Mercury, May, Deacon, or Taylor: Songs Of Queen Quiz

Answer: John Deacon

Initially Queen did not intend to release "Another One Bites The Dust" as a single. Brian May's roadie suggested it and his word was backed up by none other than a certain Michael Jackson. Deacon even said that drummer Roger Taylor hated the idea of tape being put on his kit to deaden the sound. Deacon played most of the other instruments

Brian May later told 'Mojo' magazine: "Freddie sung until his throat bled on 'Another One Bites The Dust'. He was so into it. He wanted to make that song something special." In 1980 the song peaked at number seven in the UK charts. It reached number 25 in the USA.

Incidentally, bass player John Deacon came to shun the limelight after the death of Freddie Mercury. That had shocked him. "As far as we are concerned, this is it. There is no point carrying on. It is impossible to replace Freddie", he said. Deacon decided not to appear at Queen's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, nor did he join the collaboration projects with Paul Rodgers or Adam Lambert.

Answer: Freddie Mercury

In 'Mojo' magazine in 2009, Peter Hince, head of Queen's road crew, said: "The idea for the song came to him while he was in the bath. He emerged, wrapped in a towel, I handed him the guitar and he worked out the chords there and then. Fred had this knack of knowing a great pop song."

More than a few people noted that Mercury - who had a four-octave vocal range - made this sound like an Elvis song. It reached number two in the UK in 1979 and topped the 'Billboard' Hot 100.

Answer: Brian May

"We Will Rock You" was released as a double A-side single with "We Are The Champions" and afterwards the band generally used the two songs as a back-to-back encore.

Brian May claimed the song came to him in a dream. He told 'Mojo' magazine he wanted to "create a song that the audience could participate in."

In 2000 the band Five collaborated with the three serving Queen members; May, Dean and Taylor, to the top of the UK charts.

Answer: Roger Taylor

If you noted the word "created" in the question its because Roger Taylor wrote the melody and chords but Freddie Mercury re-wrote the song behind his back. Taylor was reportedly unamused. It is Taylor's song you hear in the movie, but Mercury's on the album "A Kind Of Magic".

Taylor picked up the phrase "a kind of magic" from a line in the movie's dialogue. The single was a number three in UK in 1986.

Answer: John Deacon

Americans were believed to have been turned off by the official video. It showed the four members of Queen cross-dressed as women and performing domestic chores in a typical British house. The sight of a moustachioed Freddie Mercury in a bouffant wig pushing a vacuum cleaner was perhaps more than Americans could bear.

Indeed, the song was banned by MTV in the USA, leading Brian May to speculate: "I think at that point we lost America, which is a shame, as it means there's a whole chunk of Queen songs which never got played or heard there."

The controversy also cost Queen the chance to appear in the recording of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" for the Band Aid Ethiopian famine campaign. But when the Live Aid concert took place at Wembley Stadium in London in 1985, Queen were there and wowed the live and TV audiences with their meticulously rehearsed set.

Deacon wrote the song as a man's perspective of women's liberation. It reached number three in UK in 1984.

Answer: Freddie Mercury

Freddie Mercury later said: "I was thinking about football when I wrote it. I wanted a participation song, something that the fans could latch on to. Of course, I've given it more theatrical subtlety than an ordinary football chant. I suppose it could also be construed as my version of 'I Did It My Way.' We have made it, and it certainly wasn't easy. No bed of roses as the song says. And it's still not easy."

"We Are The Champions" was on the album "News Of The World" and flowed seamlessly into "We Will Rock You". This led some DJs to play them together. There were also related as a double A side.

Over the years the song has appeared in a number of movies and was associated with sporting successes. The surviving Queen members were not amused when Donald Trump had it played, without permission, at his rallies in 2016.

Answer: Brian May

"I want it all, and I want it now..." was a saying attributed to May's girlfriend and later wife, the former soap opera star Anita Dobson.

Although May and Freddie Mercury sang in the recording, this was a song that Mercury never got to sing in concert - his declining health from 1987 onwards meant an end to their touring schedule.

But the song brought an end to a quiet recording phase for the band - they had not hit the charts for over two years. They were to have five hits in seven months thereafter.

May later said: "We were never able to perform this song live. It would have become something of the staple core of the Queen show, I'm sure, very participatory. It was designed for the audience to sing along to, very anthemic."

After Mercury's death from AIDS in 1991, Roger Daltrey of The Who joined the other Queen members to sing the song at the Mercury Memorial Concert in April 1992.

Answer: Brian May

Brian May felt there was no ambiguity in writing a song for a singer whose choices of partners at the time were men rather than women. "I wrote it with Fred in mind, as you do especially if you've got a great singer who likes fat bottomed girls... or boys", he told 'Mojo' magazine.

The single reached number 11 in the UK as a double A with "Bicycle Race". in the UK and number 24 in the USA. The artwork on the record sleeve had to be altered. Initially it showed a rear view of a naked woman riding a bicycle. A pair of red briefs were added to her derrière.

Answer: Roger Taylor

Roger Taylor was frustrated by the blandness of many radio stations that seemed to play the same playlists of songs over and over. It was a number two in UK 1984.

In the recording of the song, Queen used a number of electronic instruments and a drum machine, something they were not generally noted for. (An exception was "I Want To Break Free" where that incredible 'guitar solo' in the middle is actually a synthesiser played by Fred Mandel.)

Answer: Freddie Mercury

Well, what can you say about one of the most audacious singles ever to top the pop charts? For a start, at six minutes it was twice the length of most pop releases. It also became the most streamed song of the 20th Century, over 1.6 billion times.

The recording sessions were also mind-blowing. Using a 24-track machine, they layered together 180 tracks. They also spent hours putting together the iconic video for the BBC music show "Top Of The Pops". There was a particular reason, according to Roger Taylor: "We did everything we possibly could to avoid appearing in 'Top Of The Pops'. It was one, the most boring day known to man, and two, it's all about not actually playing - pretending to sing, pretending to play. We came up with the video concept to avoid playing on 'Top Of The Pops'". Remarkably it took just three hours to record the video at a modest cost.

It reached Number one in UK 1975 and again after Mercury's death in 1991. It reached number two in the 'Billboard' Hot 100 in 1992. When 'Billboard' magazine put together their list of 'Queen's 25 Best Songs: Critic's Picks' in 2018, they put "Bohemian Rhapsody" at number one.