Love Of My LifeWritten by: Freddie Mercury
Musicians:
Freddie Mercury - lead and backing vocals, piano
Brian May - acoustic and electric guitars, orchestral harp
John Deacon - bass guitar
Roger Taylor - cymbals
- Just a beautiful song. Played MUCH differently than in concert. In concert, as you know it's just a voice and an acoustic. Here it's a full blown number including Brian playing the harp!
- Written by Freddie about Mary Austin, his longtime girlfriend and afterwards long time soul-mate friend.
- They started playing it live in concert about two years later in 1977 and save for one leg of the American tour in 1982 has lasted throughout all the incarnations of Queen and Brian May solo tours. Practically any full out Queen or Brian May solo gig has the song in it. From Queen to Extreme playing it at the Tribute gig, to Brian's 2 solo tours, to QPR, to Brian and Kerry Ellis, to QAL.
- There are very intricate backing vocals by Freddie here.
QUOTES:
- "There’s also a lovely little ballad; my classical influence comes into it. Brian is going to attempt to use harp, a real life-sized harp. I’m going to force him to play til his fingers drop off.” – Freddie Mercury – Muscial Express – 1975
- "It’s adapated on stage for guitar, but it was written on the piano. I’ve totally forgotton the original and if you asked me to play that now, I couldn’t. Sometimes I have to back to the music sheet, and I can’t read that well either,” – Freddie Mercury – Melody Maker – 1981.
- "I did it chord by chord. Actually it took longer to tune the thing than to play it. It was a nightmare because every time someone opened the door, the temperature would change and the whole thing would go out. I would hate to have to play a harp on stage. I just figured out how it worked – the pedals and everything – and did it bit by bit.” - Brian May – Guitar Player – 1983.
- "I hate this thing about trying to recreate the albums on stage. We sometimes deliberately change. Look at 'Love Of My Life', for instance. On record I play piano on that but on stage it's just Brian playing the guitar and me singing it, because it works on stage better that way." Freddie Mercury - 1984.
- "There are certain songs which are more popular in different countries and we used to vary the songs that we played. For instance, in South America, there was a song that was a major hit, called ‘Love Of My Life,’ which was never a hit anywhere else. So we’d always include that, and it became a major part of the show there.” – Roger Taylor – 1991
ALTERNATIVE VERSION:
CLASSIC ALBUMS VERSION- A bonus from
The Making Of A Night At The Opera it features Brian alone in the studio with an acoustic guitar interspliced with Freddie singing at Wembley. It's a nice duet
BRIAN MAY + EXTREME VERSION- Extreme performed the track at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert. They decided to record the song for a B-Side and enlisted Brian to play some electric guitar on a version which basically was a combination of the Queen live version and the studio version. It is a VERY nice version with a few additional lyrics and nice guitar work from Brian in the middle.
OFFICIALLY RELEASED LIVE VERSIONS:
LIVE KILLERS- AUDIO only.
ROCK MONTREAL VERSION- Great version. It appears that Montreal fans aren't as vocal as others and Freddie jokes that they don't know the song!
ON FIRE AT THE BOWL VERSION- Good version.
LIVE AT RIO- Live in front of 350,000 people. South America was where the song's popularity really rose so it's great to see it where it really started!
LIVE AT WEMBLEY- Two days at Wembley. Fun crowd both days!
HUNGARIAN RHAPSODYBRIAN MAY LIVE AT BRIXTON VERSION- A great version and one of the first times Brian did the song on his own. Unfortunately I couldn't find a video with the longer introduction where he says "Sometimes I don't know if I should do this song or not. The reason being is that I can't sing it as well as it's creator..."
QPR - RETURN OF THE CHAMPIONS VERSIONNO YT VID
- Brian's used to it now but in a Queen setting it was a bit more poignant.
QPR - LIVE IN UKRAINE- Another nice version.
UNRELEASED LIVE VERSIONS:
Unreleased Live
LIVE IN BIRMINGHAM - 1984- AUDIO only. ESSENTIAL listening.
- I know we have plenty of good video so I won't give you more BUT this one is funny. It has a lot of banter between the crowd and Freddie in the beginning. "How dare you sing without my command?!" [img src="
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BRIAN MAY + KERRY ELLIS - GLASGOW MAY 2011- Decent version. The only time Brian sang during the concert. This also is the introduction of someone singing the final lines ala QAL in 2012...except for Freddie, it's Kerry who sings the last part.
QAL - KIEV - JUNE 2012- The introduction of the Freddie ending makes a poignant moment...just plain
ALTERNATE LIVE:
EXTREME - LIVE AT THE FREDDIE MERCURY TRIBUTE CONCERTDOCUMENTARY
THE MAKING OF LOVE OF MY LIFEPERSONAL NOTES:
- One of the greatest love songs every written. Hands down.
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