2023-07-09 10:39:12
This week’s episode of the Queen series reveals how this hilarious but enduring rock and roll hit gives the band a chance to let loose live.
The highlight of any Queen show is the classic rock and roll “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”, as it offers the perfect opportunity for the band to really let loose. And as evidenced in episode 24 of the video series ‘The Greatest Live’ of the band, Brian, Roger, Freddie and John enjoy themselves as much as the audience.
Famously conceived by Freddie Mercury in 1979 amid the bubbles of his bathtub at the Bayerischer Hof hotel in Munich, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” it has always been one of the funniest songs in the Queen catalogue. But as we see in this week’s live archive footage from Japan ’82, the song has evolved onstage and the band flexes their musical muscles.
As the first song in contention for The Game from 1980 at the Musicland studios in Munich, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” he moved at a good pace. “It took me five or ten minutes”Freddie told Melody Maker regarding writing the Elvis-inspired beats. “I did it on the guitar, which I hardly know how to play, and in a way it was quite a good thing, because it was limited, since I only know a few chords”.
Perhaps wary of the song going cold, Freddie got the band together and urged engineer Reinhold Mack to record the tape.
“Freddie wrote it very quickly and rushed to finish it with the boys”Brian May told Absolute Radio. “When I got there, it was almost finished. And I think the sounds that Mack was able to get, these very elemental, very real ambient sounds in the studio, made a big contribution. It sounds very authentic”.
The song was the ’50s-era accent to Brian’s guitar solo, played reluctantly on Roger Taylor’s Telecaster. “They forced me to touch it”said the guitarist. “It was Mack’s idea”.
As the band’s first US chart hit, Mercury admitted it took “sheer guts and bravery” to put on a twelve-string acoustic and bring the rockabilly rhythm of the song to the live performance. But as we see in this week’s footage, by the time the Japanese leg of the 1982 Hot Space Tour concluded at Tokorozawa’s Seibu Lions Stadium on November 3, the song had become the ideal platform for jamming, with Brian and Freddie reunited. around the pianist Fred Mandel with the happy intimacy of a private in a pub.
On the other hand, Mandel would also join Brian and Eddie Van Halen in April 1983 at the Record Plant in Los Angeles for the almost mythical sessions of the Star Fleet Project. Four decades later, the exciting results can be heard on the 40th Anniversary Enhanced Edition, released July 14, 2023 on CD, vinyl, and deluxe LP box set.
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