On stage it's pretty obvious that it's Freddie the one that stands out more than the rest of the members of the band. So did David Lee Roth with Van Halen, but everybody knew that Eddie Van Halen was the man in charge.
But in the studio, whose influence stood up the most to make decisions concerning the kind of sound that each one of the Queen albums should have?
During the 70s it seemed like the main influence came from Freddie, with Brian stepping behing him very close. However, around the late 70s, 80s, and 90s it seemed like it was Brian who was mostly the leader of the band, although Roger and Freddie had their big share of leadership. John on the other hand seemed like the kind of guy who agreed with anything.
True thing is that none of the members of Queen were absolute leaders of their bands like Jim Morrison with The Doors or Kurt Cobain with Nirvana. Freddie said it himself on the Rock in Rio 85 interview where he mentioned that he wasn't the leader of the band, but they were all equal...
Although quite close to leadership equality than most bands, my guess that one or the other had to be a little more influential and stronger in that sense than the rest.
I remember watching an inerview on some DVD...and the interveiwer said something to the note like as the leader of the band or something to Freddie and Freddie corrected her saying lead singer.
John didn't agree with everything, on the contrary!! He did but only in the beginning, when he just came in the band, he said he felt a bit like an outsider, and Fred, Bri and Rog were fighting about everything, and he didn't want to meddle. But later he became the most important in their business stuff and really took the most responsability for it. In the music way, I think Freddie and Brian were totally equal, and Roger and John a little less. So, as they said many times, noone was the leader of the band!!
FriedChicken wrote: Freddie was the leader. He was pulling the strings....or something else.
But he was always pulling something
I don't think so.. For example, just listen to Made In Heaven or I Was Born To Love You. Freddie wrote them, but they sound waaaaaaaaay better when played by Queen then on Freddie's solo album. What I want to say, they functioned the best as a group, and none of them are possible to replace. So noone is a leader, they're equal. I simply cannot imagine Queen without one of them. And they were also too big egos to let someone tell them what to do.
I think they each played their part in the band, but Freddie and Brian seemed more like leaders, probably because they wrote the majority of songs on each album.
I agree, its obvious I think they were simply a group, a lot of time when band members do solo albums it sounds the same, or in Queen's case whichever stlye songs that member wrote, but with every member's solo maeterial I think they sound dramatically different from the songs the band members wrote and did as Queen.
a friend once asked me why brian may didn't have songs like '39 or Long Away on his solo albums...although there is almost a 10 year time gapbetween them, I thought it was an interesting note...
deleted user 30.08.2004 19:37
I thought Dan Fogelberg did that song....oh wait.....
I don't think there was a leader and I don't think that any of them ever really felt like a leader.
Brian and Freddie were certainly THE musicians in the band, Freddie with his voice and Brian with his great songwriting and guitar playing. But what would they've been without John and Roger??
Each one of them had at least one #1 hit, I think that shows that all of them were capable to do something really great.
No..no leader me thinks
I think always comes up the "they were a band... they were all great" arguments, which are true but out of context imo. Like in a football team, they're eleven players but they're conducted by a captain and a coach.
In the case of Queen I agree it's Freddie, for the following reasons:
- As Brian confirmed, Freddie worked as mediator in the band's fights
- He was the choir master
- As Gary Langan confirmed, Fred was all the time at the console supervising the recording process with the producer, specially during A Night At The Opera
- He was by far the major songwriter of the band (numerically)
- He took over Roger's two big hits (Radio Ga Ga & A Kind Of Magic) from an early stage and arranged them. He also participated a lot in John's songs from an early stage.
- He wrote the band's three #1 hits in UK (if we don't count the posthumous single releases and the "Queen" + things)
- In most cases it was the song writer who decided how was it mixed, recorded, performed... but again, Freddie was the major songwriter
- He decided the band's name and logo
- During the concerts he was the one who had to entertain the audience
- The tours were arranged according to his schedule, and even the album recordings (not only in his last days, John commented that they recorded part of A Kind Of Magic in London because Fred was living there again)
Of course I don't mean the others aren't important, they said sometime that Roger was useful because he was into trends (or something to that effect), John was the business leader, Brian had the Red Special, and all in all they were four songwriter with very different styles and the combination of them is the diversity of the albums (note how 'Opera' has pop, pseudo-classical, rock, dixiland, big-band, etc). If you ask for a leader, there he was. In my opinion
PS: Just to be clear again, by leader I don't mean "the most important" or "the only one who mattered" or anything to that effect