Quote related to 'Innuendo' from 'Innuendo'

I was in Geneva working with Paul Sutin and we had a day off or something, something else was happening. So I got in the car and drove to Montreux and I was just wandering around and thought I'd stop and have lunch. So I was in this restaurant that was a little bit below the pavement. I was sitting there and then this huge guy walked by called Martin who'd worked for Yes, Martin Groves, and he saw me there and I saw him and we kind of lept up and he says, “Well, look, the guys [Queen] are in the studio,” and he was only down the road, “Why don't you come in?” I was going to come by and see if anything was going on because Queen took over Mountain Studios which was originally a studio build built to record Montreux jazz, a terrific studio. So they invited me down. Well, I walked in and Freddie, Brian, and Roger Taylor were sitting there messing around writing stuff and they were friendly, “Come in, sit down, and listen to the album which we're just making.” So they started playing me all these tracks like I'm Going Slightly Mad and I Can't Live Without You which has been in my mind ever since, I still play it, it's such a powerful paradoxical description of life. And then they played me Innuendo and I go, “yeah, heavy metal flamingo!” And then Brian says, “Look, I'd like you play on this,” and I said, “you're joking, it sounds great, leave it like it is,” and he said, “No no no, I want you to play on it, I want to you to play really fast, I want you to run around the guitar a lot.” So within a couple of hours I tested some of his Gibsons, Chet Atkins classical solid body guitars, and found one that I helped balance the strings because he wasn't sure how to balance the volume between the different strings which is the important thing to do on those guitars. So I got up and running, we did a few takes, we edited it a little bit, we fixed up a few things, then we went and had dinner. So we went back to the studio and they said we really really like this and I said, “fine, let's go with it.” So I left very happy.  I'd worked with people who were diehard Queen people, and a funny thing happened a little while later, I was on a ferry going to Holland and on this ferry which takes a long time, five hours, were the Queen fan club, all going to Rotterdam to a Queen event, and a couple of them saw me and they came racing over and they said, “You're Steve Howe! You're on Innuendo!” And they all came out of the room, sitting around talking and things… and my memories of Queen will always be emotional because they were a great band and it was just great, it really was a thrill to be part of that. There was a certain studio in London called the Townhouse, it was actually a Virgin studio, and they were there a lot, we were there, and we'd meet them, and run into them, and Freddie liked my roadie a lot, and of course Freddie was a friend, so they were always in and out of the studio. Brian has always been most polite and a sort of dedicated guitarist so we've always had a great deal of respect for each other. So there's always just been some friendship between us, and it's important to me, it's quite important.

Stephen Howe; Official Website, 1997