Freddie's written a song called "Friends Will be Friends", and I think Freddie and John worked on it together. It's something which I took to heart very much as well because it's kind of traditional Queen sound. It has this... If you can remember "We are The Champions" or "Play The Game", it's in that kind of mould, it has all the Queen trademarks. And yet it's a new song and a new idea, and that's something I instantly related to. Very nice, very good track. It sounds very complete.
This album [A Kind of Magic] also furnished another of the band's crowd-pleasing anthems, namely Friends Will Be Friends. The co-composition credit on this track and on Pain Is So Close To Pleasure was merely because John Deacon insisted that Freddie's contribution be recognised and acknowledged. John's honesty and integrity would not have allowed him to do otherwise.
Obviously written as a collaboration between Freddie and John, very much on the lines of a sort of anthemic style and certainly imagining that the audience would sing along, which they did.
It's amazing how many people I know have depression issues (including me, of course). And FWBF has been pretty much overlooked since its time .... I like it too … and for Freddie it was something quite important … at the time of writing it he was also in a very sad place. I don't think Freddie suffered from depression as such, but he was in a lot of emotional pain, and in this song he was determined to make something that would have some power to cheer people through bad spots. The verses are very original, I think … little anecdotes which are pure Freddie, but the chorus, which in a way might seem the simplest part, gave him much pause for thought. And we all chipped in ideas, when asked! I think my most notable contribution was to turn the words around at the end, so that “FWBF” comes last instead of second to last.... Freddie was tickled by that. But Freddie definitely saw this as something like Champions - something that could be a uniting force for our listeners.