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Queen: The Complete Illustrated Lyrics
In 2011, the world celebrated the 40th anniversary of Queen – one of the most innovative, glamorous, and influential bands in history. Over the course of the band's career, they have grossed 170 million album sales worldwide, have written 18 number one hits, and performed 700 concerts. While some acts enjoy a forte of incredible showmanship, a virtuoso instrumentalist, a strong, charismatic leader, or a prolific sole songwriter, Queen beholds all of these strengths. Although Freddie Mercury and Brian May are recognized as the prime songwriters, each of the members have penned number one hits, including classics such as “Bohemian Rhapsody” (Freddie Mercury), “Another One Bites the Dust” (John Deacon), “A Kind of Magic” (Roger Taylor), and “We Will Rock You” (Brian May). The fates brought the four creative and cerebral youths together in London in 1971 (Mercury was by then an established fine and graphic artist, May was enveloped in the study of astrophysics, Roger Taylor enrolled in dental school, and John studying electronics). Since then, they have made history with their sophisticated fusion of operatic expression, theatrical performance, symphonic melody, and raw rock-and-roll.
Beginning with their debut Queen in 1973 (EMI/Electra Records), the band took the UK by storm, then conquered the United States along with rest of the world, serving as pioneers of stadium rock and enjoying commercial success and momentum well into the 1980s (marked by the famous Live Aid appearance in 1985) through the early 1990s. The whirlwind took a startling pause when singer Freddie Mercury passed away from AIDS on November 24, 1991. The living members have forged ahead and remain great music makers.
The Complete Illustrated Lyrics is the first book of its kind. Never before has there been a complete Queen lyric book. The hundreds of images that accompany the songs range from handwritten lyrics to rare photographs from the stage to the studio. Also included is a complete discography, pairing each song to the album on which it was originally released. Designed by the band's longtime creative director, Richard Gray, the book is as true to the band as can be, carrying with it the flamboyance, expression, and depth that Queen embodies as writers and performers. If there is one book for a fan of the band to possess, this is the one.
Beginning with their debut Queen in 1973 (EMI/Electra Records), the band took the UK by storm, then conquered the United States along with rest of the world, serving as pioneers of stadium rock and enjoying commercial success and momentum well into the 1980s (marked by the famous Live Aid appearance in 1985) through the early 1990s. The whirlwind took a startling pause when singer Freddie Mercury passed away from AIDS on November 24, 1991. The living members have forged ahead and remain great music makers.
The Complete Illustrated Lyrics is the first book of its kind. Never before has there been a complete Queen lyric book. The hundreds of images that accompany the songs range from handwritten lyrics to rare photographs from the stage to the studio. Also included is a complete discography, pairing each song to the album on which it was originally released. Designed by the band's longtime creative director, Richard Gray, the book is as true to the band as can be, carrying with it the flamboyance, expression, and depth that Queen embodies as writers and performers. If there is one book for a fan of the band to possess, this is the one.
400 pages, Paperback
First published May 29, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 13, 2024
As soon as we speak of Queen, we think of Freddie Mercury who died of AIDS on November 24, 1991. Their songs are still embedded in our basic culture, and we recognize quite a few of them with just the first few notes. And that’s a lot. We are trying to get the original music, at worst remastered, but certainly not reperformed with the “voice” of Freddie Mercury transposed by some generative artificial intelligence. Postmortem Voice indeed. And there is no possible substitution.
For us today, Queen is a mythology. They dressed in the most provocative way possible and did all sorts of stage antics. Dressing and antics were supposed to reveal the body of the performers and Freddie Mercury’s first of all.
Sexy body, sexy, sexy body
I want your body
Baby, you’re hot
Body language.
Such a declaration was in absolute phase with their time, though it’s probably less today. The Baby Boomers came to age around 1968 and their only or main motivation in life was to get more of the body language, one being the semantics and the other one the syntax and both producing, at times with some help from the lexicon that could take full part in the linguistic game, or just provide some further nourishment to the body language machine. A threesome was heaven. A foursome was the highest heaven only God could imagine. Woodstock’s vast multitude was an anti-war demonstration against the Vietnam War precisely and the invasion of Cambodia Nixon was going to decide one month later. In a long response to some criticism in The Raleigh Times (Raleigh North Carolina) on Saturday, February 14, 1970, I wrote on this very question of Vietnam, “The Vietnamese have told me that you must never accept anyone to walk on your feet, not because your feet are sensitive, but because you must have a certain self-esteem.”
We all had in our minds this letter Father to Son, but from the point of view of the Son who actually never received any letter from the Father:
Take this letter that I give you
Take it, sonny, hold it high
You won’t understand a word that’s in it
But you’ll write it all again before you die.
I am not dead yet and my father is dead for sure, but I did not write his letter all again because the only verbal oral letter I got from him was in 1970, “Here we live in a certain way, and you are not supposed to change that.” Poor dear me! And yet I was not a “Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy,” in fact, I was not a lover boy, at least not yet and I left my parents’ home soon after when I recuperated a normal salary as a teacher of some kind. Who cares about the glass provided the wine is fine? Who cares about the color of the check provided the amount is right?
But we all resonated with and amplified this message about freedom.
But life still goes on
I can’t get used to, living without, living without
Living without you by my side
I don’t want to live alone, hey
God knows, got to make it my own
So, baby can’t you see
I’ve got to break free.
And nothing has improved, nothing has changed. We are still more or less intimidated into living in couples, one couple next to all the others, and the solitary bums are just bums, be they vagrant people or people who devote a great deal of time to specified activities. We enjoyed getting lost in language, not body language, just sonorous language.
I see a little silhouette of a man,
Scaramouch, scaramouch will you do the Fandango –
Thunderbolt and lightning – very very frightening me –
Galileo, Galileo,
Galileo, Galileo,
Galileo figaro – Magnifico –
But I’m just a poor boy and nobody loves me.
Figaro brings up Mozart and his Marriage of Figaro, and his sinking into poverty and sickness rather than yielding to Viennese norms of proper living for the poor musical servants of the imperial court. Papageno is telling him, telling us that the proper way is to turn around and show all these power vessels our backside and particularly our lower backside, even a little bit lower. What do they think we are? Bohemians maybe but not mendicants, at least not yet. And that leads us to the Prophet if your ears are not clogged to such prediction of future perdition.
Oh, Oh children of the land
Love is still the answer, take my hand
The vision fades, a voice I hear
“Listen to the Madman!”
But still, I fear and still, dare not
Laugh at the Madman.
As a punk film and a punk boy’s band used to sing,
God save the queen
The fascist regime
They made you a moron
A potential H bomb
No future
No future
No future for you
No future
No future
No future for me
No future
No future
No future for you
And a Vicious Sid just amplified that delirium with his anti-gay declaration on his sexual alignment, which is just useless for us music lovers.
And now, the end is near
And so I face the final curtain
You cunt, I'm not a queer
I'll state my case, of which I'm certain
[…]
I find it all so amusing
To think, I killed a cat
And may I say, not in a gay way
Oh no, oh no not me
I did it my way
And the cat he killed was not a pussy cat of course, but not in a gay way, with a spear thrust through his body and nailing him to the floor to die in peace and pain. One more cat who must have considered Sid Vicious was not vicious the proper way, which was expected to be the gay way.
In that sad age of Rule Britannia and Margaret Thatcher, We had Queen to bring us back from tears and back to maybe a smile from time to time. Freddie Mercury tries to keep us in power in the instant of ecstasy that happens so fast and can only last if you get to the power level and are turned into an atomic bomb
Let me show it to you yeah
See what I got, I got a hell of a lot
Tell me what you feel
Is it real is it real
You know I got what it takes
And I can take a lot
Did you hear the last call baby
You and me got staying power yeah
You and me we got staying power
Staying power (I got it I got it)
That was a time when there were not so many alternatives.
And what about the music? But the music was mesmerizing, hypnotizing, fascinating, alienating, and enslaving, and we enjoyed this slavery more than anything else. Such music is harmonious enough to rock us to hell, and definitely not like some punk delirium, vicious or not.
We miss them in real concert life, but they are everywhere in the virtual cloud of the eternal concert hall in the sky, which is our limit of course, and all the time.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
For us today, Queen is a mythology. They dressed in the most provocative way possible and did all sorts of stage antics. Dressing and antics were supposed to reveal the body of the performers and Freddie Mercury’s first of all.
Sexy body, sexy, sexy body
I want your body
Baby, you’re hot
Body language.
Such a declaration was in absolute phase with their time, though it’s probably less today. The Baby Boomers came to age around 1968 and their only or main motivation in life was to get more of the body language, one being the semantics and the other one the syntax and both producing, at times with some help from the lexicon that could take full part in the linguistic game, or just provide some further nourishment to the body language machine. A threesome was heaven. A foursome was the highest heaven only God could imagine. Woodstock’s vast multitude was an anti-war demonstration against the Vietnam War precisely and the invasion of Cambodia Nixon was going to decide one month later. In a long response to some criticism in The Raleigh Times (Raleigh North Carolina) on Saturday, February 14, 1970, I wrote on this very question of Vietnam, “The Vietnamese have told me that you must never accept anyone to walk on your feet, not because your feet are sensitive, but because you must have a certain self-esteem.”
We all had in our minds this letter Father to Son, but from the point of view of the Son who actually never received any letter from the Father:
Take this letter that I give you
Take it, sonny, hold it high
You won’t understand a word that’s in it
But you’ll write it all again before you die.
I am not dead yet and my father is dead for sure, but I did not write his letter all again because the only verbal oral letter I got from him was in 1970, “Here we live in a certain way, and you are not supposed to change that.” Poor dear me! And yet I was not a “Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy,” in fact, I was not a lover boy, at least not yet and I left my parents’ home soon after when I recuperated a normal salary as a teacher of some kind. Who cares about the glass provided the wine is fine? Who cares about the color of the check provided the amount is right?
But we all resonated with and amplified this message about freedom.
But life still goes on
I can’t get used to, living without, living without
Living without you by my side
I don’t want to live alone, hey
God knows, got to make it my own
So, baby can’t you see
I’ve got to break free.
And nothing has improved, nothing has changed. We are still more or less intimidated into living in couples, one couple next to all the others, and the solitary bums are just bums, be they vagrant people or people who devote a great deal of time to specified activities. We enjoyed getting lost in language, not body language, just sonorous language.
I see a little silhouette of a man,
Scaramouch, scaramouch will you do the Fandango –
Thunderbolt and lightning – very very frightening me –
Galileo, Galileo,
Galileo, Galileo,
Galileo figaro – Magnifico –
But I’m just a poor boy and nobody loves me.
Figaro brings up Mozart and his Marriage of Figaro, and his sinking into poverty and sickness rather than yielding to Viennese norms of proper living for the poor musical servants of the imperial court. Papageno is telling him, telling us that the proper way is to turn around and show all these power vessels our backside and particularly our lower backside, even a little bit lower. What do they think we are? Bohemians maybe but not mendicants, at least not yet. And that leads us to the Prophet if your ears are not clogged to such prediction of future perdition.
Oh, Oh children of the land
Love is still the answer, take my hand
The vision fades, a voice I hear
“Listen to the Madman!”
But still, I fear and still, dare not
Laugh at the Madman.
As a punk film and a punk boy’s band used to sing,
God save the queen
The fascist regime
They made you a moron
A potential H bomb
No future
No future
No future for you
No future
No future
No future for me
No future
No future
No future for you
And a Vicious Sid just amplified that delirium with his anti-gay declaration on his sexual alignment, which is just useless for us music lovers.
And now, the end is near
And so I face the final curtain
You cunt, I'm not a queer
I'll state my case, of which I'm certain
[…]
I find it all so amusing
To think, I killed a cat
And may I say, not in a gay way
Oh no, oh no not me
I did it my way
And the cat he killed was not a pussy cat of course, but not in a gay way, with a spear thrust through his body and nailing him to the floor to die in peace and pain. One more cat who must have considered Sid Vicious was not vicious the proper way, which was expected to be the gay way.
In that sad age of Rule Britannia and Margaret Thatcher, We had Queen to bring us back from tears and back to maybe a smile from time to time. Freddie Mercury tries to keep us in power in the instant of ecstasy that happens so fast and can only last if you get to the power level and are turned into an atomic bomb
Let me show it to you yeah
See what I got, I got a hell of a lot
Tell me what you feel
Is it real is it real
You know I got what it takes
And I can take a lot
Did you hear the last call baby
You and me got staying power yeah
You and me we got staying power
Staying power (I got it I got it)
That was a time when there were not so many alternatives.
And what about the music? But the music was mesmerizing, hypnotizing, fascinating, alienating, and enslaving, and we enjoyed this slavery more than anything else. Such music is harmonious enough to rock us to hell, and definitely not like some punk delirium, vicious or not.
We miss them in real concert life, but they are everywhere in the virtual cloud of the eternal concert hall in the sky, which is our limit of course, and all the time.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
July 25, 2021
Not very necessary, but for the real fans a must-have. I'm not into this kind of collecting anymore, but for those who are, it's a really professional and beautiful book.
June 12, 2015
This book includes some really wonderful photographs of not only the band but the scraps of paper on which (we're told) some of their greatest hits were first sketched out on. But that's where the wonder ends.
Any fan of Queen would be disappointed once they looked at more than the pictures. The lyrics are wrong. On more than one song. I don't mean typos either, although I am led to believe that with the shoddy editing that let this slip through they may be present.
I won't go through each example because even one lyrical mistake in a book of lyrics should be enough to raise an eyebrow at least. The best (or worst) part of this is that I didn't have to go farther than the very first song in order to make this discovery. '39 is the song in question and here are the words as stated in the book (only those relevant):
For the earth is old and grey, to a new home we'll away
...
Actual lyrics:
For the earth is old and grey, little darling we'll away
They also skip the inclusion of the chorus (with no mention of it being there) towards the end that comes before the altered version of said chorus.
Here is a link to the official lyric video (verified channel) where you can both hear and see for yourselves which is correct (url taken from the time right before the lyrics mentioned): https://youtu.be/kE8kGMfXaFU?t=147
Overall, if you buy or peruse this book it should be for the interesting images found within or you shall be gravely disappointed as I am.
Any fan of Queen would be disappointed once they looked at more than the pictures. The lyrics are wrong. On more than one song. I don't mean typos either, although I am led to believe that with the shoddy editing that let this slip through they may be present.
I won't go through each example because even one lyrical mistake in a book of lyrics should be enough to raise an eyebrow at least. The best (or worst) part of this is that I didn't have to go farther than the very first song in order to make this discovery. '39 is the song in question and here are the words as stated in the book (only those relevant):
For the earth is old and grey, to a new home we'll away
...
Actual lyrics:
For the earth is old and grey, little darling we'll away
They also skip the inclusion of the chorus (with no mention of it being there) towards the end that comes before the altered version of said chorus.
Here is a link to the official lyric video (verified channel) where you can both hear and see for yourselves which is correct (url taken from the time right before the lyrics mentioned): https://youtu.be/kE8kGMfXaFU?t=147
Overall, if you buy or peruse this book it should be for the interesting images found within or you shall be gravely disappointed as I am.
February 3, 2016
In today's IT era, I just missed my sing-along session with lyrics from the cover of cassette. This book provides complete Queen lyrics with some of their photograph and Queen's hand-written lyrics. I love it so much!
July 20, 2012
AWESOMENESS!! Every Queen fan out there should get their copy.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews