Queen: The Complete Works (87 page)

“In ‘Star Fleet’, recorded on the first day, you can hear a kind of nervous exhilaration,” he continued. “The new situation [of recording with the four new musicians] produced a strange and different kind of energy ... I’ve attempted to hone [the song] into something like a ‘proper record’ – my thanks to Roger for helping me with the chorus vocals. But I haven’t messed one scrap with the tracking done on the day. The rest is simply mixed ‘naked’.”

The song comes to a premature conclusion five minutes in, but Brian and Eddie clearly aren’t ready to end the party: the band continue jamming for a further three minutes, though the synth is now no longer part of the equation. The song comes to a definite close, followed by a snippet of undoubtedly good-natured, albeit incomprehensible, dialogue, and one of the most satisfyingly bizarre compositions related to Queen is over. It would be hard to imagine anyone within Queen taking the song seriously, but it’s a fun little excursion that deserves more attention than it’s been given over the years. Strangely, it lived on – at the conclusion of
‘One Vision’ on the 1986
Magic
tour, the band launched into the ascending false conclusion before leading into ‘Tie Your Mother Down’.

Despite only three songs appearing on the mini-album, EMI and Elektra nevertheless extracted a single, and the title track was clearly the most commercial of the bunch. To make it even more appealing, various edits were created: the first and standard edit ran 4’25 and featured a new keyboard introduction (it was this version that was released as the single in the UK), while the second and lesser-known edit ran only 3’03, albeit pitched slightly higher than normal, and was released as the US single. Both of these versions contained a leaner edit with less instrumental space between verses; perhaps realizing the strength of the instrumental segments, a separate edit was created and released as the B-side, titled ‘Son Of Star Fleet’. The single, released towards the end of October 1983, went on to peak at an unsurprising No. 65 in the UK, not charting at all in the US. Perhaps recognizing that
Star Fleet Project
had been out of print for nearly a decade, this song, along with ‘Let Me Out’, was placed on the first CD single issue of ‘Back To The Light’ in November 1992.

A video was created for the single, and has gone down in Queen folklore as being simultaneously the strangest and scariest video created. With the decapitated head of Brian floating around periodically, lip-synching to the words, segments of the original cartoon series were also inserted, making for an unsettling viewing experience. Still, much like Brian’s other videos, it remains unfairly obscure, and deserves to be seen if only for its kitsch value.

STATE OF SHOCK

One of three tracks recorded with Michael Jackson in early 1983 at his home studio, ‘State Of Shock’ was later re-recorded with Mick Jagger on vocals and released as a single from The Jackson 5’s
Victory
album in 1984, but the original, unreleased version is great fun and deserves to be heard. With a strident guitar riff and a poppy drum-machine backing, the song sounds like an extension of ‘Staying Power’ in terms of lyrical matter, and wouldn’t sound out of place on either
Mr Bad Guy
or Michael Jackson’s own
Thriller
album.

As of this writing in the summer of 2011, it’s been confirmed that Brian and Roger are sweetening up the original recordings, with the intent of releasing the three tracks – ‘Victory’, ‘There Must Be More To Life Than This’ and ‘State Of Shock’ – in some form.

STAYING POWER
(Mercury)

• Album:
Space
• B-side: 8/82 [40] • Live:
On Fire
• Bonus:
Space

This abysmal attempt at funk opens up
Hot Space
, and it’s no surprise that the album received such a critical lambasting, considering that the song is about Freddie’s sexual prowess and, ahem, ‘staying power’. Featuring a cheesy brass section (arranged by Arif Mardin in Los Angeles) and dodgy synthesizer in place of Brian’s guitar, the song would take on a new life in the live setting, where it was transformed into a raging rocker, a perfect example of which is found at the 1982 Milton Keynes Bowl concert.

Live, the song featured Morgan Fisher (or Fred Mandel, depending on the tour) playing synth bass while John took over rhythm guitar, allowing Brian to concentrate on solos and inject a rock feel into the song. The song was a mainstay of the 1982
Hot Space
tour, and was even the only
Hot Space
song to remain in the set list beyond that tour, being performed on the first half of the 1984
Queen Works!
European tour.

Elektra issued the song as the final
Hot Space
single in the US in November 1982, more than two months after the Rock ‘n’ America tour had concluded. Unsurprisingly, the single didn’t chart, but was unique in that it offered the first extended remixes of the song and its B-side, John’s more commercial ‘Back Chat’. (The pairing was flipped in the UK, and released in August 1982.) An extended remix was also released, which turned the song into a full-scale disco workout; depending on your tastes, it’s an interesting version and arguably makes a weak track at least a bit more tolerable. Inexplicably, this extended remix wasn’t released on the 2011 reissue of
Hot Space
; in its stead was a live version from the Milton Keynes Bowl.

THE STEALER
(Rodgers/Fraser/Kossoff)

First recorded by Free and released on their 1970 album
Highway
, ‘The Stealer’ was a staple of AM radio, and a favourite of The Faces, who incorporated it into their set lists at the time. The same couldn’t be said of Queen + Paul Rodgers, who performed it live only once on the 2008
Rock The Cosmos
tour, in Zürich on 29 September.

STEALIN’
(Queen)

• B-side: 6/89 [7]

An interesting leftover from the
Miracle
sessions,
‘Stealin” evolved from a jam dominated largely by Freddie. The original recording ran at a lengthy twelve minutes, and contained an amusing interchange between several multi-tracked Freddies, and at times it sounds as if he’s arguing with himself. Mostly a throwaway, but still a compelling listen, four minutes were chopped off that version and re-edited for official use, when it appeared as the B-side of ‘Breakthru’ in June 1989. While not the strongest track ever written by Queen, it certainly would have made for a nice diversion on
The Miracle
, if only for its prominent use of twelve-string acoustic guitar.

STEP ON ME
(May/Staffell)

• Compilation (Smile):
Ghost Of A Smile

Recorded during the June 1969 sessions at Trident Studios, with future Queen one-time co-producer John Anthony at the controls, ‘Step On Me’ is one of the most Queen-like tracks to be written and recorded by Smile. That’s no surprise, since it was largely written by Brian, even featuring the guitarist on complex harmonies and piano. Telling the story of a manipulative girlfriend, ‘Step On Me’ is a jaunty and enjoyable track with great vocals and arrangements, and may be the highlight of the sessions. Chosen as the B-side to ‘Earth’ in August 1969, the song was performed semi-regularly in the live set list, but the studio version remained unreleased until the 1982
Gettin’ Smile
album and again in 1998 on the
Ghost Of A Smile
compilation.

STILL BURNIN’
(May/Rodgers/Taylor)

• Album (Q+PR):
Cosmos

In the years following Brian’s semi-retirement from a solo career, he immersed himself in a variety of projects that were as far removed from music as could be: he rekindled an interest in stereo photography, compiling a book of photographs by T. R. Williams as
A Village Lost And Found: Scenes In Our Village
; finished his PhD degree by publishing his astrophysics thesis, ‘A Survey Of Radial Velocities In The Zodiacal Dust Cloud’, and an all-encompassing book,
Bang! The Complete History Of The Universe
; and became a social activist, joining Nelson Mandela’s 46664 AIDS awareness campaign and later forming his own, Save Me, to protect all animals against cruel and unnecessary treatment. He somehow was able to work on the
We Will Rock You
musical, appearing at each country’s opening nights since it started in 2002, and produce Kerry Ellis’ debut EP,
Wicked In Rock
, and her first album,
Anthems
, all while preserving and producing Queen’s back catalogue. The farthest thing from his mind was to be an active musician again, evident in his reluctance to tour and paucity of newly-written songs, which can be counted on one hand since the beginning of the 2000s.

So it’s surprising that Brian would be the fomenter of ‘Still Burnin”, a flaccid blues stomper that extols the wonder of creativity in a performer. The precious opening moments, where Roger’s drums kick up some dust and Brian gets the feel of the sound before locking into the groove, intimates the song’s spontaneity, but when it finally does get moving, the results are underwhelming. “Music lights this flame in me,” Paul bellows, before reassuring listeners, “Don’t think for a moment that my heart went cold,” but it all rings hollow. Brian may indeed have felt reinvigorated by his association with Paul Rodgers, but it doesn’t show in his three contributions to the album; only on ’Some Things That Glitter’ does the traditional May spark ignite, but by then the impact is gone. With an expected burst of ‘We Will Rock You’ – the message of which is either to remind everyone that Queen has a musical, or that Brian is keen on relying on past glories – following a gritty, wah-wah’d guitar solo, ‘Still Burnin” doesn’t so much rage as it does fan the cooling embers.

STONE COLD CRAZY
(May/Mercury/Taylor/Deacon)

• Album:
SHA
• B-side: 11/89 [21] • Bonus:
SHA

Originally written by Freddie in 1969 during his tenure as the lead singer of Wreckage, ‘Stone Cold Crazy’ was one of the first songs performed by Queen the following year, and underwent a series of transformations until it became the blistering rocker presented on
Sheer Heart Attack
. Credited to the entire band since nobody could remember who wrote which parts, this would become the only four-way collaboration the band would undertake until ‘Soul Brother’ in 1980.

Lyrically, the song continues with the 1920s feel presented on ‘Bring Back That Leroy Brown’ as Freddie finds himself “dreaming [he] was Al Capone.” The lyrics are jumbled together, with three verses and choruses crammed into two minutes of raucous thrashing, still allowing for several manic guitar solos after each verse. It’s a perfect example of the band’s musical diversity in different types of rock, and can also be viewed as a forerunner of Queen’s brief excursion into punk. The song was covered by Metallica in 1991, where it
became a hit for that band and even earned them a Grammy. Industrial rocker Trent Reznor, frontman and genius behind Nine Inch Nails, remixed the song in 1991 for a promo single; sadly, this was passed up in favour of a more straightforward remix for the remastered release of
Sheer Heart Attack
. For those who want a new twist on the song, Reznor’s rendition is highly recommended.

‘Stone Cold Crazy’ was performed by the band with James Hetfield on lead vocals at the 1992 Concert For Life, but had been performed by Queen between 1970 and 1977, then resurrected for the
Queen Works!
tours in 1984. A live version from the 1974 Rainbow performance was issued as the B-side to ‘The Miracle’ in November 1989 and previously on the
Rare Live
video. A version recorded at the BBC on 16 October 1974 was released as a bonus track on the 2011
Sheer Heart Attack
deluxe reissue.

STONE FREE
(Hendrix)

Originally released by The Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1967, ‘Stone Free’ was performed by Ibex at The Sink Club, Liverpool on 9 September 1969 but lasted barely a minute. The song was erroneously listed as ‘Rock Me Baby’, though it’s likely that The Yardbirds track was also performed by Ibex at some point. Not entirely by coincidence, 1984 also included the song in their set list.

STOP ALL THE FIGHTING
(Mercury)

• B-side (Freddie): 4/85 [11] • B-side (Freddie): 1/93 [29] • Compilation (Freddie):
Solo Collection

Recorded during sessions for
Mr Bad Guy
, ‘Stop All The Fighting’ is an energetic rocker, sounding like an outtake from one of the numerous new wave rockers emerging at the time. The lyrics are nothing spectacular, almost mirroring the sentiments of ‘Is This The World We Created...?’ but far more aggressively. Strangely, Freddie nearly snarls the lyrics, and it’s easy to see why this song wasn’t included on the album. Instead, it was issued as the B-side of ‘I Was Born To Love You’ in April 1985, with an extended mix created especially for the release. This version could technically be considered the B-side of the extended version of ‘Love Kills’, since it was released on a separate bonus disc, albeit as a double-pack with ‘I Was Born To Love You’. The song was later issued as the B-side of the reissued ‘
The Great Pretender
’ single in January 1993.

STORM
(May)

• Soundtrack (Brian):
Furia

Suitably opening with the sound of a storm breaking, ‘Storm’ is an extension of ‘First Kiss’ but performed on keyboards, though the orchestra is introduced midway through for accompaniment. The remaining thirty seconds of the piece consist of dialogue from the film.

STRANGE FRONTIER
(Taylor)

• Album (Roger):
Frontier
• A-side (Roger): 7/84 [98]

Starting with an atmospheric synthesizer-drum duet before kicking into high gear with an accelerated drum roll, the title track to Roger’s second solo album is strong and solid, with a heavy bass line bouncing throughout, and occasional blasts of marimba colouring the song and keeping things interesting. This was the second time Roger had used the instrument on one of his songs, though by this time it had entered the pop mainstream via the Thompson Twins’ ‘Hold Me Now’ and, later, David Bowie’s ‘Blue Jean’.