King and Queen
On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the death of Freddie Mercury, I’d like to write a little tribute by way of highlighting Freddie’s connections with Elvis. I’ll declare a personal interest here. Elvis Presley is my favourite singer of all and Queen my favourite band. I’ve been an Elvis fan for as long as I can remember anything. When young I wanted nothing and no-one but Elvis. Birthdays, Christmas, any event where a little present was in the offing, it was always Elvis I wanted. The only other artist that got through were Queen. It was Freddie’s ‘Killer Queen’ that broke through in 1974. So I’ve been a Queen fan for a long time, if not from the very first album in 1973 then pretty close. It seems only natural that my favourites in music would be the King and Queen. I like those kinds of monarchs who put on a show for the public and give people what they want. Whether that’s what people need is another matter. In music and entertainment, I declare myself an unabashed hedonist.
It should come as no surprise, either, that the King and Queen are connected. Freddie Mercury was a huge admirer of Elvis Presley, going all the way back to his younger days in boarding school in India.
Freddie Mercury had many influences and declared his love for a way array of artists over the years. This list of Freddie’s influences includes rock stars, showbiz legends, and opera singers, going some way to explaining why Freddie would come to create such an immensely diverse body of work. Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie, Liza Minelli, Montserrat Caballé, Freddie would even end shows with Shirley Bassey’s ‘Big Spender.’ It’s all in here.
‘As it began …’
It would be a huge mistake to reduce Freddie Mercury to any or even all of his influences. He was an immensely creative artist who brought an added value to his influences, transforming them in the process. He strikes me as almost a mythical creature, part sponge in soaking up ideas in his environment, part magpie in taking anything he wanted from whatever caught the attention of his roving and unerring eye. Freddie was the consummate range-rider, seeing no distinctions and borders between various artistic modes of expression. He was naturally creative, producing boundary-breaking music that was rich and diverse. Freddie – like Queen – didn’t quite fit the standard definitions and categories by which less creative types seek to order music. It is clear enough that in origin Queen were a hard rock band – and could rock as hard as anyone and a lot harder than most. That’s the band I loved from the first. But hard rock bands were ten-a-penny. Queen always stood out as being in some way ‘different.’ The critics never quite knew how to describe this ‘difference,’ since there were no reference points to make the task easy. Whilst many referred to Queen as a blend of ‘Glam’ and ‘Prog,’ this never quite rang true. The connection with Glam was more a question of timing than content. Queen’s flash and panache came from somewhere else entirely, not least opera, theatre, and fashion. There is a world of difference between Freddie's interest in fine art and design and the ‘brickies in bacofoil’ look of Glam. And if the band did have ‘Prog’ elements, it has to be said that the cast of fairies, elves, and ogres in those early Queen songs was a much camper bunch than those in, say, Led Zep.
In fine, there’s any number of influences in the music of Freddie Mercury (and Queen), but it’s a huge mistake to reduce Freddie to any or all of those influences – Freddie had a creative extra value that transformed all he touched. At the same time, it all began with Elvis Presley.
Freddie's interest in music emerged when he was young. He took piano lessons growing up in Zanzibar, and his interest in music continued and expanded when he was sent to boarding school in Bombay, India. This was his first exposure to Western pop, and he took to it like a duck takes to water. The biggest influence on Freddie – as it was for many others - was Elvis. As Freddie recalls: "When I was little I was in the choir and I just liked to sing. I would copy Elvis Presley songs, then I suddenly realised that I could actually write songs and make my own music – call it a natural gift, or whatever.”
Many years later, the very first song that Freddie would sing before a paying public would be Elvis’ ‘Jailhouse Rock.’ This was when Freddie was with his very first band, Ibex, a Liverpool band. As Ibex member John ‘Tupp’ Taylor tells the tale: “The first day he stood in front of that crowd, he had it all going. It seemed as if he’d been practicing for years to be ready. We’d only ever sang together as mates before that. We’d never done anything by way of trying it out. He was going to be in the band and everyone was happy with that. Once Freddie was in, we changed in loads of different directions. We began to play ‘Jailhouse Rock’, for a start! I think that was the first thing we did with him on stage.” It was. ‘Jailhouse Rock’ would be a staple in the Queen set from first almost to last. The last time that the band performed the song in concert was in Osaka, Japan, May 15th 1985. It had been a regular up to that point, performed on every tour, year after year. In the very final Queen concert ever, Knebworth, 9th August 1986, the band performed another Elvis song, ‘Baby I Don’t Care,’ from the Elvis movie ‘Jailhouse Rock.’
Freddie paid his own tribute to his very first idol by writing a smash hit that was so like Elvis that many people thought it an Elvis cover. ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ was Queen’s first US #1, making it bigger in the United States than either ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (#6) and ‘We Are The Champions’ (#4). The Elvis styled song is also said to have inspired John Lennon – another huge Elvis fan – to return to the studio to record what was destined to become his final album. Listening to Lennon’s final hit, ‘Starting Over,’ that story certainly rings true.
‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ is celebrated as a tribute to Elvis. But it’s something that Freddie said in an interview which highlights the resonances between him and Elvis. Freddie was open about the Elvis influence, observing how close his singing on the track came to Elvis’ fifties signature sound: “My voice does sound a bit like Elvis Presley’s on Crazy Little Thing Called Love," he said in interview. "That wasn’t something I was trying to do, naturally, it was pure coincidence.” This resemblance is hardly surprising given the extent to which Freddie loved to sing along to Elvis songs when young, mimicking his idol when he was at boarding school near Bombay in the 1950s. This was when Freddie first heard Elvis and was bowled over. He remained a lifelong Elvis fan. Freddie sang along to Elvis so often that he internalized the sound of Elvis’ voice and hence would reproduce it naturally. If you listen closely, you can hear Freddie doing little Elvis impersonations in other Queen songs, in ‘Breakthrough’ and at the end of ‘Heaven for Everyone.’ At the same time he developed as a singer and songwriter in his own right: “When I was little I was in the choir and I just liked to sing,” Freddie recalled. “I would copy Elvis Presley songs, then I suddenly realized that I could actually write songs and make my own music – call it a natural gift, or whatever.” (Freddie Mercury: A Life, In His Own Words (Mercury Songs Ltd).
"It’s all sung rather low, so then you soon come close to Elvis, especially with such a 50s-type song.
"I don’t mind telling you that my girlfriend thought it was a cover song, but that is absolutely not true. I wrote it… while taking a bath.”
Brian May said of the rock 'n roll song: “It’s Freddie’s tribute to Elvis in a way... Freddie was very fond of Elvis.” May confirmed the enduring influence of Elvis on Freddie as well as the rest of the band.
‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ was released in 1979, just two years after the death of Elvis at the age of 42 in August 1977. It was the time of Elvis tributes, some better than others, some being truly dire cash-ins of no merit whatsoever. My favourites were Thin Lizzy’s ‘Do Anything You Want To Do’ from 1978 and the Phil Lynott-Mark Knopfler collaboration ‘King’s Call’ from 1980. These dates make it clear that 1979 was not too late for an Elvis tribute. But what was truly impressive about ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ is that the song makes no reference at all to Elvis or Elvis’ death, it was just a superb song in its own right, with an independent life and quality of its own. It was light and fresh and it swung like the clappers – much like early Elvis. It was also blessed with a superbly entertaining video, a little camp, a little risqué. The song certainly recalled Elvis in his 1950s heyday, which is more than enough to explain its huge success. The thing is, though, my impression of the song as a huge Elvis fan was that the song – and especially the video - was very Freddie and very Queen. I loved the song in its own right. And I think that’s why the track is so good, it has a life all of its own. It’s a song that could be performed in Queen’s stellar live set at ‘Live Aid’ and incite the crowd regardless of any Elvis connotations. Then again, Elvis has seeped so deeply into popular music and culture that he is always present, well below the conscious level. Elvis is everywhere, even when unnamed. Invoke the spirit of Elvis and you can’t go wrong.
Freddie explained how he had come to write ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love,’ quickly and in the bath. “Crazy Little Thing Called Love' took me five or ten minutes,” he told Melody Maker. “I did that on the guitar, which I can't play for nuts, and in one way it was quite a good thing because I was restricted, knowing only a few chords. It's a good discipline because I simply had to write within a small framework,” he continued. “I couldn't work through too many chords and because of that restriction I wrote a good song, I think.”
Roger Taylor confirms that Freddie wrote the song in ten minutes while lounging in the bath in their Munich hotel during one of their stints recording in Germany. Freddie took the song to the studio. Brian May was not present, but drummer Roger Taylor and bassist John Deacon were, so the three of them set about recording it with the assistance of producer Reinhold Mack. Band members say it took just half an hour, Mack says six hours. The story I hear often is that Freddie wanted it finished quickly, before Brian May turned up to do all the meticulous and finicky work he was noted (notorious) for. The song has a great feel and spontaneity and went on to hit UK #2 and US #1.
In an episode of ‘Queen The Greatest,’ May and Taylor spoke about the making of ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love.’ “The first thing we did was ‘Crazy Little Thing…’”, Taylor says, “and Fred did write the song in the bath in about 10 minutes.” May goes on to confirm Freddie’s massive admiration of Elvis: “He was very fond of Elvis, and of Cliff [Richard], I have to say. Yeah, Freddie wrote it very quickly and rushed in and put it down with the boys. By the time I got there, it was almost done.
“And I think the sounds that [sound engineer Reinhold] Mack managed to get, these very elemental, very real sounds, ambient sounds in the studio had a big contribution to make. It does sound very authentic, everything about it is sort of like original rock and roll sounding.”
That, I would say, is the best tribute to Elvis possible. I would also say that Elvis himself never quite got back to his original sound, although I am not sure how he could have re-created that one-off creative fusion in time and space he fashioned in the fifties. It was a unique moment that was impossible to re-create (except as parody).
But at least the bath story is true. Indeed, it seems that the urge to write a song would strike Freddie anytime anywhere: "Inspiration strikes anywhere. It strikes me when I'm least expecting it and it plays havoc with my sex life. I can get inspiration just sitting in the bath."
May continued on the influence of Elvis on Freddie: “I think it’s impossible to have been a kid at that time and not been influenced by Elvis. Freddie in particular though, of course. He was one of Freddie’s great heroes.”
Most of the articles on the Elvis influence are concerned with the songs and music of Freddie and Queen, more or less taking for granted Elvis’ own qualities. Elvis is Elvis. But it is still worth underscoring just what was so good about Elvis, just why he was so influential, and why Freddie Mercury was a lifelong fan. Brian May elaborates on what made Elvis great: “And looking back, you know how you sometimes reevaluate when you listen to the old records? You think, ‘What was it that I saw in those things?’ When you listen to an Elvis record you realise he probably done it in one or two takes. There’s no auto-tuning, there’s no jiggery-pokery. He was damn good.”
Precisely.
“He was accurate, passionate, had fantastic range, fantastic tone; he deserved everything he got. He was the pinnacle at the time, I would say, of what a singer could be – no doubt about it. And he had a great team around him.”
The entire world knows ‘Elvis,’ Elvis the star and the icon. Elvis has been around for so long, that people can tend to forget what it was precisely that made Elvis great in the first place. That’s what May calls back to the world.
Freddie Mercury was derided in the punk-fetishizing music press for his toast ‘may you all drink champagne tomorrow for breakfast.’ It’s amazing how po-faced, straight-laced, and literal-minded ‘cool’ and ‘clever’ people can be. I don’t think that Freddie was being entirely serious... He gave other reasons for success and popularity: “The public want a showbiz type of feel. They get a buzz. Why do you think people like David Bowie and Elvis Presley have been so successful? Because they give their audiences champagne for breakfast? No, because they’re what the people want.”
Come on, give Freddie a break! People take things far too seriously, themselves most of all. Freddie had a self-deprecating humour that grounded the pomposity and swagger, a great sense of the ridiculous. That was very amusing, and endearing. Giving people what they want, and above and beyond even that, what they need in the core of their beings, was what Freddie did best. Elvis did it too.
I shall end with the story of the real-life personal connections between the King and Queen – the time when Elvis’ daughter Lisa Marie Presley presented Freddie with one of Elvis’s scarves at a Queen concert.
In exploring the connections between my favourite singer and my favourite band, it is wonderful to read that Elvis’ daughter Lisa Marie Presley is a Queen fan. With the band’s operatic quality to music and its performance, with huge communal crowd pleasers rousing mass audiences, it is no surprise that a daughter of the ultimate crowd pleaser should express an admiration of Queen. It may be a stretch to imagine Elvis himself as being much of a fan. I find little evidence that Elvis was much of a fan of any kind of rock after the fifties. But he liked a show and a spectacle, capes and jumpsuits, flashing lights, and grand operatic show-stoppers and gestures. So who knows?
What we do know is that Queen were the very first rock band Lisa Marie ever saw in concert. “I think I saw them in 1978 or 1979 at The Forum,” Lisa Marie told Pop Entertainment.” I remember bringing Freddie Mercury a scarf of my Dad’s. And I gave it to him after the show. I loved it, I loved the theatrics. I loved Freddie, I thought Queen were awesome.”
(see Lisa Marie Presley, Now What?)
Having been a huge fan of Elvis from the moment he heard him at boarding school in Bombay in the 1950s, Freddie would have treasured the gift. And that brings the story full circle. Lisa Marie's dating is somewhat imprecise, but her statement does give us something to work with. She identifies the place as the Forum, Inglewood, Los Angeles, but gives us two dates. Queen played the Forum twelve times in their career, in 1977, 1978, 1980, and 1982. Since there is no gig in Inglewood in 1979, that leaves 1978. Peter Freestone tells the tale of Lisa Marie presenting Freddie with one of her father's scarves in his book, but Freestone was not part of the entourage in 1978, so maybe the meeting was at one of the 1980 or 1982 dates. Or maybe Freestone is repeating Lisa Marie's tale rather than claiming that he witnessed the event. Gary Taylor claims that the meeting took place at Queen’s final LA gig in 1982 (Queen Touring America: The Complete North American Concert History from 1974 to 1982). Maybe. There is a world of difference between Lisa Marie's 1978 and 1982, magnified by Lisa Maries’s age of ten for the former date and fourteen for the latter. Splitting the difference, we could imagine that the great event took place at this gig in 1980. This meeting between the King’s daughter and the lead singer of Queen at this time (and at this place, coming to visit Los Angeles many times many years later) is an appealing image for me. I grew up as a huge Elvis fanatic, and remain somewhat fanatical (very). I never wanted records by any artist other than Elvis, a barrier that it took Queen to break down (and no-one else for years after). Christmas 1979 was in some ways a succession from King to Queen. Queen’s 'Live Killers' album of that year was the very first time I received a non-Elvis album as my main Christmas gift. It is somewhat reassuring to imagine the King’s daughter blessing my new fealty to Queen. She was doing some such thing at the same time. Such is life, change and continuity.
Unless otherwise stated, all quotes are from ‘Freddie Mercury: A Life, In His Own Words,’ (Mercury Songs Ltd).