Brian May: Greatest Hits IIICNN Worldbeat ~ 9 January 2000On 'The Show Must Go On':'The Show Must Go On' is represented on this collection, which is a Queen song because we decided to credit everything to Queen after a while, but that's kind of... I regard that as my baby, because most of that I wrote with Freddie sitting *right here* (indicates nearby chair) and it was a great experience cause Freddie at that time wasn't really able to, or willing to, expose himself in terms of lyrics except at certain particular instances, and he knew about this idea... he knew that it related to the way we felt about him... and I sang the guide vocal for Freddie, and most of it I had to sing falsetto cause I couldn't sing that high, and I was going to Fred, "Is this okay?""Oh, no problem." [Fred] downs a vodka and goes into the studio and just nails it...and I think it's one of his finest vocal performances ever, the original version of 'The Show Must Go On'...
On 'Under Pressure (Rah Mix)':We had the idea to remix 'Under Pressure', which is the song we did with David Bowie... when we came to make the video, we had the opportunity to do something different, and you think 'well, what can we do here?' , and what it begs is to have something live, and we suddenly realized we have live tapes of 'Under Pressure'... we have Freddie singing it at uh... Wembley Stadium, one of the last times we ever did the song. We also had Bowie singing it at the tribute to Freddie...one's in the darkness and one's in the light. But with modern video technology, digital stuff, you can do that stuff, so Freddie and Bowie are there next to each other, which is something which would have been great to see onstage, but you can only see it on this video.
On the possibilty of Queen reforming:I don't really visualize Queen without Freddie, to be honest, no. I think I more visualize turning over a page and there he is again, like "Oh, hi, Fred...you're back, great, okay now let's just get on with it." I think we all live in this kind of strange place because he seems very much alive... I think it's nice to do one-offs, and Elton and George Michael are both great singers and great personalities. But I think if you speak to them, they would feel the same; to try and re-create something which had a wonderful moment and is gone is a mistake.
On 'Bohemian Rhapsody':I think Bohemian Rhapsody is a great piece of work. And it's really all Freddie's, and is Freddie's baby more than anything else. And whatever was in his mind at that moment was something pretty bizarre, and I feel very proud of it as a piece of work, and I was very happy to see it voted as the song of the um, millenium. [smiles proudly] We went and received our award for that, which is very nice. That was in a poll in England, which I don't know if it happens elsewhere. And we were voted number two group to the Beatles - which is lovely, you know - over the last thousand years.
On John and Roger:Roger and John and I are very good friends, still, and socially we're probably better friends than we ever were. But we like...we all like to do things in a different way now, you know. We were part of this great team for all those years but...there's a certain benefit in not being in a team in that way anymore. And I think we've all found our freedom to an extent since Queen was no longer a going concern.
On aging:The nice thing about Queen is that Queen never got old. I'm getting old, but Queen isn't old. [chuckles] |