Quotes related to 'Sleeping On The Sidewalk' from 'News Of The World' album

That was the quickest song I ever wrote in my life, I just wrote it down. It’s funny because it’s one of the ones I’m quite pleased with as well. It’s not trying too hard, it’s not highly subtle but I think it leaves me with quite a good feeling. It was sort of a one-take thing as well. Although, I messed around with the take a lot and chopped it about and rearranged it, it was basically the first take, which we used. So, it has that kind of sloppy feel that I think works with the song. Which we never would have dreamed with the previous albums. We always used to work on the backing tracks until they were a million percent perfect and if they weren’t we would splice together two which were. We’d go to great lengths, but for this album we wanted to get that spontaneity back in.

Brian May; Guitar Greats, BBC Radio One, January 1983 #

We had a classic case with "Sleeping on the Sidewalk," which we did as a first take. I was trying to explain to Roger [Taylor, Queen drummer] what I wanted, which was a simple blues shuffle beat type thing. We did endless takes and it never sounded as good as the first take. I took the cassette mix home of that first take and it sounded incredible. In my mind, we never got the sound of that first cassette mix. I have no idea why but it always sounds like it's half falling to pieces, whereas on that first cassette it all gelled and sounded like it was a band.

Brian May; Guitar for the Practicing Musician magazine, September 1993 #

We recorded it in one take, it sounds like an old blues track, quick and simple. Brian did some sort of smooth voice on it.

Roger Taylor; EMI Italy, October 1977 #

I think we've managed to cut through to the spontaneity lacking in our other albums. I have no apologies to make for any of our previous albums. We're proud of them and wouldn't have let them out if we weren't. But I now feel some may have been over-produced, so we wanted to go with a more spontaneous rock ‘n' roll based album. It was nice to do something that didn't need such intensity. For example, with Sleeping on the Sidewalk, we did it in one take because it just seemed right the first time. We like to think of the album as a window on an unguarded moment, not a set piece.

Brian May; Circus, January 1978 #

English traditional recording at that time was: everybody has to be sealed off from everyone else - the guitar has to be in this little cubicle, the drums have to be hidden away in this place which is totally deadened, there's no way that anything should meet except when it gets on the tape. I thought it'd be fun to do it opposite and just set up all in the studio so we can all see each other and hear each other and play so you won't be able to change anything but you would get a live feel. Mike Stone was engineering and he was very into it and thought, “yeah, why don't we do this - that's obviously what people did in the old days and used to work, why doesn't it work now?” So we did it one day: set up just within about a five foot radius of each other and play the thing - and I didn't have the song complete at the time, we had just a verse and a chorus, and I said, “just try it like this,” having played it over to them, and Mike luckily had the tape rolling and the first time we played it through it had a certain sort of feel. We went and listened to it in the control room and it sounded great and we thought, “that's exact!” We all loved it and thought it sounded natural and had a nice feel to it and the sounds were warm, you could feel that everything was in the same room.  So then we thought, “Great! Let's go and do it now and get it right and perfect it and then we'll have it on tape.” So we spent about, I would say, two days solid, trying to get the thing better, and it never got any better, it got worse and worse, it got turdiered and we changed some of the sounds and that made it worse and somehow it just lost all its soul. We want back and listened to the first take and we thought, “it had it then, and it doesn't now.” To this day I don't know what happened but we'd just destroyed it.

Brian May; In the Studio with Redbeard, 27th of October 1997 #

It just wasn't possible to recreate the magic of the first take. It was exceptional. I hadn't even explained the structure of the song to Roger and John - we just went in and played it as a guide, treating it as a bit of fun - playing with a lazy kind of blues feel, which was what I'd wanted. As soon as we heard the take back we were astonished - everyone thought we must have been practising it for ages… So then, after discussing the structure of the whole song, we went back in and started taking it seriously. We played all the right notes, but the feel was never like the first one - that relaxed feel could only be approximated to. It was one of those examples of a “Moment” caught on tape. You cannot recreate a moment. As soon as you're trying to do this, by definition you will fail. So? Well, I constructed the entire song out of that first take. In those days there was no Protools. We had to duplicate the multitrack tape, and cut it up, and reassemble it with a little ingenuity, a very small bit of crafty overdubbing from me, and sticky tape. I am not joking! The backing track was then ready to sing on. So there it is. As for revisiting recordings - no we we have never felt the urge unless there was some specific new purpose for doing so. I always regard the original mixes as something special - even with their imperfections. Another example of a “Moment”. That's why, when we remix for 5.1 surround, we always include a faithful reproduction of the EXACT original Stereo mix done at the time AS WELL. I have seen people complaining about this on the Web! But if they want digital stereo they have only to “fold down” the 5.1 version. To us the original mix, with the sound the mastering tape made as it was driven into saturation, and all the moves made by our fingers on the mechanical faders at that moment, not to mention all the colours brought into it by the old mixing desk, and the vintage equalisation, original valve compressors, limiters, etc. is SPECIAL.

Brian May; Official Website, 7th of November 2003 #

Sleepin' on the Sidewalk was recorded using the first take of the backing track (which was incomplete, so I/we did a little jiggery pokery). WE recorded other takes, but this one had the “magic”. But it was simply a first take… a first attempt, after I'd roughly explained the song to the chaps. We were fully aware that the tape was rolling - stories get a little modified over the years, I guess.

Brian May; Official Website, 28th of January 2008 #

Sleeping on the Sidewalk is a little treasure and a real departure. Queen didn't often play the blues, and we also did it completely live and spontaneous – something else which didn't happen often. I never wanted us just to be defined by our singles. We were an albums band.

Brian May; Mojo, July 2019 #