Queen: The Complete Works (38 page)

THE COSMOS ROCKS

Parlophone 50999 2 37025 2 3 (CD) [5]

COSMOS 001 (limited edition) [5]

Parlophone 50999 2 37025 1 6 (LP) [5]

Hollywood Records D000261502 (CD) [47]

Hollywood D000280801 (LP/collector’s edition) [47]

‘Cosmos Rockin” (4’10), ‘Time To Shine’ (4’23), ‘Still Burnin” (4’04), ‘Small’ (4’39), ‘Warboys (A Prayer For Peace)’ (3’18), ‘We Believe’ (6’08), ‘Call Me’ (2’59), ‘Voodoo’ (4’27), ‘Some Things That Glitter’ (4’03), ‘C-Lebrity’ (3’38), ‘Through The Night’ (4’54), ‘Say It’s Not True’ (4’00), ‘Surf’s Up ... School’s Out !’ (5’38), ‘Small (2’05)’, ‘Runaway’
(digital editions only)
(5’28)

Super Live In Japan – Highlights (Bonus DVD)
: ‘Reaching Out’, ‘Tie Your Mother Down’, ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’, ‘Another One Bites The Dust’, ‘Fire And Water’, ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’, ‘Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together)’, ‘These Are The Days Of Our Lives’, ‘Radio Ga Ga’, ‘Can’t Get Enough’, ‘I Was Born To Love You’, ‘All Right Now’, ‘We Will Rock You’, ‘We Are The Champions’, ‘God Save The Queen’

Musicians
: Brian May (
guitars, bass guitar, piano, keyboards, backing vocals, lead vocals on ‘Say It’s Not True’
), Roger Taylor (
drums, percussion, keyboards, backing vocals, lead vocals on ‘Say It’s Not True’
), Paul Rodgers (
lead and backing vocals, piano, keyboards, guitars, bass guitar
), Taylor Hawkins (
backing vocals on ‘C-Lebrity’
)

Recorded
: June 2007–August 2008 at The Priory, Surrey
Producers
: Brian May, Roger Taylor, Paul Rodgers, Joshua J. Macrae, Justin Shirley-Smith, Kris Fredriksson

Following the conclusion of the Queen + Paul Rodgers US tour in April 2006, the touring band went their separate ways to ponder the future of the partnership. While Paul had commitments as a solo artist, performing continuously from May until the end of October, and then again when his other commitments allowed it throughout 2007 and the early part of 2008, Brian and Roger had other plans, and not all of them were music-related. Roger was invigorated by the experience of playing to such large audiences again, and this sparked an interest in writing new material; indeed, he was the prime mover in getting Brian and Paul into the studio, and confirmed in 2006 that a new album from the trio would be inevitable. “There was no point in carrying on without new material,” Roger told Australia’s
Courier Mail
. “Otherwise you’re not a potent, ongoing force. If you’re just going to recycle old records, old songs, old hits, you sort of become your own tribute band.” As if to prove he was still bursting with creativity, that August he released ‘Woman You’re So Beautiful (But Still A Pain In The Ass)’, his first solo single since 1999.

Brian, however, was reluctant; despite the thrill of being on stage night after night, his fingers weren’t moving as quickly as they had before, and he was in more physical pain throughout the lengthy world tours than he had been in years. Throughout the European tour in 2005, Brian wrote at length on his website about what a rush it was being in cities that had only recently witnessed their first Queen-related concert, but he also noted that the itinerary was rigorous and physically draining for him. (This was confirmed when Paul was stricken with vocal problems, forcing a last-minute rearrangement of vocal duties between Brian and Roger.) Such tours also meant extended time away from his family, and the process of getting back into a normal routine upon returning home was lengthy; Brian wasn’t ready to relive this anytime soon, and so threw himself into other projects that involved
We Will Rock You: The Musical
, the completion of his thesis (titled
A Survey Of Radial Velocities In The Zodiacal Dust Cloud
) and his postgraduate degree, and a book titled
Bang!: The Complete History Of The Universe
, written with astrophysicist Chris Lintott and astronmer Sir Patrick Moore. The very last thing he wanted to do was to pick up The Red Special and trot off around the world once again.

Owing to the persistence of Roger, however, and the undeniable feeling that the chemistry between the three primary musicians had indeed sparked a creative force, long believed to be missing in the dark days following Freddie’s death, Brian conceded to work on new material once again, and sessions for an untitled studio album began in earnest in the summer of 2007. The recording location was at Roger’s home studio (which only further confirmed his dedication to the project) in Surrey, allowing the band to feel at ease with their surroundings and with each other, and not struggle to meet deadlines or feel pressured into arrangements suggested by a hot-shot producer. This has its pros and cons, as can be expected; without a guiding force to overlook the sessions and offer an outsider’s perspective, bands can fall into complacency; luckily, with three hard-headed musicians like Brian, Roger and Paul, however, this wasn’t ever the issue.

The goal of the sessions was to create something organic. Shortly after the sessions began in earnest, Paul spoke to
Billboard
about the progress so far: “We’re letting it sort of develop itself naturally and not pushing it or giving it any pressure. We go in, just the three of us. Roger gets on the kit, Brian gets on othe guitar, I get on the acoustic guitar and piano, either/or, and then we share the bass line afterwards ... I can hear the song line and then Brian can hear all the harmonies on top of it.” The following year, in Australia’s
Courier Mail
, Brian mirrored these sentiments, explaining how they played together every day: “That’s something I’m proud of. We didn’t just go in there and fiddle with machines; we went in there and played our instruments and worked off each other – you can hear that on the album, I think. It’s an organic album at its core.”

“Organic” was the manifesto of the sessions, with the decision made early on not to employ session musicians to fill in the gaps – everything would be played by Brian, Roger and Paul. Considering the chemistry that had developed, not only between the primary musicians but also Jamie Moses, Spike Edney, and newcomer Danny Miranda, on the 2005 and 2006 tours, it would have made sense to have had the touring band included on the sessions, as well. However, Brian, Roger and Paul still felt they had something to prove – if not to their fans, then certainly to themselves – that the three of them could write and record an album of new material. While this may have worked in theory, in practice the result was a mixed bag: with no permanent bassist, those duties fell to Brian and Paul, and while
they may be a brilliant guitarist and brilliant vocalist, respectively, they’re certainly not bass guitarists, and John Deacon’s inventive and fluid lines are sorely missing on the finished album.

Within the first three weeks, two complete songs – ‘Voodoo’ and ‘Time To Shine’, both by Paul – were submitted and finished to the band’s satisfaction, with several other ideas started; by the end of the summer, nine tracks were ready to go, with five more still to come. The ideas flowed fast and free, and everybody learned something from each other: “Paul works in a completely different way to us,” Roger told
Classic Rock
. “Brian and I go to incredible lengths to get things right. He’d never met two pickier, fussier individuals. We even ended up teaching him how to sing harmony vocals, which he’d never done before, but we learned from his spontaneity.”

The first new Queen-related songs since the 46664 songs from 2003 was, incidentally, a re-recording of Roger’s ‘Say It’s Not True’, a live favourite on the 2005/2006 tours but drastically rearranged and overloaded with the pomp and grandeur of Queen’s glory days: transformed from its simplistic, acoustic origins to an emotional, uplifting power ballad, it was a promising return to form, and allowed Paul a perfect opportunity to affirm himself as a vocalist on a par with Freddie. Released as a digital single for World AIDS Day on 1 December 2007, the song was released as a physical product later that month, but because of its previous availability, the single reached a disappointing No. 90 in the UK.

Recording on the album continued well into 2008, with promotion starting earlier than anticipated, when the touring band appeared on the second series finale of
Al Murray’s Happy Hour
in April 2008. The new album title was announced, as such, in the loo, where Brian, Roger and Paul were standing, having just graffitied the wall with “The Cosmos Rocks” and looking charmingly innocent, before they were introduced to perform the new single. But it wasn’t ‘Say It’s Not True’ that was performed; instead, Roger’s ‘C-Lebrity’, a tired potshot at instant stardom, was announced as the lead single. The band delivered a rambunctious performance, with Paul and Roger clearly enjoying themselves, Brian less so, before finishing up with versions of ‘All Right Now’ and an unaired ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’.

The next day, the online community exploded with activity, with equal amounts of venom from Queen purists and praise from open-minded fans. Anticipation ran high, but the momentum ran out far too soon; considering the single wouldn’t be released for another four months, and the album following two weeks after that, the promotional blitz was premature, and by the time ‘C-Lebrity’ was finally released, fans had either had it already by way of rips from YouTube, or had moved on to something else.

Work on the album finished for good on 1 August 2008, with Brian exclaiming on his website, “After many months, and much mountain climbing, and a degree of pain – we have an album!” He prophetically finished his update with, “And hey, can I have my life back now?! ... I need five months off! See ya...” The album was sent off to be mastered, and the touring band once again began rehearsals for the upcoming world tour, set to begin on 15 September in Kharkov, Russia – the same day that
The Cosmos Rocks
was released.

Reviews were cautiously hopeful, with most centering around the lack of Freddie and the almost-there-but-not-quite gelling of Paul’s ramshackle blues-rock pedigree with Brian and Roger’s background in histrionic bombast.
Uncut
was particularly venomous, frothing that “this ill-fitting rebirth, fronted by the defiantly ungay, unIndian and uneccentric Paul Rodgers, can be seen as an attempt to ditch the Mercury-inspired absurdity and bolster Queen’s hard rawkin’ credentials ... Only the funky military swagger of ‘Warboys’ and the beautifully-crafted Freddie tribute ballad ‘Some Things That Glitter’ (possibly Rodgers’ finest vocal performance since his Free heyday) survive this faintly ridiculous project with any credit.”
The Guardian
was also contemptuous: “All involved have underlined that Rodgers should in no sense be thought of as Freddie Mercury’s replacement, but it’s hard to stop yourself wondering what Mercury might have made of all this. The songs might have sounded less awful if they were delivered with a certain knowing camp, a grandiloquence that suggested a sense of the ridiculous. But Paul Rodgers’ stock in trade is a kind of pained sincerity: not for nothing was he the favourite vocalist of our erstwhile PM. When he sings ‘Once I loved a butterfly, don’t wonder how, don’t ask me why’, he sounds as if he quite literally did love a butterfly, like one of those blokes you see on late-night Channel 4 documentaries trying to explain away his intimate relationship with a horse.” Virgin Media simply hated the album: “At best, this sounds like Queen with a lifeless stand-in where their heart should be. At worst, it’s not even that, sounding like a third-rate ZZ Top or just anonymously dull stadium rock. Hard to pick the nadir of such a dire selection,
but ‘C-Lebrity”s galumphing satire particularly grates.”

Two reviews, mostly mixed, brought up some valid points. Australia’s
undercover.com
was a little more generous in its damning: “Had they gone to neutral ground and called it by another name other than Queen, we would be hailing it as one of the great rock releases on 2008. Unfortunately, it is so far removed from what Queen sounded like and not all that far removed from what the various Rodgers albums sounded like that it is difficult to accept
The Cosmos Rocks
as a follow-up to the Mercury legacy.” The
Mail on Sunday
, too, nearly hit the nail on the head: “There are glimmers of May and Taylor’s old skills – ‘Time To Shine’ is built on a wailing Arab motif, ‘Call Me’ contains hints of ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’, and ‘We Believe’ has a simplistic grandeur that could give them another Christmas No 1. But much of this album is pub-rock writ large.”

The good notices approached the album with an open mind. Some, however, blew some truly hyperbolic smoke: “The new trio’s first studio album has this seemingly unlikely coalition clicking together as a fine-tuned, cohesive unit,”
Mojo
gushed. “Without Freddie’s decorative flourishes, the onus is on straight shooting heavy rock, with bullish single ‘C-Lebrity’ the mission statement Queen/Bad Co hybrid. Elsewhere, ‘Small’ is a gentle throwback to Free, and ‘We Believe’ an ‘80s-spec stadium-rock anthem. Occasionally they stumble, as on the clunky ‘Warboys’, but with Rodgers imperious, Queen’s second coming is vindicated.” “Not only can
The Cosmos Rocks
sit proudly in the Queen canon,”
Classic Rock
purred, “it can also do the same alongside Rodgers’ work with Free and Bad Company ... As the album unfolds it rapidly becomes clear that all the components of classic Queen are here. It’s a work of extraordinary confidence, taking the band’s familiar blueprint and casually expanding it to encompass the organic blues and visceral soul of Paul Rodgers. Overall
The Cosmos Rocks
has more than enough power to take your breath away. Freddie’s legacy is in safe hands.”

Record Collector
was cautious: “It’s not until track 12 that the epic ‘Say It’s Not True’ rekindles the pomp of Queen of old, followed by the harmony-rich ‘Surf’s Up ... School’s Out!’. Ending on a high note, then, but it may take some plays to get used to the idea that QPR is very much a meeting of equals.”
The Pace Press
was more realistic: “[It] isn’t a perfect album, but is well worth the thirteen-year wait. Brian May’s guitar playing abilities, for someone as old as he is, haven’t faded in the least. This album is full of tunes that will have fans rocking out and playing air guitar while walking city streets ... This album will take you up, down and all around Queentown. It’s not perfect, but it’s a step in the right direction.”