My Life Has Been Saved. has always been one of my favourite post-Freddie Queen songs, but I’ve recently learned something about it that has resurrected both Freddie and the song.
Queen: Made in Heaven is not really a Queen Album.
My Life Has Been Saved. is one of the stand-out tracks on Queen’s 1995 Made in Heaven album. An album that’s come under a lot of criticism for not being a genuine Queen album, and rather a collection of stems from the past cobbled together, polished up, and sold as Queen. (For the record, Queen’s legendary lead singer Freddie Mercury sadly passed away in 1991). This is more obvious on some tracks than others. Mother Love, for example, for all that trademark creativity, is very rough, with Brian and Roger chipping in to fill in the lead vocal gaps tragically missing from their ailing frontman. A Winter’s Tale includes Freddie’s parts, but it feels more like a rushed demo than perhaps the Christmas song it deserved to be. It’s A Beautiful Day also serves as a kind of filler to top and tail the album, but nothing much more, and also rough around the edges at times.
It’s not all bad though. You Don’t Fool Me achieves Queen’s 20+ year mission of being unpredictable and hopping genres with style. I think this is an attempt to appeal to the club scene, or as close as a bunch of uncool old-timers could get. And then we have this: My Life Has Been Saved.
Queen: My Life Has Been Saved.
It’s that optimism, isn’t it? As soon as you hear the first line. This is where we are today. It sounds like an old, understanding friend in the same room. There’s joy and positivity ingrained in his vocal cords that communicate on a separate frequency to the music and words, the frequency of the heart. This is a trademark Freddie thing of course, and we’ve heard it before on Don’t Stop Me Now. I Want to Break Free and more recently, Breakthru.
But My Life Has Been Saved is a little more relaxed and pleasantly subdued, interspersed with the chug of the pre-chorus and some signature tastefully intertwining lead guitar work by Brian May. Actually, this is a guitar blog, so let’s get into that.
With the exception of the Innuendo album, I’ve always thought Brian’s tone moved away from those classic Deacy tones of previous albums and into a more processed, digital tone that’s prevalent throughout Made in Heaven. That’s also the case on this track, but that smoothness isn’t such so much of a bad thing in the context of backing up the vocals. Having said that, those biting, out-of-phase tones worked for 20 years against Freddie’s vocals, so I really don’t understand why Brian changed them.
I digress, the build-up to the solo is so tastefully done, with slithery slides and emotive bends smoothing out and bringing the other musical elements together like a fine-dining sauce. The solo maintains the core tone, but Brian does what he always does and cleverly mixes things up in interesting ways to provide the hook, on this occasion with accented rhythmic phrasing, some unusual downward runs, a blues lick of all things, and finishing up a strained unison bend. Then it’s back into the slithering smoothness to compliment the rest of the song.
And throughout it’s Freddie, the real Freddie. Unhindered and happy, with perhaps a message that, despite everything, he’s had a good life. This song feels like a gift, from him to us. Not a copy-and-paste job like much of the album, but a proper, genuine, heartfelt song. Thank you, Freddie.
But unfortunately, it’s not the above. It’s dated 1995, not 1991. Freddie wasn’t here. So for almost 20 years one of my favourite Queen songs has had a bit of a bitter aftertaste.
Until now!
The miraculous discovery.
I’ve always thought myself to be sort of knowledgeable when it came to Queen. But the other day I stumbled across this…..
My Life Has Been Saved was the B-side to 1989’s Scandal. That’s right. It was released when Freddie was still alive, and that’s massive for me as listening to it feels as if Freddie has been brought back from the grave.
But there’s more. this is the original version of the song. it’s a B-Side after all so doesn’t have the gloss of the 1995 version (especially those drums), but it’s rawer, it’s genuine, and discovering it feels like so much more of a gift than before. Freddie’s not only communicating through his vocals here, there are even a few impromptu spoken lines thrown in. Welcome back Freddie.
Oh, and the guitar, the guitar is better, the tone is better, It’s heavier, it’s wilder, it’s more emotive, it’s more Brian May, it’s more Queen!
In fact, the whole song is more Queen.
So did we really need a new version? Did we really need Made in Heaven? One thing’s for sure, the best track on the album already existed, in better form, when Freddie was still here.
My Life Has Been Saved is no longer one of my favourite post-Freddie Queen songs. It just became one of my favourite Queen songs!
That bitter after-taste just got a whole lot sweeter. So here’s to you, Freddie.
Cheers!
