Written by John Deacon
Recording information by Philipp (PraxisNothaft@t-online.de)
Recorded in late1985 at the Townhouse Studios, London.
Released in May 1986 on the album A Kind Of Magic.
General:
A tasteful soul-ballad, which is an important background theme in the Highlander movie. It´s one of the most untypical Queen-songs ever!
Without Freddie´s voice you wouldn´t recognize it as a Queen-song.
One Year of Love feat. several guests.
Drums:
Roger only used a bass-drum, snare and closed Hi-Hat.
All drums are reverbed and/or slightly stereo-delayed. They surely invested much time to create that atmospheric drum-sound. The drums are very slightly placed left and right. There´s also a tambourine-overdub-track (also reverbed and stereo-delayed)
Bass:
The sound is very warm with lots of treble as well as bass-portion. The signal was picked up via D.I.
Mixed into the center.
Keyboards:
- There´s a keyboard-track, which is slightly panned right. John plays a sweeping string-pad sound. That means, that when you touch the keys,the sound doesn´t come immediately but takes a short time to come to its full range. The sound would be best described as Strings 2, to say it in General Midi. Played with a Yamaha DX-7.
- The other keyboard, also played by John, is panned into the middle. It´s an E-Piano sound mixed with bell-tones. Played on Yamaha DX-7.
Strings:
John invited a 10-15 head string-section to the Townhouse.
Their arrangement is done by Lynton Naiff.
With the exception of some fills, they´re actually only playing in the outro.
Picked up with many mics. The signals are diffused over left and right.
Saxophone:
The sax is played by Steve Gregory.
His very tasteful solo is picked up with a small mic, put into the sax-tube.
The sound has got lots of reverb and sometimes a bit of stereo-delay.
Vocals:
The few backing-vocals are done exclusively by Freddie. He recorded his voice on three tracks for this.
The lead vocals are also sung by him.
All voices and instruments are reverbed and/or slightly stereo-delayed.
By the way:
This song is recorded completely without Brian... was this the revenge for Forever?... or was Forever the revenge for this?
There´s also a piano-version, to hear in the Highlander movie.