On the Bass Line
John Deacon has chosen not to participate in the tour with Paul Rodgers. He also wasn’t involved in the musical although he gave permission for lyrical changes to be made to his songs if this were required.
This site has been set up as a dedication to Queen, especially to Brian and Roger. But there’s a ‘thread’ concerning Freddie running throughout the site, but I also want to set aside more of an exclusive place for ‘Deaky’.
So here I shall be placing anything ‘Deaky-related’ which I find of interest, such as lyrics and quotes…
Are you ready, are you ready for this?
– John Deacon, 'Another One Bites The Dust'
Extracts from Jeffry Hudson’s article ‘The Invisible Man’ from
‘The Bassist and Bass Techniques’, April 1996, my comments are in italics:
In 1980 Another
One Bites The Dust reigned at Number One in the American charts for what
seemed like forever, eventually outselling every other chart-topper that
year - including Queen's own Crazy Little Thing Called Love. It was big;
it was bigger than big, it was huge. It was also remarkable for two
tings. One, it was only the third single John Deacon had ever written -
not bad considering he'd penned just nine full songs in total. And two,
while the other singles from 'The Game' - Brian's Save Me and Freddie's
Play The Game - were standard Queen fare, this song went places the band
never ventured after dark. It was funky!
"I listened to a lot of soul music when I was in school," John recalls, "and I've always been interested in that sort of music. I'd been wanting to do a track like Another One Bites The Dust for a while, but originally all I had was the line and the bass riff. Gradually I filled it in and the band added ideas. I could hear it as a song for dancing but had no idea it would become as big as it did. The song got picked up off our album and some of the black radio stations in the US started playing it, which we've never had before.
Another new side was demonstrated by
John's first ever composition for the group, a jaunty pop number called
Misfire. For this track he played acoustic guitar as well as supplying a
perky bass riff that dominates the song's fadeout. He also shared a 25%
credit on the jam track Stone Cold Crazy, later to be covered by
Metallica on record and stage, and performed by James Hetfield with
Queen at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in 1992. Remembering the
frenetic sessions for the track and its frantic pace, John reveals,
"It was very fast and hard to play." 1975 was a pivotal year
for Queen and John in particular. While most of the world went mad about
the Mercury composition Bohemian Rhapsody, the band were just as amazed
at the bass player's contribution to the album, a little number called
You're My Best Friend. "John just came from nowhere with this
song," Brian has admitted. "It was only the second song he'd
written for the group and it was just this perfect pop song." The
public agreed, and the song reached number Seven in the UK - higher than
anything written by the already prolific May.
As well as his Fender
Precision, John contributed electric piano to the song (he also did some
double bass work for a Brian track called 39), which he mimes in the
song's accompanying promo - or 'video' as they came to be known after
Bohemian Rhapsody's groundbreaking achievement.
It’s
significant that this article starts with details of ‘Another One
Bites The Dust’ because it typifies the diversity, especially at the
time of ‘The Game’ and ‘Hot Space’ albums, of Queen’s
repertoire which was enabled by John’s presence in the band. It is the
only Queen song to have been made into a rap – the Wyclef Jean version
can be heard on Greatest Hits III and even before then gained huge
appeal among black audiences in America. In the Greatest Hits I
commentary, John is heard saying that the title came from a cowboy catch
phrase.
It is
also notable that John’s first composition was for the ‘Sheer Heart
Attack’ album. Having been the last member to join the group, he said
that his perspective was different and was not absolutely convinced that
there was 'something there' until this third album was produced.
John did not
contribute to the vocals on ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ – as Roy Thomas
Baker says in the documentary, he didn’t rate himself as a vocalist
and didn’t want to get into any arguments with other members of the
group. The decision to release ‘You’re My Best Friend’ as the
follow-up to ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ was a stroke of genius – things
desperately needed to quieten down! Both the song and the video could
hardly display a starker contrast, the latter presenting the group in a
candlelit setting, Freddie gently leaning his hand on the microphone
rather than ripping himself out of a piano seat!
Despite his single
success, John was still limited to one track on the next album, 'Day At
The Races'. The next two long players saw both he and drummer Roger
Taylor allowed two songs each - still half of Mercury and May's
allowance…
John’s
song on ‘The Day At The Races’ album is ‘You And I’, and should
be seen against the background that the album marks the end of an era of
sorts. There is the decadent indulgence of the instrumental at start and
finish which is also the hallmark of the album, and, it might very well
be said, of Queen’s career up to that point. Among the rockers,
operatic overtures and cabaret touch which all bear the Queen hallmark,
there are wistful love songs such as this. John
plays acoustic guitar on this track, the lyrics telling of the feelings
of suspense and excitement at the prospect of being alone with a loved
one. The descriptions evoke a romantic atmosphere which is a little
mysterious and even oriental –
‘Music is playing in the darkness
And
a lantern goes swinging by’.
also
to be found, but manifest in different ways, in Freddie’s ‘You Take
My Breath Away’ and Brian’s anthemic ‘Teo Torriatte’.
The
next album, The News Of The World, is the first to have two
contributions from John. The first, ‘Spread Your Wings’ was the
second single to be released from this album, and, in keeping with the
more practical tone of this album – this was now the era which
demanded a response to punk – tells the story of ‘Sammy’, regarded
by his boss as a no-hoper, determined, somehow, to find his way out of a
dead-end job which is defining his life as that of a loser. The
accompanying video was shot in the snowy back garden of Roger’s home,
runny noses and frozen knuckles much in evidence - the group no doubt
wishing they could all ‘fly away, high away’ from the cold. The song
was not a chart success in the UK, reaching only no. 34, but proved to
be a popular sing-along number in live concerts in the late seventies.
‘Jazz’
was the last studio album of the seventies, and demonstrated ‘a pop
sensibility that acknowledged the oncoming new decade’* and John also
provides two more offerings. Real vindictive plotting can be found in
‘If You Can’t Beat Them’, matched by the rockiest sound found in a
‘Deaky’ song, appropriate for the ‘dog-eat-dog’ message it
conveys. The gentle ‘In Only Seven Days’ tells of a holiday romance,
which ends in regret at the end of the time away; relating a common
experience, as does Brian’s equally quiet song ‘Leaving Home Ain’t
Easy’.
About
the album ‘The Game’, he said:
‘Indeed
the songs are less complicated than a few years ago. The reason could be
the way the album was recorded. We have now been together 10 years, and
decided to record it in different phases, each time with a few weeks for
2 or 3 tracks. "Crazy little thing" was the first song and
even if we did make very different songs after this one, it seems that
this first track gave something like a sign. Anyway the whole album is
simpler and more direct, there’s no doubt about that. Why it is this
way, I have no idea’.*
Of
the song ‘Another One Bites the Dust in particular, he stated:
‘The
song came about because I’d actually always wanted to something in the
direction of black, disco-oriented music. I managed to get this song on
to the album as it was. It’s not typical for Queen and I don’t know
if we’ll do something similar again’. **
He
went on to speak about the differences of opinion within the group when
their American company wanted to release it as a single because of the
airplay it had received on black radio stations, and in particular how
Roger wanted to prevent it because he believed that it was too weighted
towards disco and didn’t fit into the overall picture of the group.*
It certainly was a very different sound for Queen, and gave them a dimension which they would never otherwise have had. Over the years, they have clearly become stronger for this versatility. Deaky’s other composition on the same album immediately follows it – ‘Need Your Loving Tonight’ and is more of a 60s-70s pop influenced song, paving the way for the next track, ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’, composed by Freddie on acoustic guitar.
After the album ‘The Game’, (the first Queen album to use synthesisers), the mainly instrumental album, the soundtrack to ‘Flash Gordon’ was released. John penned two tracks for this album – the tranquil Execution of Flash and the mysterious ‘Arboria (Planet of the Tree Men)’.
At the time of the release of the album, ‘Deaky’ stated:
‘I think that outsiders don’t suspect at all just how personal and characteristic.some songs are that originate within a group. For the public it’s a Queen song, even if it is, in fact, a very personal song of one of the members’*.
Body Language? A Picture from around the 'Hot Space' era.
Getting
his songs on an album was one thing; keeping them recognisable was
another battle, as John found on the 1982 album 'Hot Space'. Despite the
outrageous success of his recent funk experiment (which Weird Al
Yankowicz was to parody as Another One Rides The Bus), and the fact that
as a band Queen had tackled just about every style going, his latest
black-influenced song was being forced into more conventional shape, as
Brian admits: "In one track called Back Chat there wasn't going to
be a guitar solo because John, who wrote the song, had gone perhaps more
violently black than the rest of us. We had lots of arguments about it,
and what he was heading for in his tracks was a totally non-compromise
situation, doing black stuff as R&B artists would do it with no
concessions to our methods at all. I was trying to edge him back towards
the central path and get a bit of heaviness into it. So one night I said
I wanted to see what I could add to it - it's called Back Chat and it
should have some guts - and he agreed, so I went in and tried a few
things."
Against John alone, the guitarist won; but when the bassist united with the all-conquering singer, there was no opposition. Cool Cat, the pair's first collaboration, found a lazy bass riff, leading the way, with Freddie scatting jazzily over the top. Mellow and distinctly un-Queen, the original version features David Bowie on backing vocals (check those bootlegs). Bowie had arrived at the band's Swiss studios in Montreux and stayed to feature on another bass-driven track - one that actually made it onto the album. It was Under Pressure and it reached Number One in the UK charts (unlike Back Chat which stifled at 40).
Hot
Space as an album, in fact, is an interesting melange of tracks which
probably go together as well as the colours on the album cover itself.
Interestingly, it appears that the other members of the group were
adopting John-led dance/funk influences which in their writing, although
there are exceptions. ‘Under Pressure is the album’s last track, and
its strength surely lies the impromptu collaboration that created it –
but it’s the bass that is so memorable and unmistakable.
If
a Deacon song could be said to have crowned Queen's US career in 1980,
it was another of his compositions which effectively killed them off. I
Want to Break Free, from 1984's return-to-form album, 'The Works'
was a massive seller world-wide, largely aided by its hilarious video of
al four band members in drag. Unfortunately the fact that it was a spoof
on 'Coronation Street' was lost on Americans who thought the butch
rockers of four years earlier had gone mad. They would never have
another hit there in Freddie's lifetime.
Wherever it went, it seems,
the song caused uproar. South America, Queen's honorary home since their
record-breaking excursion there in 1980/1, had seen the lyrics as
something more than a love affair gone wrong. For them it was a
campaigning song for freedom - so when Freddie appeared in front of
200,000 people at the Rock in Rio festival in 1985 wearing false
breasts, he was reportedly booed and pelted until he removed the
offending mammaries.
Undoubtedly
‘I Want To Break Free’ ranks at least alongside ‘Another One Bites
The Dust’ as John Deacon’s most successful song. It is clear that
the video was not understood at all in America. I have also read that
the earlier video to ‘Body Language’ from ‘Hot Space’ was also
not well received there.
Deaky
was clear about his feelings before the recording of ‘The Works’:
"I can't make a
solo album because I can't sing." "We're not so much a group
anymore," he explains. "We're four individuals that work
together as Queen but our working together as Queen is now actually
taking up less and less of our time. I mean basically I went spare,
really, because we were doing so little. I got really bored and I
actually got quite depressed because we had so much time on our
hands..."
That slow drag for
Deacon started around three years ago after the group's desappointing
'Hot Space' album...
"We were
disappointed with it too I think, so we really did talk about how we
were going to attack the next album. With 'The Works' we decided to go
more towards the things people actually associate with Queen."
+
It certainly
comes as a surprise to many that the song ‘I Want To Break Free’,
Deaky’s only composition on ‘The Works’ album, which has been
interpreted variously as a gay or liberation anthem was written by the
quietest member of the band! Freddie’s participation with hoover and
duster is such a memorable feature of the video! With regard to the idea
for the video, Deaky stated:
I was very happy to go along and I forget – I think
Roger had the idea at first and it worked very well – it’s
entertaining, and I think it was very good, and we all had a lot of fun
doing that one, as well.
(transcribed
from Greatest Hits DVD II)
Similarly, he
commented on dressing up in a unicorn outfit in the video
for Freddie’s song ‘It’s A Hard Life’:
I felt silly and it was, you know, weird things to do
really – everyone makes videos, and you have to try something
different really: Freddie had some strong ideas, and in the absence of
any other good ideas then you go along with it, and some of them worked
very well.
(transcribed from Greatest Hits DVD
II)
The following
year, the band participated in the Live Aid Concert, an extremely
successful event for them, which saw the early release of the single
‘One Vision’, which formed a part of the following album ‘A Kind
of Magic’. During the recording of the song and the video in September
1985, ‘Deaky’ stated that most of the writing was done by the other
three members of the group. He had this to say about Live Aid in 1986:
"We didn't know
Bob Geldof at all," John remembers. "When Do They Know It's
Christmas was out, that was a lot of the newer acts. For the gig, he
wanted to
get a lot of the established acts. Our first reaction was, we didn't
know - 20 minutes, no soundcheck?!"
"When it became
apparent that it was going to happen, we'd just finished touring Japan
and ended up having a meal in the hotel discussing whether we should do
it ... and we said yes."
"It was the one
day that I was proud to be involved in the music business - a lot of
days you certainly don't feel that! But the day was fabulous, people
forgot that element of competitiveness... it was a good morale booster
for us too, because it showed us the strength of support we had in
England, and it showed us what we had to offer as a band."
"The
band was rejuvenated by that wonderful day. It breathed new life into
us. We had all been getting a bit tired. Jaded. Now we're bursting with
enthusiasm and ideas. There's so much we want to do, it's hard to find
the right order." ++
By
the mid 80's, the collaboration between singer and bassist became more
pronounced. Released in 1986, 'A Kind Of Magic' featured two
compositions credited to Mercury/Deacon. Following the groove set down
on Cool Cat, the new efforts blended John's funk leanings with Freddie's
innate pop sensibilities; Pain Is So Close To Pleasure in particular saw
Freddie giving his best Diana Ross impression to keep up with John's
bass-driven tune, while Friends Will Be Friends was more standard Queen
anthem fare, scoring a decent hit for the band.
‘I’m going probably through a very uncertain phase in my life at the moment as part of the insecurities of being involved in the music business or in a band…’ said Deaky after the Magic tour of big stadiums in 1986, as shown on 'The Magic Years' video. It must have been a tiring year. The album they were promoting, ‘A Kind of Magic’ contained music for the soundtrack of the film ‘Highlander’, but the songs stand in their own right, as they were rearranged and lengthened for the album. Deaky’s contribution, apart from his collaborations with Freddie mentioned above, was the romantic ballad ‘One Year of Love’. This was written, as Deaky himself said on Greatest Hits II DVD,, for the point in the film when the hero entered a relationship for the second time after the first one hurt him so much. This is a wonderfully romantic song with a saxophone instrumental in the middle, and should count among Deaky’s best.
Deaky also made a contribution to another film that year, ‘Biggles’, recording the theme tune, ‘No Turning Back’, with The Immortals. This is one of his very few collaborations outside of Queen.
At the time of the recording of ‘The Miracle’ album, released in 1989, Deaky admitted (Greatest Hits II DVD) that they were all exhausted after the 1986 concert tour, hence the two-year break before starting work on the new album. He talked about the sharing of the songwriting, the durability of the band, which is still the same four people, who seem to be able to get over falling out.
Deaky in 'The Miracle' video, 1989
Recording of the band's next album began as soon as 'The Miracle' was completed; by this stage Freddie knew his days were numbered, although he never admitted it to the group. Not only did he live to complete 'Innuendo', but he also saw the album's release, the release of a second 'Greatest Hits' package as well as finding the energy to lay down basic tracks for what would be the last Queen recording: 1995's 'Made In Heaven'.
The singer's death in November 1991 has proved a brutal blow to Deacon. "As far as we are concerned, this is it," he insists. "There is no point carrying on. It is impossible to replace Freddie."
It’s clear that ‘Deaky’ saw Freddie’s passing as the end, but it is probably not the only reason why he has chosen to stay away from the current Queen projects. I believe he’s with Brian and Roger in spirit, and approves of what they do, even if he does not wish to be involved in it himself. Although considered to be diametrically opposed personalities, John and Freddie both had their shyness in common – ‘Deaky’ to the extent that he sent a roadie to meet Princess Diana in his place at Live Aid!
'Im
Going Slightly Mad' video, 1991
Peter Freestone, Freddie's personal assistant, observed that Freddie took ‘Deaky’ 'under his arm'. The 'Classic Albums' broadcast indicated that this was specially true with the encouragement he gave him in songwriting (an area where Deaky was quite self-effacing according to Brian), probably the reason for Freddie-John collaborations like ‘Pain is so close to Pleasure’, which, alongside his own romantic ‘One Year of Love’, Deaky describes as a ‘bitter-sweet ballad’ (Popcorn, 1986). Furthermore, without Deaky, a whole dimension to Queen’s songwriting would be missing – especially of the kind that gave us ‘Another One Bites the Dust’.
Comedian Tony
Hawks, who fronted 'Morris Minor and the Majors', for whom Deaky starred
in two comedy rap videos in the 80s, is quoted as saying "John
struck me as someone who’d become a rock star by
accident".(‘The Invisible Man’, Q Special 2005).
One final quote,
then, from Deaky, about Freddie himself:
John Deacon, April 1992
*Mark
Blake, Q Special Edition, late 2004
**Translated
from German from the article
‘Queen – Angenehme Macken in
der Krone’ (Musikexpress & Sounds 1981)
Interviewer : Bernd Gockel.
+ ‘The Hit’ 1985 interview with Martin Townsend
++The Daily Star, Nov 21, 1985
Source for many of
the above interviews:
I may add more to this page n future, so watch this space!