"His (John's) songs are good and are getting better every time actually. I’m getting a bit worried actually" - Freddie Mercury (Radio interview with Kenny Everett, December 1976).
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YOU AND I
'A Day at the Races' was in many ways a sequel to 'A Night at the Opera': both albums have a Roger number in triple metre (Car - Drowse), Mercury's incursions into vaudeville (Lazing / Seaside - Good Old Fashioned), complex rock tunes with classical influences (Bo Rhap - Millionaire Waltz), piano ballads (Love of My Life - You Take My Breath Away), Brian's skiffle-esque numbers ('39 - Long Away) and some heavy tracks with a canon in the middle (Prophet's Song - White Man). And then there's of course the couple of Deacon tracks: You're My Best Friend and You And I, both beautiful rock/pop ballads with very clever structure. Unfortunately this one wasn't a single and the band never performed it live, which made it fall into being mere 'music playing in the darkness', only known to some relatively few lucky listeners. The use of broad multi-tracked harmonies (on both vocals and guitars) wasn't a trademark of John's, but it did characterise the Marx-Brothers' era in general. Music
& Lyrics by: John Deacon Produced
by: Queen Recorded:
July - November 1976
Keys: D, A, Bm Acoustic
Drums: Roger Taylor Lead
Vocals: Freddie Mercury
The basic set of chords is almost the same as in Best Friend (I, II, ii, III, IV, iv, V, vi), but this one includes IV-IV (see Spread Your Wings or Friends Will Be Friends). You And I is much more influenced by rock, while Best Friend features some slight jazz influences. As a result, You And I is notably simpler in both harmony and phrasing. Modulations are mostly done abruptly, which is a major difference between John's ballads (My Life Has Been Saved, Misfire) and Freddie's (Lily of the Valley, Made in Heaven). Brian employed both approaches (Save Me vs White Queen). This is one of the very few songs in the Queen catalogue that employs the 1-5-6-4 cliché (non-Queen examples from the top off my head: Beatles' Let It Be, blink-182's Always, Damn It, Feeling This, First Date, +44's 155, Avril Lavigne's Sk8r Boi, Bob Marley's No Woman No Cry, Black Eyed Peas' Where Is the Love, etc). IV > I > ii > I appears in Let It Be as well. The lack of "iii" function is somewhat usual in John Deacon's songs' verses (Spread Your Wings, One Year Of Love I Want to Break Free, You're My Best Friend...), as well as the "II" chord (Spread Your Wings, Best Friend). It starts on the subdominant (as in Friends Will Be Friends and other pop ballads like Don Henley's Heart of the Matter, Guns N' Roses' November Rain and Avril Lavigne's When You're Gone). IV > II > V is another cliché'd progression (Friends Will Be Friends). Nice IV/IV > IV > iv > V chord-chain driven by a chromatic line (as in John's Best Friend which has I > V/vi > vi > V/IV in the opposite direction). The progression is done twice: once in A, once in D (similar to Another One Bites the Dust doing the chorus in Fm and then shifting to Gm). IV > iv is a common chord-change in ballads (Save Me, Best Friend, Play the Game, More than Words, Creep, Wake Me Up When September Ends...). Yet further references to Best Friend are the V/vi > vi > I progression (both times preceded by the tonic) and V > V/vi > i > V/V. Compare You're My Best Friend's fragment from "in rain or shine" up to "happy at home" with You and I (from "forever" until right before the solo begins):
As you can see, both bits are harmonically identical in an 83.33%. That's enough to regard both songs fraternal twins, isn't it? |
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