Quotes related to 'Fat Bottomed Girls' from 'Jazz' album

[playing slide] The only tuning I've used apart from normal is to take the bottom string down to D, which I've used on "The Prophet's Song", "White Man", and "Fat Bottomed Girls".

Brian May; Guitar Player magazine, January, 1983 #

[what was the inspiration] I could give you a glib answer, couldn't I? But I think the chorus just popped into my head as a tune and a set of words. Same as 'Tie Your Mother Down' did. I didn't know what the hell 'Tie Your Mother Down' was supposed to mean, off the top of my head. But it became something that meant something: a teenage rebellion song. And 'Fat Bottomed Girls' became a song about the girls who help the spirits of the performers backstage, I suppose. The groupies or whatever. In light of what we were saying before about Freddie's sexual orientation, I remember thinking, "Freddie's going to have to sing this and I'm going to write it so you can take it any way you like. You can be into anything and this would still make sense." And I remember thinking, "This is kind of interesting: Why does everybody love casual sex with people that they otherwise wouldn't want to be with? Why does that mean so much to them? Where does it come from?" So some other words are about things that people will possibly remember from their youth.I saw a smile when Freddie was singing it, but we never talked about it. We didn't with our songs. Odd, isn't it? You'd think we would talk about our lyrics with each other, but we never did. It was kind of an unwritten law that you really didn't explain your lyrics to the other guys. But I wanted Freddie to be comfortable with it. And it's a fun song. But I still wonder how Freddie felt about it. I don't know if he knew that I wrote things to make it fun for him too. Delicate ground, isn't it?

Brian May; Guitar World, October 1998 #

Fat Bottomed Girls I thought was okay, but fairly banal. I thought people would be much more interested in Dead On Time, but it didn't really get that much airplay.

Brian May; On the Record, 1982 #

I actually conceived it as fitting the ‘swamp; style of the Deep South of the USA, I admired those guys with a Dobro on their knee and a foot stamp, which I saw as organically congruent with ZZ Top and electric southern boogie. But, yes this kind of single chant works in many folk styles - did you hear the brilliant Hayseed Dixie version? We did the backing track live in the studio, Roger, John and myself, with Freddie throwing in comments. Roger and John instinctively rose to the occasion. Actually, I've always thought it was a bad idea to explain songs too much. I remember being so disappointed with what Paul Simon had to say about his writings - it destroyed my mental images. OK, there were a lot of bottoms involved, and not just the ones in my direct experience. You'll have to use your imagination a bit, but I can tell you there was a big glint in my eye, because there were inspirations in both camps on tour. And remember, I was writing a song for Freddie to sing! But my prime inspiration was my realisation that it wasn't just the glamorous beauties who fuelled the rock ‘n' roll romance that was “touring”; in so many cases, it was the unruly kids who devoted themselves to rock bands in a very self-effacing way: the real fans. I had most of it in my head so it was one of the easier tracks to make work. My usual bridge and middle pickup in phase, no effects. It's just gut instincts, but we felt we wanted it to motor into the main part of the song quicker on the radio. All this stuff was floating around while the Tour de France was coming through Nice [sic]. It gave us a kind of mental focus - the image of naked girls on bikes. We were boys. We wouldn't go into that area now, I would be much too conscious of respect for ladies. But, well, at the time...  Usually, we record my guitars with no EQ. But in this case, the more we mixed it, the more the guitars seemed to sink into the mud, so we kept adding more middle, the middle to high frequencies giving clarity and presence. In the end it worked. A rarity on this track is that Roger double-tracked all the drums - even that insane fill that heralds the final choruses.

Brian May; Total Guitar, 9th of July 2011 #

Around this nucleus there's a whole kind of community of people who feed energy into it. They get something from it but they also feed into it. You know, a lot of girls and boys who just devote their lives to live in the dream in their particular way. So the song was really inspired by them, and they didn't have to be beautiful girls, they didn't have to be pretty boys or whatever. They're just people whose hearts were in it and they're the people you're speaking to, they're the people you see in your line of sight when you're playing on a tour, and in a sense they're the life blood because they're your first line of connexion to an audience.

Brian May; Absolute Radio, 17th of August 2011 #

Well, I'm against explaining songs, but it was really reaction to touring and noticing that it wasn't always the pretty girls or the pretty boys that made things happen. Sometimes it was the people who had so much passion in their buns that they were able to give a lot of energy to the situation, so it applies to everybody that you come across in the rock and roll world, I suppose. So, it was a kind of tribute to people who don't necessarily have the looks to stir people's loins but nevertheless do it because they have such a great gift of personality, or whatever. So that's one way of looking at it.

Brian May; Official Website, 17th of August 2011 #