rock history.

The Red Special was born in 1963, the result of 18 months hard work and development between Brian and his electrical engineer father, Harold. Unable to afford the coveted Fenders and Les Pauls of the day, the pair set about designing and building their own interpretation of the perfect electric guitar.

The guitar earned its nickname "the Fireplace" because the huge one-piece mahogany neck was laboriously hand-carved using a penknife from just that - the column support from an old mirror-type fireplace that a family friend happened to be throwing out.

The glossy fingerboard is actually made of Oak, painted black with that classic British DIY substance known as Rustin´s Plastic Coating and dotted with hand-filed Pearl butons pinched from Brian´s mum´s sewing box - as was a the end of a knitting needle that would soon find a new home as a vibrato arm tip.

The neck joins the body via a paddle-like heel extension which slots into a rectangular cut-out in the body, stopping just short of the bridge pickup. Although originally designed to be glued in, the snug neck/body join is also secured by a single bolt visible on the back of the guitar. This bolt also acts an anchor for the truss-rod end which the Mays bent into shape on the kitchen cooker.

The central section of the body was formed from an old Oak table. The rest - including the distinctive curves - were made up from two layers of blockboard, hollowed out to create acoustic chambers, and then stuck onto the sides of the oak insert. These acoustic chambers are the key to much of the guitar´s incredible high-gain resonance (in truth, May originally planned an f-hole but never got round to it). The whole body was finally covered in a Mahogany veneer, stained a deep brick-red color and then lacquered with Rustin´s, rounded off by binding sourced from some

readily available shelf edging.

But the May´s ingenuity didn´t end there. Brian wanted a wide-travel vibrato that would drop an octave and (gasp!) actually return to pitch after use. They realised that most vibratos of that era were riddled with flaws. The main
culprit being friction in the strings´ path of travel.

After building a few prototypes they settled on a design which used six individual aluminium bridge pieces screwed straight to the body, each supporting a low-friction steel roller saddle. Intonation was handled by small slots cut into the top of each bridge piece; if the intonation was out on an individual string, the roller could be popped out of its axle and moved back or forward accordingly to an appropriate slot. Behind these, a handmade trem block rocked against a case-hardened steel knife edge hidden under the top body veneer. Unlike a conventional Strat fulcrum trem - which stretches the springs when the arm is depressed - this design used two heavy-duty tension adjustable motorbike valve springs suspended on cavity-mounted bolts. When the trem arm (sourced from a bicycle saddlebag holder) was pressed down the trem plate compressed the springs giving a positive, subtantial feel. With almost straight string pull to the tuners and a shallow 4 degree headstock angle causing very little friction through the black bakelite string guide, this system allowed excellent return to pitch for the non-locking unit. For its time, it was nothing short of revolutionary.

And of course when it came to the electrics, the egghead May family just couldn't keep it simple. Brian had originally wound his own pickups; they´d sounded good, but under string-bending the unhelpful north/south dual polarity of the small horseshoe type magnets he´d used created a nasty rustling noise. After spending three guineas at the Burns shop in St. Giles´ Circus, Brian became the proud owner of a set of the fabled metal cased Burns Tri-sonics.

First, the coils were potted in Araldite epoxy to help reduce their microphonic tendencies. Next the pickups were direct mounted to the body, and after much experimentation the pair eventually settled on an arrangement where each pickup passed to two small 2-position slider switches, the first row, nearest the pickups, being on/offs for each pickup and the second row allowing phase reversal for each. These switches and the volume and tone pots were all mounted on a shielding-aiding aluminium plate underneath the black perspex scratchplate.

This wiring allowed a number of different pickup configuations and tones. With two or more pickups on together the sound combined in series - not parallel, as on a Strat, for instance - increasing the output and giving the guitar its famously fat, resonant humbucking tone when combined with a treble booster into a Vox AC30. But when May flicked up one of the phase reversal switches it cancelled out the low end harmonic, creating a chiming clean tone or the trademark sreeching lead sounds typified by the Bohemiam Rhapsody solo (neck and middle pickups on
together, out of phase).

Its owner has decribed the guitar as a cross between a Strat- and a Les Paul-sounding tone. Add the humbucking options and the wide travel trem and the Red Special displays a remarkable number of elements of the modern metal guitar. Not bad for two inexperienced guitar builders working in a spare bedroom in the early ´60s...

(Credit to source for this article: Guitar Magazine Vol.10 No 2 , October 1999)

My Favourite Queen Videos - Part 3

2011-12-05T15:05:00.000-08:00

The Miracle (1989)

The Miracle was the fifth and last single from Queen's 1989 album The Miracle. It was composed by the entire band, although Freddie Mercury was reportedly the main driving force behind it. It was released as a single in late November 1989, some six months after the album. It was the last of the singles from that album to be released, and the first time that a 5th single had been released from any of Queen's EMI albums.
In the video, Four young Queen impersonators do a remarkably accurate riff on the band before, in the final third, being joined by the real thing. Slightly bizarre in those opening moments, it's actually rather cute by the end. The young Freddie is Ross McCall, who would grow up to star in Band Of Brothers TV series...

It's by no means my favourite Queen song, but it's certainly one of my favourite videos....