{"id":122932,"date":"2026-02-04T19:02:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T19:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/122932\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T19:02:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T19:02:17","slug":"they-all-chimed-in-we-want-some-crazy-spanish-guitar-improvise-i-thought-ive-bitten-off-more-than-i-can-chew-when-queen-pressganged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/122932\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThey all chimed in, \u2018We want some crazy Spanish guitar. Improvise!\u2019 I thought, \u2018I\u2019ve bitten off more than I can chew\u2019\u201d: When Queen pressganged Steve Howe into appearing on Innuendo"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2012 Prog stated the case for Queen being regarded as a prog band.<\/a> One of our main exhibits was 1991 album Innuendo, which included a guest appearance by Steve Howe on the title track. Here\u2019s what he told us about his unexpected day in the studio.<\/p>\n

Right at the end of their career as an active band, Queen<\/a> returned to the adventurous music-making they\u2019d been known for back in the beginning. In 1989 they began working on their penultimate album, Innuendo<\/a>, in London and Montreux.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the summer of 1990, Yes<\/a> guitarist Steve Howe<\/a> paid a flying visit to the Swiss city, where a chance encounter with a former guitar tech found him being invited to Queen\u2019s studio to hear the album as a work-in-progress.<\/p>\n

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\u201cInside, there\u2019s Freddie<\/a>, Brian<\/a> and Roger<\/a> all sitting together,\u201d Howe says. \u201cThey go, \u2018Let\u2019s play you the album.\u2019 Of course, I\u2019m hearing it for the first time: \u2013 I Can\u2019t Live Without You, I\u2019m Going Slightly Mad. And they saved Innuendo itself until last. They played it, and I was fucking blown away.\u201d<\/p>\n

If that was surprising, what happened next was utterly out-of-the-blue: the band asked Howe to play on the title track. The Yes man politely suggested they\u2019d lost their minds. It took the combined weight of Mercury, May and Taylor to persuade him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey all chimed in, \u2018We want some crazy Spanish guitar flying around over the top. Improvise!\u2019\u201d recalls Howe. \u201cI started noodling around on the guitar. It was pretty tough. After a couple of hours I thought, \u2018I\u2019ve bitten off more than I can chew here.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to learn a bit of the structure, work out the chordal roots, where you had to fall if you did a mad run into the distance \u2013 you have to know where you\u2019re going. But it got towards evening, and we\u2019d doodled and I\u2019d noodled, and it turned out to be really good fun.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe have this beautiful dinner, we go back to the studio and have a listen, And they go, \u2018That\u2019s great \u2013 that\u2019s what we wanted.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Released as a single in January 1991, Innuendo gave Queen their third No.1 single. Like Bohemian Rhapsody<\/a> 25 years earlier, it was as unlikely as hit singles get: a six-and-a-half minute musical jigsaw, complete with flamenco runs, classically-inclined orchestral overloads and maverick 5\/4 timing.<\/p>\n

Queensr\u00ffche<\/a> covered the song on 2007\u2019s Take Cover album, and you can hear its echo in Radiohead<\/a>\u2019s Paranoid Android and Muse<\/a>\u2019s more elaborate sci-fi epics.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the world of rock, Queen stands out as a good example of the clash between guitar and piano in songwriting,\u201d Muse\u2019s Matt Bellamy <\/a>once said. \u201cI think that\u2019s where you stumble across those more unusual arrangements and chord structures.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2012 Prog stated the case for Queen being regarded as a prog band. One of our main…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":{"0":"post-122932","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-city","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-queens","12":"tag-queens-headlines","13":"tag-queens-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}