Chords for Queen: The Making of "You're My Best Friend"

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[C] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ Ooh, you make me live. _
[F] Whatever this _ [C] world can give to me,
it's true, you're all I see. _ _
[F] _ Ooh, you make [C] me live now, honey.
Ooh, you make me live.
[Em] _
[Am] _ Oh, [D] you're the best friend [F] that [G] I ever had.
Normally, [Am] I think any other band that's saying that lyric,
you're my best friend, [E] people would
throw things at them.
They would burn their records _ live on the radio.
[D] But what a beautiful song, just the conviction
of doing a simple pop song, well-crafted.
All of a sudden, John Deacon emerged
from his vows of silence to speak up that he wanted
his song out as a single.
He didn't write that many, but if you think about it,
another one bites the [F] dust.
You're my best friend.
[Ab] I want to break free.
[B] Big, big hits.
And You're My Best Friend is still one of the most played
tracks on American radio.
You know, My Best Friend was a significant song
as far as radio was concerned in the United States.
I mean, I think that it was a kind of friendlier, more
accessible side to some of the stuff Queen was doing.
John was always a dark horse.
He always was.
You know, he's the guy who doesn't say very much up
to a certain point.
I mean, he would go nuts sometimes and say a lot.
But generally, he was the quiet guy.
And he would come in, and we'd say, have you got anything, John?
He'd go, oh, I've got this.
I don't know.
I don't know if it's any good, but we could try this.
You know, very self-effacing.
I think they encouraged him.
The other guys wanted them all to have more of a stake in it,
because after all, the songwriting, you know,
there's all those extra royalties,
and that's often an issue with rock and roll bands,
and quite often a reason why some of them break up.
So they wanted to make sure.
I know Freddie, I mean, even as early as Queen 2,
he'd be encouraging John to contribute.
And I think John was just a little reticent.
He was the last to join, and he was certainly the most shy.
He just writes in that one area which he likes, which is almost
like a Tamla Motown, or the sort of, and I love that,
because I love [Eb] to sing on songs like that.
So he's very different.
I mean, you could never call his songs heavy.
It was written on a Fender Rhodes.
Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do.
John played it.
John played his own keyboards.
And John, as far as I know, wrote the song
about his lovely lady wife.
Further than that, you would have to ask John.
And I don't think he's _ probably in the mood
to answer at this point.
And it's a shame that, you know, he really feels that he doesn't
want to be part of the music business _ these days.
I can see his point in some ways, but, _ _ [G] you know, he just sort of
doesn't really want to, he doesn't like meeting people a lot.
And _ _ he has opted for the quiet life,
although he approves of what we do and [E] _ has [Am] said so.
[Em] I [F] really love _ _ [Fm] you.
Oh, [C] you're my best friend. _ _ _ _
The vocal harmonies, you know, on a Queen record
are going to provide it with unity, regardless of what
the kind of, you know, individual style of a particular song is.
You know, there's something that's, you know, instantly
_ identifiable about what they do.
The three voices that we had blended instantly and sounded very big.
They [G] interacted quite magically, and we all had different qualities
in our voices, and I had a sort of high searing quality.
Freddie had an incredibly powerful quality in most ranges.
And Brian had a very nice quality in the lower range.
And so the three made a very good combination.
But what we would do is we would not take a single part each.
We would all together sing every part.
So as soon as the three of us sang a line, it already sounded quite big.
You double track that, it sounds very big, and then
we would sing the next line and the next line and the next line.
[Fm] So you really were looking after both ends of the sort of spectrum there.
In fact, all ends.
You were covering everything.
So it came out particularly strong. _
And [Am] that was really part of the Queen sound, I think,
the fact that the three of us sang every part.
[Dm] Will you make [C] me live?
[E] Back in vocal [C] range. _ _
[F] _ _ _ _ [C] _ Come back [G] to [E] you.
_ [Gb] _ _ _ [G] _
Happy, _ _ happy [C] and whole.
[A] The skill that they could just build those layers and layers and layers of harmony
and make the whole thing work rather than you focus on elements of it
and then forget the rest, that I think is really what always was the thing
that made them stand out from everybody else.
Well, there was never any question of writing a single.
We just wrote albums.
And then, you know, so it would really by consensus, it would be,
ah, that sounds like the first single, you know.
And then there might be some argument.
Obviously, you have certain of your own babies if you wrote the song
and you want them to be _ _ _ heard in a wide area.
Usually the writer of that particular song would be arguing that he should have the single.
And if you miss that opportunity, it's kind of gone forever.
In my case, I think we all had things like that that we felt sad about.
In my case, there's things like Long Away, _ _ _ 39 of this album,
which could have been a single.
And part of me wishes they had been because they would have been much more
in the public consciousness.
_ _ Songs become hooked into people's lives in a very wonderful way.
You know, you hear a song and it reminds you of being on a beach somewhere
at a particular time with a particular person. _
_ _ And generally, if the song hasn't become a single,
it doesn't