Queen... And The Show Goes On

Rip, July 1993

It was like the old days of rock 'n' roll, music industry VIPs agreed; a throwback to the '70s, when extravagance was commonplace. But it was excess of the most enchanting sort, like Carnival in Rio, Mardi Gras, a Victorian circus, a raucous medieval banquet or a dazzling fireworks display... like the mystical fascination with the occult... like the passion and pure pleasure of music itself. In fact, it was all of these, and it happened one balmy, intoxicating Southern California night aboard the moored Queen Mary ocean liner; a regal setting truly fit for one of the world's all-time biggest rock bands, Queen, who are celebrating, in grand style, a 20-year reign in the business and a 19th album release, Innuendo.

Almost a quarter-mile long with three elliptical smokestacks, the Queen Mary rests in Long Beach harbor, silhouetted against a steely blue twilight sky. It has been many years since her maiden voyage, but the ship's majestic grandeur and art deco elegance remain intact. Painstakingly, lovingly maintained, the vessel exudes a nostalgic, dreamlike mystique.

Surrounded by giant clusters of balloons, a red carpet at ground level covers a gangway leading to an escalator. At its foot an organ grinder and his monkey are the greeters. Beside them is a plate-twirler on stilts, balancing bottles, glasses, saucers—even liquid-filled teacups whirl in perfect equilibrium on a spinning umbrella. At the top of the escalator a man in a formal tailcoat is poised, eating long flames of fire on sticks. Next to the daredevil, a tarot-card reader in the full-sleeved, flowing attire of a gypsy sits at a table, beckoning, the first in a series of wildly attired palm readers, astrologers, psychics and fortune tellers. A jester strolls by, juggling silver-striped bowling pins. Midgets in Renaissance costume tumble the length of the hallway.

The 30-foot-high columns supporting the ceiling are draped with colorful fabric swaths, accented with metallic gold. Just outside the Grand Salon an antique map depicting the Atlantic Ocean between England and New York has movable miniature crystal ships that once charted the liner's course. Larger-than-life statues of a red devil and a brazen bordello madam stand at the Salon's entrance. Paneled with the beautiful imported woods that are the Queen Mary's trademark, this 9,000-square-foot party room spans the width of the ship.

Inside, paintings of Queen's album covers are on display, along with the band's stage-wear. One piece is a white satin chemise with billowing angel-wing sleeves, once worn by flamboyant Queen vocalist Freddie Mercury. Sound systems at both ends play Queen classics like "Under Pressure" and the anthemic "We Will Rock You." There are cotton

candy, popcorn, pretzel and hot dog carts, seven full bars, and as many sumptuous buffets with seafood, cheeses, chicken skewers, pates, veggies, meats and crepes. The desserts are in the adjacent Windsor Room; tables full of goodies: lavish layer cake and chocolate fondue, as well as grand pianos and palm trees made of solid chocolate.

Within an hour both rooms are crammed with nearly 2,000 partygoers. Members of Warrant, Great White, the BulletBoys, White Lion, Valentine and Shark Island, and "Weird" Al Yankovich, Tom Peterson of Cheap Trick and Howard Leese of Heart are socializing. While Howard is talking exotic cars with Queen drummer Roger Taylor, there comes .a trumpet fanfare.

The album's imaginative title-cut video is shown, with elaborate Vari-lites and strobes enhancing the mood. An audio-animatronic, incredibly lifelike humanoid mechanical figure —its clear plastic exterior revealing the electronic circuitry within—makes its debut to one of the songs from Innuendo. "I'm Going Slightly Mad." A product of Walt Disney "Imag-ineering," the robot's brilliant blue "veins" pulse throughout its hands, body and head, a creation of fiber optics triggered by laser technology. The character actually cops some of Freddie's stage moves while a mounted three-heads-only version "sings" backup. Hollywood Records, the evening's

host and the label releasing Innuendo (as well as the band's entire catalog in compact disc format), makes a presentation. Innuendo has shipped gold—sales of 500,000 units— making Queen's total record sales 80-and-one-half million!

But the highlight of the bash is yet to come. The merry cast of entertainers leads everyone, in Pied Piper-fashion, across the promenade deck to a vantage point outside in the night. The fireworks are about to begin!

Over two massive speakers the strains of Queen's tongue-in-cheek grandiose epic from 1975, "Bohemian Rhapsody," fill the air. The song's operatic splendor is punctuated by exploding whorls of brilliant violet, fuchsia, crimson and silver...a computer-controlled spectrum of hues timed to the music. Each movement of the tune has its visual counterpoint, as rockets of many colors shoot upward and erupt in a magnificent, gyrating vortex. The spectacle is awe-inspiring. Like a curtain coming down, a shimmering wall of sparks is the breathtaking grand finale. The euphoric guests concur: It is the most amazing fireworks display they have ever seen.

More entertainment awaits back in the Grand Salon, where Queen guitarist Brian May and Faster Pussycat's Brent Muscat jam with another Hollywood Records act, Circle Of Soul. A few quick numbers and, all too soon, the soiree is coming to an end. But it's not over before the musicians—accompanied by Matt Sorum of Guns N' Roses and Metallica's Lars Ulrich—stop at a Queen Mary jazz bar, move the party to Circle Of Soul's suite, and get closed down by security for being too rowdy!

Before their departure back to England, Brian and Roger are back in their hotel villa off Sunset Strip, talking about the festivities.

"The party was quite a classy do," says Brian. "It reminded me of one we had in New Orleans some years ago, where we just invited everyone weird under the sun. We were famous for our parties. They were loose and rather scuzzball, lots of bizarre stuff. We'd lock the world outside."

Roger, too, is thinking of that night in New Orleans. "There were 125 strippers," he recalls. "For ten years afterwards the cabbies asked, 'When are you going to have another party?' You don't quite see parties like that anymore," he points out...at least when it comes to the scantily-clad-female factor. As much as Roger loved the Queen Mary itself, he found the shindig "wasn't quite rude enough—too many clothes! But there were lots of pretty girls. I'd forgotten how many pretty giril there are in L.A.!"

Brian agrees. He loves Los Angeles, and muses that, one day, he may be ^-continental.

In the meantime, the success of Innuendo is sure to be multi-continental. This is the band that played in 1981 to the biggest-ever paying audience (251,000 in Sao Paulo, Brazil), had a #1 hit in 35 countries with 1986's "A Kind of Magic," and that same year played the first major stadium concert in Eastern Europe and made a movie of the event—the first film produced in Hungary without government subsidy or financial aid. So the album's international popularity is a given.

With Innuendo, Brian says, "I think we've come back to the old Queen, only better written, better played, better recorded, and with better digital technology. The album almost wrote itself. It came along in a certain way and worked. It wasn't a struggle, or contrived or pushed together.

"Some songs came in fairly formed," he continues. "Some evolved together. In the end, one of us took each song under our wing." Such was the case with the two hard-rockin'-est tunes on the record, "Headlong" and "Hitman," which both feature Brian's versatile mastery of the guitar. "'Headlong' came from me, at our studio in Montreux," says Brian, "a home recording studio for us that's very state-of-the-art, lovely for creating. The ideas

came in a couple of days. At first I thought about it as a song for my solo album but, as always, the band is the best vehicle. As soon as I heard Freddie sing it, I said, 'That's it!' Sometimes it's painful to give the baby away, but what you gain is much more. It became a Queen song."

"Hitman's" finished version, Brian says, "had very little to do with the original idea. Most of the riff came from Freddie. I wasn't even in the room when they wrote it. I changed the key and some of the notes to make it playable on the guitar. We finished the backing track, but it seemed to ramble. John [Deacon, Queen's bassist] sat down and decided to reconstruct the track. He changed the order. He changed everything. I went back and played on that. Then we filled in the gaps on the lyrics, did the harmonies and generally tidied up."

Roger is particularly fond of "I'm Going Slightly Mad," which he describes as "Noel Coward meets Led Zeppelin. It makes me laugh." Roger also enjoys the title track, calling it "big, long and pretentious! It goes through a lot of changes."

"The Show Must Go On" is a cut well-loved by the whole band, and is in the classic Queen vein. "There's a piece of all of us in it," says Brian. "We made a decision to work on it corporately, and left our egos outside the room. We put drums on a loop, then I put chords to it. I said, 'Freddie, listen to this.' The phrase 'I can't go on' kept going around in my head. I sat with it and developed it, wrote lines and had a verse after a while. But it was a long way to the final version."

Roger adds that "The Show Must Go On" is "typical Queen, sort of a closing track, metaphorical in a way."

For now, at least, that will probably be the extent of Queen's "Show," for it doesn't look as if the band will be touring any time soon. Brian says Freddie is reclusive and "prefers being creative in the studio." The rest of them are working on solo projects. Brian has his album, which, he says "will have quite a bit of the blues," and Roger is the singer and rhythm guitarist of another band, called the Cross. "We're making an album in Peter Gabriel's studio," he says, "and we'll probably look around for a label. It's pretty hard rock...with a brain cell, hopefully!" When he returns to England, Roger says he'll go into rehearsal with the Cross and do some more recording with Queen.

So there is more yet to come from this Queen, though you never know where or what that may be...whether it's pushing musical boundaries with inventive arrangements on record, or in an innovative, experimental video.

It could even happen on an ocean liner straight out of another time.. .but rest assured, if it's Queen, it will always be in the realm where fantasy is king and legends rule.

Laurel Fishman