We were also very singles-minded about the songs. Killer Queen was a lighter song but we knew how we wanted to treat it. We wanted to state the song, have the harmonies, and the solo. That was a three part solo and one of the first solos I did where the three parts were actually starting in different places. It wasn't the first, but it was the ONE of the first where almost three different tunes going on.
[thinking about the solo before recording it] Yes; I didn’t write it down, but I had it in my head – that bell-like effect. I just worked with it a little while. In the early days some people had put an echo on the guitar sound and I hated it, so I had this big thing about ‘Don’t you dare touch the guitar, don’t you dare put anything on it’ so everything in those days was totally dry.
[which is the successful solo of Brian] "Killer Queen." I just like the riff. For me, what Nuno was saying about what you leave out is important, and Freddie was an expert at that. There's nothing cluttered about "Killer Queen." There's a fantastic amount going on, but nothing ever gets in the way of anything else. I was pleased that the solo went along with that. Everything is crystal clear. And when the three voices of guitars are all doing little tunes of their own, it feels almost accidental that they go together. I was pleased with how it came out.
I had reservations about the song being a single at first. I was always worried. When we put out "Killer Queen" everybody thought it was the most commercial. I was worried that people would put us in a category where they thought we were doing something light. Sheer Heart Attack was, in my mind, quite heavy and dirty and "Killer Queen" was the lightest and cleanest track and I was worried about putting it out. But when I heard it on the radio I thought, "It's a well-made record and I'm proud of it so it doesn't really matter." Plus it was a hit so fuck it. A hit is a hit is a hit.
The first time I heard Freddie playing that song, I was lying in my room in Rockfield [a residential recording studio in Wales], feeling very sick. After Queen's first American tour I had hepatitis, and then I had very bad stomach problems and I had to be operated on. So I remember Just lying there, hearing Freddie play this really great song and feeling sad, because I thought, 'I can't even get out of bed to participate in this. Maybe the group will have to go on without me.' No one could figure out what was wrong with me. But then I did go into the hospital and I got fixed up, thank God. And when I came out again, we were able to fin- ish off 'Killer Queen.' They left some space for me and I did the solo. I had strong feelings about one of the harmony bits in the chorus, so we had another go at that too.
People are used to hard rock, energy music from Queen, yet with this single you almost expect Noel Coward to sing it. It's one of those bowler hat, black suspender belt numbers - not that Coward would wear that. It's about a high class call girl. I'm trying to say that classy people can be whores as well. That's what the song is about, though I'd prefer people to put their interpretation upon it - to read into it what they like.
It was one song which was really out of the format that I usually write in. Generally the music comes first, but this time it was the words, along with the sophisticated style that I wanted to put across in the song that came first. A lot of my songs are fantasy, I can dream up all kinds of things. Killer Queen I wrote in one night, it just fell into place as some songs do. I suppose I'm a sort of chameleon, success has taught me a lot of things and I've adapted. You have to learn to come up with decisions very quickly. There's no beating about the bush in this business. I never ever really sit down at the piano and say, “right, I've got to write a song now”. I feel a few things out and I get some ideas about them. It's hard to explain but there are always various ideas going through my head all the time. I scribbled down the words for Killer Queen in the dark on Saturday night and the next morning I got them all together and I worked all day Sunday and that was it, I'd got it. Certain things just come together, but others you have to work for. Now, March of the Black Queen, for instance, that was a song that took ages to complete, I wanted to give it everything, to be self-indulgent or whatever. But the whole band in particular, we don't go in for half measures and I'm pretty hard with myself. There are no compromises. If I think a song isn't quite right then I'll discard it.
Very relaxed, with Noel Coward overtones.
I just wrote it in a couple of days, during the Sheer Heart Attack sort of batch where I was writing the songs for the album. It wasn't written or conceived as a single at all, it was just one of the songs, my contributions for the album. It so happened that when we sort of recorded it, we thought that it could make a good single, and we gave it a slightly sort of single's approach to it. But, basically, it's an album track. Back home, it was a double-A side, so Flick of the Wrist was the A-Side as well, so we were sort of putting across a sort of a taste of what was to come on the album.
We're very keen on not repeating ourselves and not playing two notes where one will do. You have an idea and you do it in the most concise way. There are a lot of different things on Killer Queen – you could almost say the same thing never happens twice, there's always different things going on.
Elton John was wonderful - one of those people you can instantly get on with. He said he liked Killer Queen and anyone who says that goes in my white book - my black book is bursting at the seams.
We're very proud of that number. It's done me a lot of proud. It's just one of the tracks I wrote for the album to be honest. It wasn't written as a single. I just wrote a batch of songs for the Sheer Heart Attack album and when I finished writing it, and when we recorded it, we found it was a very, very strong single. It really was. At that time it was very, very unlike Queen. They all said: “Awwwwwww.” It was another risk that we took you know. Every risk we've taken so far has paid off.
Robert Plant was always my favourite singer - and he's said nice things about me, you know. He actually said he liked Killer Queen.
I basically write the tune. I write the song around the melody most of the time. Sometimes a lyric will get me started. Life Is Real was one of those, because the words came first… Killer Queen was another one I wrote the words for first. But otherwise I have melodies in my head. I play them on the piano and I used to tape record them. Now I just store them in my head. I feel that if they're worth remembering, I will. If I lose them, I lose them. If they're still in my head, they're worth remember and putting down on tape.
I remember thinking at the time we were a group that was making its name as a heavy live act, and I thought this single was a little bit light at the time; but looking back on it, I think it's something to be proud of, I don't mind it at all.
I was always very happy with this song. The whole record was made in a very craftsman-like manner. I still enjoy listening to It because there's a lot to listen to, but it never gets cluttered. There's always space for all the little ideas to come through. And of course I like the solo, with that three-part section, where each part has its own voice. What can say? It's vintage Queen. The first time I heard Freddie playing that song, I was lying in my room in Rockfield, feeling very sick. After Queen's first American tour I had hepatitis, and then I had very bad stomach problems and I had to be operated on. So I remember just lying there, hearing Freddie play this really great song and feeling sad, because I thought, “I can't even get out of bed to participate in this. Maybe the group will have to go on without me.” No one could figure out what was wrong with me. But then I did go into the hospital and I got fixed up, thank God. And when I came out again, we were able to finish off Killer Queen. They left some space for me and I did the solo. I had strong feelings about one of the harmony bits in the chorus, so we had another go at that too.
That was a song which we spent ages literally sort of crafting, and I think it shows. I think it still sounds good today. It's well-played, it sounds good, it's well sung, harmonies are good and it's got a very original lyric. I think it stands up well.
I don't think many people have figured out that I do this “pre-bending” thing ... and I'm not aware of anyone doing it ... with the possible exception of Jeff Beck ... but he tends to achieve the same kind of thing but mainly with the whammy bar ... his Where Were You? must be the most incredibly piece of electric guitar recorded, ever. But as for me ... well, I also have to tell you I don't always get it right. It depends on a lot of things. As with any playing, but especially string bending, if you can't hear clearly what you are doing, you are sunk. So good monitoring is a vital requirement. We are fortunate in having a superb Monitor engineer, but of course there are still times when the acoustics of a hall or arena conspire to blur things, enough to make judgement of bends difficult. Secondly, it depends on knowing your instrument very well ... mine has been with me so long, that it is almost a part of me. I always use the same strings, and the guitar always gives me what I ask of it. So the “memory”, of how far a given bend will need to go to produce a bent note of a certain pitch, is at least partly in the muscles of the fingers. Its [sic] also, I think, updated by the few bends which you have just played, with “bio-feedback” allowing you to correct the pitch as you go along. But in the end, I think it has to be quite largely instinct. On a good day, everything is sweet and it's impossible to go wrong. On a bad day when you're not hearing stuff well, I find you can come off feeling that almost nothing was quite right!!! SO, like most things, you prepare, you plan, you think, you do everything to give yourself the best chance, but in the end, it's “In the Lap of the Gods” - and it helps to realise this .... “admitting powerlessness” is a powerful technique at the very least, and can become a whole way of life. I subscribe to that belief - and try to act on it when I can. By the way, thinking about it, my “pre-bends” go back a long way .... there are some (mutitracked!) on The Night Comes Down on the first Queen album ... and White Queen on Queen II ... and they are an essential part of the solo in Killer Queen. But Last Horizon has the hardest ones to pull off live!!
Again, a radical departure. I think most people hearing this for the first time were shocked because it wasn't rock like they expected us to be: it's very sophisticated, very delicate, a beautifully crafted record, you know, and I don't claim much credit myself although we were all in there – but you know it's just… there's so much space in it and yet so much going on, which all works, and I love it as a pop record, I have to say. It's a beautiful backing track: there's no clicks, of course, there's no machines whatsoever, there's no Pro Tools, this is just people playing. I think I was in hospital when [the rest of the band] did the backing track, I think, I'm not sure. I was very ill at that time and I came out and it was, sort of, almost finished and I remember being horrible to Fred about the backing vocals because I thought they were very abrasive so we sang them all again, and they had just a sort of sweeter touch, I suppose. Yeah, this is probably the guitar solo I would like to be remembered for. But it's so totally Freddie, I don't think anyone else would have dared to do anything like this and call themselves a rock star.
Shades of Noel Coward, Cole Porter all sorts of things, quite unique. The guitars are fantastic and their counterparts and it's brilliantly constructed. I remember we knew it's… something special about this song when we were doing it because we did it take after take after take. I don't ever remember doing as many takes as we did for this song on any other song. The feel had to be just right and it was just… you know, it had to be pitched exactly right. It had to have weight but it had to be light, as well, so it was a very difficult balancing act, this. [The backing track] is all live.
There's a lot to say about Killer Queen. It was made at a time that I was almost dying of stomach problems, I was in the hospital in the middle of the recording that album, during which time, although we'd recorded together the beginnings of Killer Queen, the boys went in and did some harmonies and I remember they brought it in for me to hear in hospital and I went, “it's really good but it sounds very abrasive, you know, perhaps we make it sound more rounded in the vocal harmony department.” So Freddie said, “you're absolutely right, Brian, and we will do it again when you get better so you better damn well get better.”
We were all in bands, we're all playing, the music business is huge in the UK at that time, in the seventies and the eighties, so we were all very busy people, so it was difficult to pick something out. I was, of course, aware of Queen but in the early days they didn't chart, there weren't the big hits that there were in subsequent years, but I remember a great friend of mine, Kenny Everett, and Kenny phoned me up one day and said, “Look, I'm playing a new record at four o'clock this afternoon, just turn on and listen to it on the Capital Radio in London.” I happened to be driving back, I remember I was in Regents Park, and he said, “I've got this new record from Queen and it's called Killer Queen.” This came on and I actually stopped the car, which was very strange for me, and I listened, I thought, “that's really good.” I think that, for me, was a turning point for the band, like Please Please Me was for The Beatles: they went into a different kind of thing and it became a kind of factory of great harmonies and great melodies and rhythm and interesting arrangements, and I thought, “that's a really, really good record,” and I still think so to this day, actually. It's a really terrific piece, terrific production, and everything about it is inventive, and it was just different from the rest of the stuff that was around and, of course, then they went on and became what it is, but I remember that as being a really significant kind of musical moment in English pop history.
We looked up to Led Zeppelin, especially, because we were just coming up behind them. Queen II was good. Sheer Heart Attack was more of a piece, though. Killer Queen was incredibly well-crafted. God, the attention to detail Freddie put into that.
The idea of Queen III [sic] was, “let's just together, let's get some songs out there for once, real little short songs.” It was very successful on that level. Very few of the production techniques were used… they were used but they weren't used to such great extent. If Killer Queen would've been done a year earlier, on Queen II, it would've probably phased from beginning to end, but it was just used on one word, “laser-beam”, that's the thing it was used on.