Queen: Days of Our Lives Page #4

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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, f*** 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 f***ing 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

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, we met The Sex Pistols

in Wessex Studios

and, uh...

I thought it was fascinating.

Can you imagine it just a whole

thing about punk rock

And anti establishment...

under one roof.

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?"

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

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