THE STORY BEHIND THE SONG. You Take My Breath Away

 “Here comes Freddie plus Freddie plus Freddie plus

Freddie plus Freddie“. This was the way Kenny Everett

introduced this song when he was playing tracks from

the new ‘A Day at the Races’ album in company with

Freddie in the Capital Radio studio back in November

1976. This was because, unlike other Queen vocal

arrangements, this track contains only Freddie’s voice

multitracked, and no backing from Brian and Roger.

Despite the replication, Freddie described the song as

“pretty sparse by Queen standards”.  

This feature of the track, which is the second one on

side 1 of the album, was picked up by Harry Doherty in

his contemporary review, where he described it as a

“fairly simple Mercury song”, pointing out that it had

already been performed by Freddie with just his vocal,

accompanying himself on the piano. This was a

reference to the band’s September 1976 concerts, for

example at Edinburgh and the free concert in London’s

Hyde Park. He likened it to ‘Love of My Life’ from the

previous ‘A Night at the Opera’ album, but parallels

have also been drawn with ‘Nevermore’ from Queen

II.  

Apart from his captivating and harmonised vocals,

superbly managed as ever by sound engineer Mike

Stone, Freddie played the piano part, the scale used

being a huge nod to Japan, where the band had first

been received like superstars. Whereas the Hyde Park

version was only about three minutes long, the final

studio track extended to just over five. Roger

contributed a little percussion - there were no drums -

Brian added some courtly guitar and John’s bass inlay

completes this jewel of a track.

In an interview with Jas Obrecht in Guitar Player

magazine in 1983, Brian was asked how he achieved

the violin-like tone. He replied:  

“There's a particular pickup combination which I use for

the violin things: the fingerboard pickup and the middle

one. Those two working in phase make a very mellow

sound. And there's a point on the amplifier where it's just

about to get distorted, but not quite. Instead of using my

pick, I tap the fingerboard with the right hand, and that

just sets the thing moving. It sustains itself - you hardly

need to even tap it any. If you stand in exactly the right

place, it feeds back in any position so I can just warble

around and it's very smooth”.  

Freddie’s lyrics express a very physical passion,

together with his deep-seated need for the object of his

affection, which is understood to have been David

Minns, a music manager with whom he had a romantic

relationship early on after realising his sexuality.  

The song remained on the setlist until June 1977 and it

has been played on tape to lead into ‘Who Wants to Live

Forever’ in Queen and Adam Lambert concerts.

© Alison Sesi 2023

THE STORY BEHIND THE SONG: RADIO GA GA

The origins of this song are well documented: it arrived with us through

the toddler mutterings of Roger’s son Felix denouncing radio as "ca ca"

using French, the first language of his mother Dominique. He’d thus

declared radio to be 'poo poo'. There can’t be too many people who can

claim that a pronouncement they made at the age of three has become

immortalised in a song! Although the band sang 'ca ca' on the original

recording, it wouldn’t sit well within an English language title, so it was

changed to ‘ga ga’, which, spelled as one word means crazy in two

senses: losing one’s mental faculties, especially in old age; or being

passionate about something, which both fit the message of the song in a

way.

The story goes that Roger started working on the track individually

before Freddie, along with the other band members, took an interest in it.

It’s well known that Roger intended the song to be a eulogy to radio,

which he felt was the ideal medium for music, but was being endangered

by the introduction in the early 80s of MTV and its requirement that a

video should accompany every song from now on, otherwise it simply

couldn’t become a hit.

Ironically, Queen created a highly memorable and imaginative video for

this song, which, according to the Official International Queen Fan Club

magazine of the time, was premiered in the US on 10 February 1984 on

MTV, which had exclusive rights to it until 17 February.  For one week,

therefore, MTV was its sole broadcaster, unaware that it was airing a

protest against its own existence.

The importance of radio for a teenager growing up in the 60s and even

the 70s, when TV was in its infancy, is of paramount importance in

understanding the lyrical content: Roger declares that radio was "my only

friend through teenage nights and that "everything I had to know

I heard it on my radio…"

By his own account, it was influencers like Bill Haley and Elvis Presley

that he first heard this way. Similar stories of listening to popular music

have been recorded concerning Brian, who "lay under the covers

listening to Radio Luxembourg", a pirate station, and Freddie, whose

"fascination with western pop music" as a teenager in Zanzibar was fed

by the BBC World Service.

The song was originally composed with various synthesisers. A

vocoder was used to create the robotic effect on the vocals, and the

production also included the use of a LinnDrum drum machine with

keyboards played by Fred Mandel.

As for the video, footage from the 1927 science fiction movie,

‘Metropolis’ creates an appropriate mix of past and future as a backdrop.

Freddie and Roger had long admired the film and Freddie’s solo song

‘Love Kills’, co-written by Giorgio Moroder, was on the soundtrack of the

latter’s 1984 Metropolis remake.

The video shows the band members riding in a flying car through the

futuristic city, as well as ‘extras’ from the fan club dressed like the

demoralised workers from the movie footage, whom they impersonate

with their heads down. The words "finest hour’" in the song are a quote

from the British wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and the video

also depicts a family, apparently during World War 2, entirely dependent

on their radio.

There is also a reference in the song to the 1938 ‘War of the Worlds’

sci fi radio drama in the US, which is said to have been so genuine that

some people were duped into thinking that a real Martian invasion was

taking place, another homage to the power of radio.

The song, which is almost as long as Bohemian Rhapsody, is

unquestionably Roger’s most successful contribution to Queen’s

enduring repertoire, and with footage from Metropolis accompanying its

performance at Queeh and Adam Lambert concerts, it has, despite its

original message, become irrevocably bound to the contents of its video

in the public imagination. 

© Alison Sesi 2022

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The Story Behind the Song - In the Lap of the Gods...Revisited

 

This is the outro track on the 1974 ‘Sheer Heart Attack’ album, and appears to be related to the opening track of side 2 of the album, also by Freddie, in name only.

It features a narrator having a discussion with himself, reflected in the alternate high and low vocals at the start, as he appears undecided and unsure of his identity: ‘Where do I belong’?

Brian has stated that Freddie, who was dealing with personal struggles, was expressing himself in emotional terms here: about relationships and his sexuality. Interestingly, Brian himself performed the song at a solo gig in Reading in September 1999, footage of which can be found on You Tube.

The song has enjoyed a revival on the live scene due to its inclusion in Queen and Adam Lambert setlists for much of the life of the collaboration. I noted at the Berlin concert in 2022 that the dry ice was doing overtime during its performance. It seems that times hadn’t changed and was intrigued to find the number of references to dry ice accompanying the song when played live, just as you can see on the 1974 ‘Live at the Rainbow’, and ‘Live at the Odeon’ of the following year, where dry ice is much in evidence!

Contemporary reviews of shows at New York’s Beacon Theatre in February 1976 and at Edinburgh’s Playhouse in September of the same year both note the dry ice used during the performance of the song.  The most detailed reference is by Chris Welch in the Melody Maker concerning a concert at the Empire in Liverpool in November 1974: “Dry ice began to envelope the stage, and as red light glowed through the fog, group and audience took on an eerie aspect, like a scene from some Wagnerian forest, as arms waved like young saplings in a night breeze. Then an explosion of white light, and two red flares burn over a deserted stage. Queen have gone, signalling a desperate roar of “MORE!” " 

This indicates the typical placement of the song in a concert: and as it was played at the end of the show before the encore, and it has an anthemic style, it’s often seen as a precursor to ‘We are the Champions’, and, like its successor, featured Freddie playing piano at the start before moving front of stage to lead the audience participation. In fact, due to time constraints, it actually concluded the free gig at Hyde Park in London on 18 September 1976. According to tour manager Gerry Stickells, quoted in the ‘As it Began’ biography, the police had threatened to arrest Freddie if he returned on stage for the encore that the audience was shouting for.

The song remained on the set list until the end of the ‘A Day at the Races’ tour in mid-1977, and was reintroduced in 1986 for the Magic tour, where it was sung early in the show: Freddie can be seen on ‘Live at Budapest’ and ‘Live at Wembley’ reversing his earlier habit  – at front of stage at the start, making sure the audience is singing along, before sitting down to accompany himself on the piano at the finish, which allows him to hang on there to perform the introduction to the next number, ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’.

The song has an overriding message of leaving things in the hands of fate. It's certainly one of the more obscure ones regularly performed in the Queen and Adam Lambert concerts, and the only one essentially not released as a single that didn’t appear in the Queen and Paul Rodgers collaboration too - but unlike those: ‘I’m in Love With My Car’, ‘’39’ and ‘Love of My Life’, Adam has been on the lead vocal for this one, indicating his particular fondness for, and personal identification with, this crowd-rousing chant.

© Alison Sesi, 2023