Crazy Little Thing Called Love The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke
Fender Telecaster Electric Guitar
1: "That’s one of our first major experiments in stereo" - Roger Taylor (24th December 1977, BBC One, Tom Browne interview, available on audio). |
THE FAIRY FELLER'S MASTER-STROKE
Compared to Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin or Yes, Queen were much less influenced by old English music. Only two songs in their entire catalogue hint at some strong Victorian flavour: White Queen and this one. The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke has been celebrated by die-hard fans as one of the masterpieces responsible for 'Queen II' high level of respect. With its crazy interlude, oscillating vocals, simple but killer guitar work, Freddie's keyboard duet with himself (on piano and harpsichord) and over-the-top use of panning effects (1), this track is in some ways a big favourite of many. Music
& Lyrics by: Freddie Mercury Produced
by: Queen & Roy Thomas Baker Recorded:
August 1973
Keys: Em, Am, Dm, A Dorian, Bhm, D Acoustic
Drums: Roger Taylor Lead
Vocals: Freddie Mercury
This oil on canvas by Richard Dadd was painted between 1855 and 1864. As Freddie described in the Tom Browne interview on Christmas Eve 1977, "it was thoroughly inspired by a painting by Richard Dadd which is in the Tate Gallery. I thought, I did a lot of research on it and it inspired me to write a song about the painting. Depicting what I thought I saw in it. It was just because I’d come through art collage and I basically like the artist and I like the painting, so I thought I’d like to write a song about it".
An often-debated point regarding these days is how close Queen were to progressive rock in those days. Although the genre itself is hard to define, some of the features associated with it (segues, formal freedom, leitmotifs, epic lyrics) were indeed present in numbers like this one. Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon' was in many ways an inspiration for 'Queen II', as evidenced in the use of fading-in heart-beat emulation as overture (Speak to Me - Procession), the elaborate stereo trickery and the eclectic nature of both records.
While not precisely acyclic, the structure is quite irregular. Freddie built the track over a number of recurring phrases, some of which are exposed during the intro (a trick he'd repeat on Bohemian Rhapsody and Don't Stop Me Now). Some comments on each section: - A: It's the intro in Em, alternating 'i' and 'iv' functions, another recurring feature of Freddie's music (e.g. Lily of the Valley, The Kiss, My Fairy King). A halved version appears after the first cycle, which is again something Mercury had done before (in Liar, there's a re-intro after the power-ballad part, in Ogre Battle, the riff appears after the first cycle) and would apply later on (Love of My Life has variants of the intro appearing after vocal sections, and so does Was It All Worth It). - B: Built over the D chord with a 1-1-4-3 riff (on piano and bass) that foreshadows the main leitmotif of the track. - C: Simple four-chord section (I, ii, V, vi) appearing in five different variants throughout the song. In some of them, different chords appear (more precisely, II and IV). - D: This is where the main leitmotif (1-8-6-5-4) is introduced. Five chords are used (Am, B, C, D and Em), and two further variants form the crazy interlude. - E: D > A chord-change (Fred would use the same progression for Bicycle Race), altered the fourth time to a nice D > C > B > B progression, which is a variant on the flamenco cadence (VII > VI > V > V in the key of Em), that Freddie had applied (in variants too) to other pieces like Liar and Great King Rat, and would use again in It's a Hard Life and Innuendo. - F: F > Bb > F triumphant ending (in the record, it's overlapping the intro of the next track, Nevermore). During the main sections of the song, key usually revolves around Em and its enharmonic equivalent A Dorian, the latter mode quite common in Victorian pieces such as Scarborough Fair. Sometimes the melody and chords made the key switch to C or F, but those were still short-lived neighbour modulations. The more interesting ones, though, appear during the interlude: it starts off in A Dorian and abruptly changes to B-Flat Harmonic-Minor. The i>bii shift of tonal-centre wasn't new to Freddie: he'd used it before in Jesus (Bm to Cm in that case), and would apply the major-key equivalent (I>bII) at the end of the "Galileo" bit in Bohemian Rhapsody, only that in a much more advanced and professional way. In terms of pitch-set, the difference between A Dorian and Bbhm is five notes: the former has A, B, C, D, E, F# and G, the latter has A, Bb, C, Db, Eb, F and Gb. After the four-bar harpsichord solo, the key changes to D, resulting in a six-note pitch-set-difference and a i>bIII tonal-centre shift. Then the key is Em again. Another interpretation would be that the key changed from Bbhm to Em directly, which would mean a five-note pitch-set difference and a i>bV tonal-centre shift.
In the percussion department, there were several additions to Roger's drumming: castanets (courtesy of producer Roy Thomas Baker), handclaps and a reversed gong that came from the ending of Ogre Battle. Harmonically, the main instrument is Freddie's piano, as bass and harpsichord most of the time double left and right hand parts respectively, with notable exceptions. Guitar work is fragmentary: Brian does some fills here and there, a nice solo in the middle, and occasionally provides rhythmic reinforcement. There are very few bits of harmonising guitar and those are all parallel and two or three part. A quite important matter, though, is that Brian often provides blue notes, spicing up the harmony a bit (another example is Crazy Little Thing Called Love at the end). Vocals change from one section to another. Basically we've got two Mercury's alternating lead bits. Backing vocals are mostly done by Freddie too, sometimes perhaps with the others (Roger's voice is particularly noticeable in the screaming bits and the second "lady friend"), and they either harmonise the lead tune (there's one phrase in octaves, perhaps the earliest case in a Queen record), or provide oscillating chordal support.
It consists of four parts: - 1st: Bass and piano are all the time playing Am, while vocal harmonies bring in a i > ii > III progression. The 'ii' function in a minor key is rare but it does appear in another song by Freddie - The March of the Black Queen. Speaking of which, Black Queen also has a section based around the Am chord, a resource Fred would repeat on Somebody to Love (gospel interlude over Ab), All God's People (F) and Was It All Worth It (Am). - 2nd: Piano disappears, harpsichord enters and does a solo. Three-part harmony vocals provide the chord progression, which is basically alternating between Bbm (the new tonic), Gbdim, Adim and Cdim. The use of "A" instead of "Ab" in different chords than 'V' confirms the "harmonic-minor" flavour. - 3rd: Piano re-enters, harpsichord continues the solo (so-so), guitar enters doing some nice figures. The new key is either D or Em (or E Dorian, depending on how you interpret it). - 4th: Harpsichord finishes up the solo, a second guitar enters and they go in harmony, bass does an ascending diatonic scale (omitting the 2nd degree and adding sharped 6th).
John played this ascending scale just before "soldier". - The vocal range used by Freddie recording this song is two octaves and a perfect fourth (E2 to A4), including falsetto. - The harpsichord Freddie used here just happened to be lying around in the studio. - John Deacon seems to have been very fond of the track, since he often mentioned it in contemporary interviews without having been asked about it. - It was all recorded in 16-tracks. |
