Killer Opening Songs (Queen's Mustapha)

Some artists manage just one Killer Opening Song in their whole musical career. Some others get to release just a handful. But there are performers and bands for whom Killer Opening Songs are part of their DNA. One clear example is the British rock and pop group Queen.

I must declare an expression of interest here. I am a Queen fan. I have been one since age thirteen and I’m about to enter my thirty-seventh year of existence in a few months, so that would make me twenty-four years listening to one of the top bands in the vast rock universe.

So, there, I’ve written that paragraph. Now, you can either stop reading this post or the blog altogether and make tracks (no charge will be levied, mind) or stay for a while and learn a little bit more about one of the most dynamic and forward-thinking groups in rock’s short life.

Queen fans come under two guises, those who are enamoured of the band’s Greatest Hits Volumes (and can quote most of their hits by heart) and those who listen to their albums in their entirety and really understand the group’s ethos. I guess that by now you know which team I am in.

The first element that attracted me to this band when I was still a teenager and living in Havana, Cuba, was their pure and unbridled creative energy. From their debut album, ‘Queen’, with its nod to Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones, the band embarked on a never-ending experimental tour that brought them a huge following but also derision. It’s not strange that Queen never courted favour with British rock critics. In a country where self-effacement is the lifestyle of choice, captions like ‘No Synthesizers’ (plastered across the first seven albums) did not attract praise but mockery. And Freddie’s artistic vision (like for instance in the song ‘The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke’ from their second album, ‘Queen II') did not find an enthusiastic audience amongst rock’s cognoscenti.

The other aspect that always appealed to me about this British band was their chutzpah. Theirs was a form of musical audacity that led them to see off more narcissistic rock styles, like punk, for instance, at a time when most people were writing their musical obituary.

That’s why it is a pleasure to bring to this column this week a song that encapsulates everything I have described above. Never released as a single, yet it has the same quality as ‘We Will Rock You’ or ‘Play the Game’ (two other anthemic Killer Opening Songs by Queen). Not sung live very often, however in a moment you will see footage of a very rare performance of it. The words are not in English, bar a few ones, but any real fan familiar with Queen’s music will know by now that the band sometimes indulged in French, Japanese and Spanish in their compositions. In short, ‘Mustapha’, the song I am uploading this week, was a very creative and challenging outing for his writer, Freddie Mercury. Sung in Persian, the song was very popular in France due to the large Muslim population in this European nation. The fact that I’ve selected this track from a plethora of songs used by Queen to open their albums with, attests to the brilliance and intelligence this band displayed for their entire twenty-year career (yes, to me they were finished after Freddie died in 1991, so that means 1971-1991 R.I.P.). Just to give you fellow bloggers and readers an idea of what else to find within the ‘Jazz’ album, where this song first appeared here’s a roll-call: ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’, ‘Bicycle Race’, (yes, the one with the naughty video), ‘Let Me Entertain You’, (a real camp-fest with words like ‘I've come here to sell you my body/I can show you some good merchandise/I'll pull you and I'll pill you/I'll CrueladeVille you/And to thrill you I'll use any device) and one of their stadium anthems, ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’, currently used in a car ad.

So, do you see my point? ‘Mustapha’ was nothing but the introduction to a huge musical extravaganza, the likelihood of which is hard to find these days amidst the anodyne and formulaic pop that gets churned out by production companies so often. What other songs from the album did not make it to singles or hits? Oh dear, you got me on a roll now: ‘If You Can’t Beat Them’, (the male rock version of ‘I Will Survive’ by Gloria Gaynor), ‘Dead On Time’ (heavy metal anyone?), ‘Dreamer’s Ball’ (Freddie said of this song in the ‘Live Killers’ album: ‘The things you have to do for money’) and ‘Fun It’ (precursor to Queen going disco in the 80s, but still a brilliant tune).

Now that I’ve held your attention for all this time, allow me to explain what you’re about to witness. The first clip is the original intro from the ‘Live Killers’ album, the Paris leg, which, as I have already explained, had the whole crowd asking for the song. The second clip is that aforementioned rare performance and the third video is just the album version, no funky visuals or anything.

I hope that you come away from this week’s column with a different idea about this British band that broke every single barrier there was out there in terms of creativity and originality.






Copyright 2008

Living in a Bilingual World (Menuetto Allegretto)

'No te pares frente a mi,
con esa mirada tan hiriente,
puedo entender estrechez de mente,
soportar la falta de experiencia,
pero no puedo aguantar
estrechez de corazon'

Thus sang, not the 80s Southamerican pop rockers Los Prisioneros, but my two children in the car recently with perfectly rolled 'Rs'. They've taken to Latin pop and rock like fish to the water. It all started with Daughter humming and then actually saying the words to Charly García's Raros Peinados Nuevos, one of the anthems that defined my teenage years. Currently Daughter has the lyrics pinned to the walls of her bedroom and once in a while we give it a good go; Charly would be proud. Son followed suit and now we have Los Prisioneros on in the car most of the time.

Today and, according to the Times Education Supplement, it's European Day of Languages, yet, I've not heard anything about it, have you, my dear fellow bloggers/readers/posters? Wouldn't it be a wonder if we could tune in to the good ol' BBC Morning News and see a presenter telling us about recent events in French? Or how about a John Humphreys-like figure (I'm still with the Beeb) roasting a politician in German?

Because I've seen up close and personal how learning Spanish has made my two children brighter, smarter and more culturally aware, it's harder to understand why this is not a priority in the government agenda, especially in the modern and globalised world we live in today. Lest we forget, let's recall that just scarcely a few years ago, David Blunkett, whilst still Home Secretary, called upon foreign parents (yep, that's me, then!), to give up talking to their children in their own language at home and switch to English instead. Yeah, right, Dave, well, if I was to follow your advice, matey, my children wouldn't understand a word of what's being said when we travel to both Spain and Cuba. How do you think one learns a foreign language, Dave? By osmosis? But it's not just the linguistic element that one absorbs when devoted to this activity. It's the cultural one attached to it. Language and culture journey together through the annals of a nation. The mere existence of a particular phrase or word can take you back on a historical voyage to a time and context that you were unaware of to begin with. My son, who translates texts from Spanish to English at present, although reluctantly, has discovered a world of talking rats and honest elephants. Daughter, on the other hand, immerses herself in a realm populated by capricious queens and magical whales. All in all, both, with support from my wife, who speaks Spanish fluently, have found an alternative world that they can flee to and where they feel welcome. In the meantime, they have both taken to singing Chico Buarque's 'Cálice and learning the words. Portuguese, now, so soon?

Copyright 2007

Illustration courtesy of Garrincha

I've got a song in my head

I've got a song in my head and I can't stop. I've got a song in my head and I continue to bop. I've got a slender song in my head that can lift its body a third off the ground and look down onto me . I've got a song in my head that can flatten its neck sheltering me in the hood of its larynx. I've got a song in my head that slithers along, nestles in the crook of my arm and stays in, warm and uninvited. I've got a song in my head that is solitary and territorial; it prefers deep forests, but can also range in open areas. I've got a song in my head that, from the first time I heard it, has overpowered me from any angle, using its puny size to knock me off my balance.

It's a mad song, it is, my song. It talks about a phallus in pigtails and blood in my nose. It describes how my tissue is rotting/where the rats chew my bones. I love my song, because it is mine, you see. I know, I know, it was written by one David Bowie but I've appropriated it now, just like IT has got a hold on me. When I first got 'Space Oddity' years ago, it was the title track I was familiar with. But it was the second song, 'Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed' that got me hooked to the album. It starts with a simple acoustic arrangement and Bowie singing in a nonchalant manner Spy, spy, pretty girl/I see you see me through your window/Don't turn your nose up/Well, you can if you need to, you won't be the first or last/It must strain you to look down so far from your father's house/And I know what a louse like me in his house could do for you and suddenly... pandemonium.

The guitar grows muscled forelimbs with which to render the listener powerless, there's a harmonica that lets rip right into your soul, and doesn't let go until you lie on the floor, motionless, still, immobile, from having exhausted yourself through pure musical ecstasy.

I've got a song in my head, I've got a song in my head that makes me hop and bop, and I won't stop till I drop... I've got a song in my head...

Copyright 2007