Instruments: The Works Tour [24.08.1984 - 13.07.1985]
Information > Instruments on tour > The Works 1984
660 days without playing a single concert, and then back with a new tour with several changes, the most important being Spike Edney on synths, piano and guitar. Live Aid is included here as they used Works-era equipment. Roger made a deal with Zildjian and stopped using Paiste products (including the gong), and he also had a new kit, in chrome finish.
Brian had a new replica of his guitar, made by the American company Guild (Brian was living in Los Angeles back then), which looked very similar (though not identical) and the sound was almost identical, only a bit darker. Roger, an avid guitar collector, found a classical electric guitar (which looks like an acoustic but is actually electric), that Brian would use later on for some legendary recordings including Innuendo (1989, Steve Howe played that same guitar as well).
|
Drum kit Bass-drum logo: Queen on The Works font, black background (white at Live Aid). Tambourines |
|
|
|
Electric bass guitars |
|
Main electric six-string guitars * Played by John Deacon. A Black-Gold model, CE 10484. Spare electric guitars Acoustic guitars [Love of My Life, Crazy Little Thing] |
|
Piano Synthesisers Electric grand piano |
 |
|
The Works is perhaps the Queen album where the instruments used for the recordings differ the most from what was used on stage. On the record, they used Linn LM-2 drum machines for some songs (in fact, Roger doesn't play at all on the studio version of Break Free), Fairlight CMI-II samplers and Yamaha C-7 pianos (both Musicland and the Record Plant had them as part of their back-line equipment). John played the Fender Special 1981 bass on Break Free and also played three different guitars on it (Gibson Chet Atkins, Fender Telecaster and Fender Stratocaster). Regardless of what's said elsewhere on the internet, the synth solo Fred Mandel played was not on a Roland Jupiter 8 - most likely it was either a Minimoog or an Oberheim OB-Xa. Brian recorded Is This the World We Created with his twelve-string Ovation, not with the Gibson Chet Atkins he'd use on stage. He also used a Gibson Firebird guitar (owned by Ben Fenner) on Hammer to Fall and Tear It Up (and possibly I Go Crazy as well). That shows how Brian, even with a different guitar, still sounds like himself; on the contrary, if we gave another guitar player (even a professional one, unless they're a Brian imitator, and even then...) the Red Special and Brian's rig, he/she wouldn't sound like Brian - regardless of how important the equipment is, the main ingredient is and will always be the performer. |