Good old R&B, a funky beat with Queen overtones.
Now I'm Here, which is our last single over here [in Britain], was really directly inspired from American audiences. It looks like it won't be a single in America. It's on the Sheer Heart Attack album. That was really my experiences with audiences in America.
There is always a case of a guitarist being influenced by another guitarist who he admires, and it is the same with drummers and singers as well. But I'm sure we have our own things to offer and definitely we certainly never try to sound like somebody else. It's rubbish that we sound like Led Zeppelin. If we wanted to rip off Led Zeppelin then we'd sound exactly like them. We could sound like them or The Who if we wanted to, we have the capabilities. But what would be the point? And how anybody could say that Freddie Mercury sounds like Robert Plant or Roger Daltrey I do not know. Brian's got a completely different style of playing to either Pete Townsend or Jimmy Page. I mean I really admire those two guys and I think Townsend is the most articulate guy I've heard in years - but as for copying them! The only thing we've ever done that's consciously a bit of a rip off is Now I'm Here and that was because it was a sort of tribute to the Stones and Mott The Hoople with a bit of the Who as well. But it was a tribute rather than anything else and it's the only thing we've ever done to aim for a sound that we didn't popularise. As far as we are concerned ninety-eight per cent of our music is ours. We unashamedly like our own music what's more. If I go round to Freddie's he's playing it the same as I am. I've heard a lot of even really good people that we admire say that they never play their own albums - John Lennon, who we all admire a great deal. But I'm sure everybody plays their own albums and it's a load of shit if they say they never play them. Admittedly you can get fed up with them sometimes and usually just after we've made an album we don't play it, but after a while I play them unashamedly because I want to hear certain bits and enjoy them. There are always faults in an album or a single but at the same time there are some real high spots.
That was nice. That was a Brian May thing. We released it after Killer Queen. And it's a total contrast, just a total contrast. It was just to show people we can still do rock ‘n' roll - we haven't forgotten our rock ‘n' roll roots. It's nice to do on stage. I enjoyed doing that on stage.
With Sheer Heart Attack, it was very weird, because I was able to see the group from the outside, and was pretty excited by what I saw. We'd done a few things before I was ill, but when I came back, they'd done a lot more, including a couple of backing tracks of songs by Freddie which I hadn't heard, like Flick of the Wrist, which excited me and gave me a lot of inspiration to get back in there and do what I wanted to do. I also managed to do some writing: Now I'm Here was done in that period, and came out quite easily, whereas I'd been wrestling with it before without getting anywhere. That song's sort of about experiences on the American tour, which really blew me away in more senses than one! I was bowled over, partly by the success we were having and partly by the amazing aura which surrounds rock music in America, which is hard to describe.
When I compose riffs or progressions that I want to become signature to a certain song, I prefer to use voicings near the nut. I feel that this area of the neck provides the most power, definition and clarity possible for chords as well as single-line riffs. In fact, many of Queen's signature riffs, like the ones in Tie Your Mother Down, Stone Cold Crazy and It's Late, are played in the open position. One of my favourites is the riff before the verse in Now I'm Here.
For the record, as far as I remember, I played piano on: Doin' All Right, Father to Son, Now I'm Here, Dear Friends, Teo Toriatte, All Dead All Dead. Notably NOT on Sail Away Sweet Sister - I got Freddie to learn it and play it with Roger and John for the backing track - I wanted his marvellous rhythm and percussive feel on piano - but yes on Save Me, Las Palabras de Amor, Flash and The Hero (plus organ on the Wedding). But from here on in we began using synthesisers and there were many excursions from us all into keyboard territory… The only pure piece of piano from this era from me is Forever - which was a doodle done live in the studio which I rescued for a bonus track later on.
It's musically a conscious tribute to Mott themselves - the All the Way from Memphis style. I imagine the Stones were an influence on Mott, but to me the Mott material had more colour and depth.