Now I'm Here (May)

This is a single in the wrong place. What I mean is, this fits much more closely with Keep Yourself Alive and Seven Seas of Rhye in terms of style etc. than it does with the two songs it sits between, both of which (the latter especially) take the group in all sorts of different directions than those explored so far in their singles.

For this is a classic, early-Queen rocker. Does that sound like a complaint? I hope not, as this is the best of May's two singles thus far and is perhaps unfairly overshadowed by its predecessor and especially its successor.

I've been a Queen fan for, oooh, years now but I've only just noticed that there's a glitch at the start of this, during May's chugging intro. I can only describe this musically, so here goes: in the thrid bar, if you're beating time, it loses a beat somewhere. It sounds like a bad edit or something, but it's there.

It doesn't spoil things. Queen were beginning to show off with their studio prowess, especially under Roy Thomas Baker, and Freddie's voice leaping from speaker to speaker still sounds great (never listen to this song when one of your speakers is duff). The quiet intro explodes into life, siren-style guitars, heavy drums and big harmonies taking us into the verse.

Freddie's vocal is interesting; it seems to be double-tracked on the verses, but slightly out of sync. I suspect this is deliberate and certainly adds a rockier, harder edge to his singing (he'd repeat the trick during the heavy rock section of Bohemian Rhapsody). The harmonies work great, especially the "Don't I love her/him/you so" parts between verses and during the outro.

There's a lot of guitar in this song - a lot. And it's at its most intense during the solo, a veritable wall of guitars which, combined with the piano that's thrown in there for luck, is a quite thrilling listen.

All in all, this is a stormer of a song. The other interesting thing is how (relatively) slow the original is. During Queen's live career, it seemed to speed up and get longer until, by the Magic Tour of 1986, it had become a massive heavy rock interlude (with an almost stupidly long guitar solo, right after May had had his little solo spot). But the original is a fine example of Queen's ability to drop it all and rock out... 7 (If only for the slightly too-long outro)

Video: Again, none was made for this song. If you buy a Queen video collection, you're likely to find the live version from Queen's 1974 concert at The Rainbow on it in place of the original. Which is OK, but not half as good as this, frankly.