Freddie Mercury. One of the greatest frontmen and singers of all time. There is little argument about this. His incredible range and extroverted on stage presence is still praised today almost 35 years after his passing. And as the frontman for the band Queen, he brought all of that to an incredible quartet who changed the world of music over two decades. And while the band melded different styles and genres of music over their years together, there was no one true dominant figure who pressed the band into the direction that they felt the band was best suited. What this meant, at least from my own point of view, is that each member of the band had their say in the songs and music that Queen produced, but they would never have had a moment where they felt that they had been able to completely express their own musical direction. And in a band situation, as a group, that is how it works.
In 1982 Queen released arguably their most controversial and divergent album, “Hot Space”. Moving away from the hard rock style that the band had mostly sat within, this album infused many differing styles into the songs including new wave, dance and disco along with funk and R&B. While drummer Roger Taylor was quoted as saying that it was the influence of bass guitarist John Deacon’s love of disco and R&B that moved the album in the direction it went, guitarist Brian May was critical of Freddie’s personal assistant Paul Prenter, whom he said pushed Mercury to produce the music style on this album. Taylor was quoted in 2011 saying “Prenter wanted our music to sound like you’d just walked in a gay club... and I didn’t”. Suggesting that the band had overcorrected, they then returned to a more hard rock oriented style (albeit utilising the key and synths of the time) with their next album “The Works”.
Freddie though had other ideas. Following the tour to promote “Hot Space”, and no doubt knowing that both May and Taylor were less than happy about the music’s direction, and having also found the pushback from fans about the album difficult to accept, he decided to start compiling songs for a solo album, one where he didn’t have to answer or compromise to the group’s decision making basis. He was quoted as saying "I had a lot of ideas bursting to get out and there were a lot of musical territories I wanted to explore which I really couldn't do within Queen”. Queen producer Mack, who would also co-produce this solo effort, was quoted: "he used to get pretty annoyed working with the others, because there was always Brian saying, 'It needs to be more rock 'n' roll.'”.
The process, from beginning to compile material to recording and releasing the album took two years. Queen had taken a year off following the tour for “Hot Space” which is where Freddie’s process started, but once Queen had returned to work and ramped up production on “The Works” and then begun the tour to promote it, he had to split his time between the two projects. The recording and release of the single “Love Kills” with Georgio Moroder for the soundtrack to the restoration of the film “Metropolis” was met with fan appraisal, which no doubt would have been a boost to Mercury as he finished off his solo album. With recording completed, the album “Mr Bad Guy” was released in April 1985, one that gave a clearer indication of what style of music Freddie Mercury was fascinated with in an era where anything seemed possible.
At the time of this album’s release, the most interesting thing for me to hear was what the difference would be of Freddie’s songs without the influence or input of his other three band mates. While Queen's true balance was hard rock, here Freddie has a much more dance disco pop style and vibe in his songs, while retaining his amazing vocal performance to make them instantly recognisable. So, while there are certainly differences between these songs from Queen songs, that doesn't make them any less likeable.
“Mr Bad Guy” uses a lot of synths and programming, all of which was the popular culture of the mid-1980's and of which Freddie wanted to experiment. And as with many solo adventures from artists away from their known band, about half of this works terrifically well, and the other half perhaps falls a little flat. You know, the other half of the songs where input from other members of a band would either improve them or replace them with better songs.
The opening side of the album is well put together, the structure of the songs all complementing the other and fitting into a style that showcases what Freddie was obviously looking to portray with his own music in his own way. “Let’s Turn it On” has an almost calypso or Mexican beat about it though utilising synths and keys rather than the instruments of those musical styles. It has that very upbeat dance vibe from the beginning, heavily influenced and led by Freddie’s bright and breezy best vocalisations. There’s not a lot of necessitated lyrical output here, a simple repeating of a few lines is enough to make the track what it is. It is the music which is the basis of the song, aiming for dance clubs and 80’s parties with the style. By way of contradiction however, this is followed by “Made in Heaven”, a glorious and beautifully crafted track that's structure is of guitars and drums but having synths substituted in to create the sound of the era. Freddie’s vocals soar within this song, moving away from the party style of the opening track to his perfectly emotional styled vocals here. Already you have the two sides of what Freddie was probably aiming for with this album, the opening track which showcased a style he couldn’t hope to do with his band, and then this song that showed he wasn’t going to abandon the style of track that he certainly have used in his band. So too you can put in this class “I Was Born to Love You”, released as the first single from the album. This received wide radio airplay at the time, and most probably had success because, like “Made in Heaven”, it was still close enough to what Queen might release as a song that it didn’t turn fans of that band away. It is more synthesised than a Queen song, but it has the harmony and melodic vocal choruses, a catchy beat and fun to sing lyrics which Freddie again sounds like he is having fun singing. Both of these songs were released as singles which is not a surprise. What is also not a surprise is that they were the two songs that Queen chose to re-record after Freddie’s passing for the band’s “Made in Heaven” album, where the three remaining members “Queenified” the songs by recording new music to put with Freddie’s vocals. Arguments remain as to which are the better versions.
Arguably one of the best tracks on the album is “Foolin’ Around”, one that fully captures the pop sound of the era. Drenched in synth and drum machine, Freddie croons his way through the song in a style that sets it above most similar songs of the era, even though it is hardly recognised. Bands like Tears for Fears and Foreigner and Huey Lewis and the News and Hall and Oates dominated the charts with songs like this, that were no better or worse than this. The side closes with “Your Kind of Lover”, delving deeper into the same lyrical content we have had throughout the album to this point with a very Harold Faltermeyer sound to the synths.
Side Two opens with another of the best and most underrated songs of the album, the title track “Mr Bad Guy”. A dystopian harsh look-in-the-mirror themed track where Freddie offers some thoughts on how he feels he is portrayed by sections of the fan base and media base, the overblown musical passages offer a ‘pomp and ceremony’ about the song, giving it the sound of majesty, the majesty of Freddie Mercury. As always, he pulls it off wonderfully. “Man Made Paradise” falls back into the love theme for the lyrics, but perhaps more surprisingly it is the guitar, bass and piano that is the dominant factor of this song, and in places very much resembling Freddie’s band rather than this as a solo output, including the layered vocal harmonies at the end of the song. It remains an interesting song as it is so obviously the style that Queen would have done excellently but with more prominance on the harder elements of guitar and drums if it had.
“There Must Be More to Life Than This” started life as a collaboration with Michael Jackson, along with two other songs, “Victory” and “State of Shock”. No versions of these songs were ever released, and “State of Shock” was eventually recorded by The Jacksons on their “Victory” album, with Mick Jagger rather than Freddie providing the duet vocal. Some sources say that “There Must Be More to Life Than This” was then slated to be the closing track on Queen’s “The Works” album before Mercury and May wrote "Is This the World We Created...?". And so it eventually was recorded here by Freddie alone for his solo album (side note: a reworked version of the Mercury and Jackson duet version was later released in 2014 on the “Queen Forever” album along with a ballad version of “Love Kills”). “Living on My Own” is perhaps the best convergence of styles on this album. Freddie manages to sing in a beautiful and romanticised style without making it a cheap copy of the style of the age. It combines the theatre of dance club remix styled songs filled with synths and repeatable rhythm with heartfelt vocals that gives the track an emotive content that similar tracks can’t and don’t match. “My Love is Dangerous” which follows channels a reggae theme without actually falling down that pathway. Another repeated rhythm track of drum machine tracks through the song with a tougher vocal line from Freddie as the basis, with an actual guitar solo that sends it through to the fade out. The album then concludes with “Love Me Like There’s No Tomorrow”, another Freddie love ballad that is saved from being mediocre because Freddie Mercury is the one who sings it.
Back in January of this year I did a Patreon-only episode in my ongoing series called The Creation of Me, which follows my life of music through a chronological discussion on how my music tastes have developed over the years, on which I discussed both the album “The Works” and the single “Love Kills”. If you are interested, you can find me on Patreon at RealMetalKevin. No pressure. For those that have not heard that episode - I still vividly recall when Freddie Mercury released his solo single “Love Kills” that he had done with Giorgio Moroder. For those that are not familiar with the song, it is the synthiest poppiest 80’s electronica song as you could possibly imagine. Even at that stage of my music journey, where I was just beginning to get into bands rather than singles off the radio, and was beginning down a path that would shortly lead me to the joys of heavy metal music, I had absolutely no interest in the type of music that this song was drenched in. And yet – I became absolutely obsessed by it. I bought the 7” single and played it to the death of several turntable stylus’s and the actual album itself. Completely and utterly taken in. Thus, when it was announced that Freddie was then going to release an entire solo album, I was immediately on board. Hey, “The Works” had been a shining moment in my music story, “Love Kills” had now also become a part of that, so now there was no doubt that this new Freddie Mercury solo album was going to be another watershed moment. Welllllll... you know how sometimes you just build something up too much, and then that thing has zero chance of meeting your expectations?... that’s pretty much what happened here. For a start, “Love Kills” was not put on the album. That annoyed me tremendously. And then the other songs... well, it’s funny how I really wasn’t prepared for 11 songs that were so differently musically from what I enjoyed from the bands I was listening to at that time. I know, right?! Who would have thought?!
So there was stuff I liked. In the main at that time, it probably came down to “I Was Born to Love You”, “Foolin’ Around” and “Mr Bad Guy”. The rest I tolerated to a certain point. And then it went back into the box with my other cassettes. Likely never to see the light of day again. But then Freddie died, and in the aftermath of that event and the constant rotation of Queen albums in memory of that, I dug this cassette out of the box and tried it on for size again. And perhaps, most probably, because of the nostalgia of the situation, I found it far more palatable than I had seven plus years previously. I was older, more rounded, willing to briefly look beyond my instant disregard for music I didn’t immediately like, and hear it as it was no doubt intended – an album that Freddie had more or less written and recorded for himself. Not for record companies or friends or anyone. Just an album that he wrote to be able to explore different styles of music that he was unable to do with his band.
Did I suddenly love it? Well no. But I certainly appreciated parts of it more than I had before. And then a couple of years later I lost all my cassette tapes, and I was without the album again. In more recent times I have bought it again, more for nostalgia than anything else. In fact I now own it on CD and on vinyl, both because the price was too good to pass up. And I have had the album playing regularly over the last week. And it hasn’t been unpleasant at all. Mind you, 40 years on from its release (and that number of years is a crazy thought) it is truly stuck in that era through the synth saturation, so it is an album that has to be listened to with a particular ear if you are going to get anything out of it. So yes it has been interesting to listen to all the way through this many times over the past few days (ten if you are interested). It is an album that I like. There’s nothing more than I can say but that. It still is an album that whenever I listen to it, it is with raised eyebrows. It’s a different time. That more than anything is what this album constantly reminds you of.
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