The Works: "Early" Tracklist

Now THAT'S an album!
I really hope MMP was fully recorded by the band.

My book has a delivery ETA of next wednesday.
Amazon UK are getting slower.
All to push "prime" I guess.

Two other details.
Take Another Piece of Another my Heart(Let Me Live), which later appeared in Made In Heaven.
Your Heart Again which was finally released on the Queen Forever compilation.

For many years, I was believing and still do that the works is a good album, however very short in terms of time.
According with the above list, it could have been a great album, same thing I believe for the miracle album.

During the 80s their ideas were still clever, their decisions were a different story...

queenchat.boards.net/post/45401/thread


Golden Salmon posted that.

Man, The Works could have been a cracking album; one of their best. When I see these track listings and the quality of songs left off, it really makes me wonder what went into the final decision making.

Possibly the length on the tape, with some of it being silence at either end? RGG is almost 6 mins anyway, isn't it?

I really think that they could make some thing about 40 years of The Works, something more than remember some tracks and the Machines intro openning on this North American tour... if they make something like 'The Miracle' boxset with this original tracklist will be honestly pretty marvelous!

What makes you think there's a lack of proper material to be released on potential boxset? I'd say that Works is one of the first I'd think of to get the box treatment as opposed to the earliest albums when they obviously had studio time/tape limits. They surely DO have the early takes of each song plus the amount of titles we learned from Works sessions overpasses any other album, obviously except for TM.

Early takes of each song, throw in some demos of unreleased songs and you get the same thing as The Miracle box. Moreover, Sotheby's exhibition has shown that those Miracle treats we got on the box set are really only a tiny part of what they've been working on and what we'd like to hear.

But…. There was only two unknown songs in the Miracle box set, Water and YKYBTM and they were just demos?
I’m pretty sure there’ll be stuff like that from the Works sessions, as well as alternative takes for each song? Plus the obligatory instrumental versions of each song…
I’d say it’s ripe for a box set

Very interesting! But I do not think that is anything like a suggested tracklisting or running order for the album. I think it is simply a list of everything they had, presumably at quite a late stage. It's about 52 minutes long in total, which is longer than even the Innuendo vinyl.

Looking at the sheet, someone (any handwriting experts?) it seems, has first gone through and ticked off the 'definites' for the record. Interesting that Tear It Up is not ticked, but we'll come to that.

Secondly they are totting up the running times, to see how the tracks might fit over two sides of vinyl. I think the maximum at the time was about 23 minutes per side before any audible quality loss. The first four 'ticks' on the list - Break Free, Machines, Hard Life and Prowl - all have their run times listed below.

Then it gets confusing. The number 5.30 is listed twice with a little squiggle. There is no track with this timing. So was that the 'remaining' time on side one, if the four tracks were all included? Maybe. (The four tracks add up to 17.23). If so, Ca Ca and Windows are both too long to fit, and the only other 'tick' that fits is Hammer which (we shall see) is being saved for Side 2. Maybe they are wondering if there can be 5.30 edits for either Ca Ca or Windows to make one of them fit.

So perhaps our scribe now changes tack. The number 25 is written - the amount of material so far perhaps? This is a mystery. Then below that 28.35, which is also a mystery - the only song that almost fits this 3.35 timing is Tear It Up (at 3.38). After this the songs Heart, Whip and Hammer are all added on, taking the run length to 41. Now 'Heart' (Your Heart Again) is sort of half ticked on the list - as we know there were issues with completing it in a workable key. So perhaps it is still only a possible, not a definite. At the top of the main list, neither Tear It Up or Whipping Boy are ticked - so perhaps this was a 'one or other but not both' decision (I believe Whipping Boy/I Go Crazy was not a big favourite amongst the band). And Hammer To Fall rounds things off, suggesting it was thought to be a strong closer and was thus earmarked for Side Two.

I think it's a combination of firstly working out album side timings and seeing what might sit together, but curiously there's no indication at this point that Ca Ca was intended to open things. Then again the workings out mainly seem to be about timings, as I cannot see them placing rockers like Whipping Boy and Hammer next to each other. It's an interesting indication how album 'flow' could be dictated by technology (Peter Gabriel's So in 1986 was re-sequenced for CD as he was unhappy with not being able to end the original record with 'In Your Eyes' as planned).

So there's my (very idle) speculation. Below all that we have some fairly clear notes about to-be-completed backing vocals and guitar solos, and the intriguing prospect of a horn section for Prowl..

Brenski, wasn't there an interview where Freddie stated that they had roughly 40 songs for The Works ?

I believe the 40 tracks comment related to The Game, and it was actually Roger who said it somewhere.

Regarding the question about the number of tracks for The Works, here's a relevant excerpt from an interview in 1984 (note that it's an English-Japanese-English translation):

Music Life: By the way, how many songs did you have for this album?

Roger: We had over 30. Not that they were all finished songs, but we picked the ones that we thought were the best. Anyway, there were a lot.

Rest of the interview here:
queenchat.boards.net/thread/1059/roger-john-works-promotional-japan?page=1&scrollTo=11045

I wonder how many of those are from Strange Frontier and Mr Bad Guy.