Quote related to 'Radio Ga Ga' from 'The Works'

It's quite competitive, now, just within the band, fucking hell, before it's out to the public and is competitive with all the other bands around, it starts off being competitive within the group, because, I mean, there are four good writers, and you know, equally sort of adept at doing things. There are no passengers, especially now Roger's writing very well and so is John, because Brian and I used to be the principal writers, now I think we all write the same, so there's a good fight right at the start, and we just basically come out with our own ideas and present it to each other and just say, “OK, what do you think?” and then the fighting starts if you don't like it. I seem to participate more on, say, John's or Roger's tracks, they let me help them and suggest more things. Brian's got his own sort of writing ideas and they're very sort of strong to start with anyway, so I mean, I don't seem to be able to get into his ideas so much, but in a way that's quite good, I'd rather leave it to him. It doesn't mean I just stay out of it altogether, I let him sort of do a lot of it whereas in John's songs or Roger's songs, I mean, I sort of get in there at a quite early stage, they don't mind me sort of tearing it apart and then piecing it back together again. Sometimes I take the whole song over, like, er, I don't mind saying it, Radio Ga Ga, I just instantly felt that you could build that into a really good strong saleable commodity, and I think Roger was just thinking of it as just another track, so I virtually took it over, and I sent him on a… he went on a skiing holiday for about a week and came back, but it's basically his song, you know, he had the ideas altogether, I just felt that there was some construction elements in it that were wrong to start with and he just said, “OK, you do what you want.” He wanted [to have a hit] very badly and I think he deserves it. It's a big hit in Europe and places.

Freddie Mercury; Westwood One, 1984