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BRIAN HAROLD MAY As Producer
From the very beginning, all the band members were interested in the production side, as they wanted to have as much control as possible over the music they recorded. Up until the 'Opera' days, however, it was Freddie who was hardly-ever far from the console and who worked shoulder to shoulder with Roy Thomas Baker. Brian, Roger and John participated as part of the mixing team since they mostly did all the work without automation. By the time they started their fifth album, Queen were able to self-produce it, counting on Mike Stone to assist them. Brian's philosophy in mixing favoured vocals more than anything else, which came from the very early days when somebody'd suggested them to make Keep Yourself Alive a dialogue (with the overlapping voices mixed left and right respectively), which May rejected in favour of having "vocals in the centre and everything else ping-poing around them". Brian's approach to mic-placing and soundboard effects was the same as the others': keeping them to a bare minimum. That turned out quite well in the end since it allowed the 70's albums to survive the test of time without sounding dated (compared with 'The Works', for instance). In 1980 May co-produced the 'Flash Gordon' soundtrack with Mack, deciding what to use and working closely with the orchestral arranger. It would be the first and only time that a Queen record was defined by only one member. Some years later, Brian and Roger would be instrumental in the choice of the last "fifth-member" of the band, David Richards, with whom they worked for 'Highlander' and the 'Magic' album. While John's and Freddie's songs - Friends Will Be Friends, Pain Is So Close to Pleasure, Princes of the Universe, One Year Of Love - were produced by Mack as well as One Vision, Taylor's and May's A Kind of Magic, Don't Lose Your Head, Who Wants to Live Forever and Gimme the Prize were produced by David. The band were so impressed with Mr Richards' work that they kept him from then on. Most of Brian's work behind the mixer was done outside the band: during the break they took before recording 'The Miracle', he produced Bad News, Minako Honda and Anita Dobson, and started a solo album where he was in charge of virtually all sides, even playing most of the instruments himself (including bass and programmed-drums). After Freddie died the remaining band-members and David Richards did a marvellous job producing, mixing and editing I Was Born to Love You and Made in Heaven to make Queen versions of them. Although the fandom usually credits that to Brian (and indeed he did a great job), it was actually a four-way split (not to mention Mack's original work on those tracks, which made things much easier for them). |
