Long Away confirmed to be played live !?

It sounds not only as thinking about quitting the band but also as quitting the music industry. Maybe it was early onset of depression ?

You may be thinking of Mad the Swine, reportedly performed in Memphis on April 20th 1974. Have never heard any concrete source of The Night Comes Down being played, ever.

At one point in time Brian told an interviewer perhaps jokingly, that there was a time it figuratively seemed like they were trying to kick him out the band. Probably a lot of truth to why he felt that way. Even on Freddie's piano based singles or even YMBF, up until Jazz, Brian's sound was everywhere. Cue 1980 and The Game, it's nowhere to be found on their biggest single ever to that date (CLTCL), to be followed up again by another song with virtually no Brian (AOBTD). Flash Gordon was keyboard heavy, and on the two North American singles for Hot Space, Brian gets a few notes on Body Language then a cursory noodling section on Calling all girls. Finally, he was invisible on Radio Ga Ga and close to it on IWTBF from the works. Add in the fact his solo disappeared and he was likely feeling totally adrift musically, and of all the Queen members, I found the new styles of music were least suited to him.

Hi vh, certainly understood that Brian was the driving force behind a lot of Flash Gordon, however, my point remains and your examples lead credence to what Brian likely felt.

Roger played a lot of guitar on The Game and Jazz too. But since Brian was the guitarist not sure that the original point of him being happy with things is solved by a drummer playing guitar instead of him.

You are correct that Mack told Brian to use an old Telecaster for CLTCL. The other part of the story is that Freddie, Roger and John did the track without Brian there and Freddie wanted to do it quickly before Brain arrived to the session. Why? No idea. But maybe they wanted to get away from the style of guitar Brain was renowned for. If you can pick up Brian's vibrato on that song and saying that is Brian May playing you're a better man than I. That could have been Scotty Moore, James Burton or the guy from the Stary Cats. There is no "this is Brian May" vibe to that at all. Again, not being a mind reader, his involvement in what was the classic Queen sound was decreasing with each album.

Brian wrote Dear Friends which has no guitar, and All dead, All dead, which has a one beautiful guitar break but no guitar elsewhere. Save Me is a piano heavy song so it's not like Brian had guitar on every song. However, Great King Rat had 55! bars of solo guitar 7 years before the Game. I'd be surprised if there are 55 bars of soloing on The Game, and sure as hell there in't on Hot Space. You are 100% correct that Queen played for the song and that is what made them great. But Brian, despite being one of the apparently lovely people in the world, has an enormous ego and must have felt a little out of sorts that their biggest singles had no input form him, and most of the early 80s stuff singles wise he really didn't need to be in the band. But great post, alternate thoughts welcomed and appreciated, that's how I learn

I think CLTCL would sound awful with a typical BM solo. The given story is that Freddie wrote the track quickly, went to the studio to record the song the next day, Freddie, Roger and John recorded the backing track before BM arrived, the consensus seemed to be that they wanted to get to sound as close to Freddie's vision as possible. Had Brian been there it would have taken a lot longer because Brian would have taken his time learning the song and then coming up with alternatives to Freddie's idea, causing arguments? Maybe! You mentioned the guitar solo again, I take your point, but that was the style he was looking for, however within that style BM plays a melodic solo that is close too although different to the song melody, something he very often does in a lot of his solos. You've said it could be anyone, I still don't see that.  It seems that on The Game both ABTD and Crazy were recorded to sound like genuine versions of the song style rather than Queen versions of those styles. Remember Roger had already introduced funk to the Queen sound on the previous album, but it retained everything you'd want to here in the Queen sound.

Something else worth remembering is that it wasn't in the late 70's early 80's that other band members played guitar on albums. As far back as the third album Brian wasn't playing all the guitars.

Yes their song writing and arranging became less guitar based in the early 80's. But with the introduction of keyboards the music had to have space for that instrument, at the point of The Works they were so far into all things 80's that even some of Rogers drum parts were no longer live drums.

in some ways BM was in a similar situation to Alex Lifeson in as much as the guitar wasn't a majorly featured instrument on a lot of the early to mid 80's material. Both Rush and Queen kind of returned to there "heavier"  guitar led sound later in their careers, but both lost some and gained some other fans through that 80's period. Like BM Lifeson was very disgruntled with the way keys and some of the song writing was heading but both rode out the storm for there bands success.

If that hand-written setlist from 1972 is genuine, then that claim would indeed be correct.

@the Real Wizard - is Saginaw missing from your site?

I'm very late to this but I'm guessing that this is probably true. Long Away might've only been played once but it does seem likely when songs like The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke and Sleeping On The Sidewalk weren't confirmed either until the last few years with official recordings.

But something which I don't think was mentioned in this thread, Freddie did an interview in Detroit just a day or two prior to the gig in Saginaw (basically the aftermath of the previous gig to the specific concert review shared where Long Away is mentioned) where he talks about Long Away being heavily rehearsed:



It sounds like the group needed to rehearse Long Away a bit more but they had found a point to insert it in the show. So if they had a day between this interview and the next gig maybe rehearsing the song is what they did...

I honestly think Somebody To Love live was the changing point for Queen. 1977 is the year the band became a tour de force and I'm not saying Queen weren't amazing before (because they were still great) but they lacked faith and belief that they couldn't play the complicated stuff. But in my mind if they could play Somebody To Love, they could play anything!


Obviously this was the year they played at the Madison Square Garden for the first time but maybe the absolute moment was when WWRY & WATC appeared. 

I honestly don't think you would hear any of the group talk about the live set like Freddie did here in a few months time....

A new article on Long Away here:

ultimateclassicrock.com/queen-long-away/

Seems to confirm that it was never played live.

The article states "Queen never performed the song live", so I guess they're not counting any performances outside of the original band.

My rather poor footage from 2010 shows RT too....