Keep Yourself Alive

Today we are looking at facts from the song keep yourself alive:

Keep Yourself Alive is a song that was written by Brian May. Brian wrote this as a teenager in 1966 while with his first band; 1984. Brian May wrote this song as just message of simply just staying alive. Staying alive is the most important thing of life. Well duh! The song was first performed on October 31, 1970 during a Halloween party at the Cavern Club, Liverpool. Little that the club owner knew, Queen had touched a little bit of brandy before performing. Brian accidentally strummed so hard, he broke a string off the red special, Freddie slurred every word in the song, and Roger would fall heavily off beat. Later, they performed the song sober at their next concert at the Balls Park College in Hertford, UK on November 14, 1970. When they performed Keep Yourself Alive (SOBER), everything went terribly wrong. Freddie started getting really apprehensive over everything, They had announced mid concert that the band's new name was Queen too. After the gig, while speaking with an employee of the college, Queen requested more money for their labors on the basis that they were "more famous" now that they had played at the Cavern Club, where The Beatles played in their early days. In 1971, De Lane Lea Studios offered to let Queen recorded four demos for their songs.

In 1972, Queen entered discussions with Trident Studios after being spotted at De La Lane Studios by John Anthony. After these discussions, Normal Sheffield offered the band a management deal under Neptune Productions, a subsidiary of Trident, to manage the band and enable them to use the facilities at Trident to record new material, whilst the management searched for a record label to sign Queen. This suited both parties, as Trident were expanding into management, and under the deal, Queen were able to make use of the hi-tech recording facilities used by other musicians such as The Beatles and Elton John to produce new material. Keep yourself alive was released on July 6, 1973 with Son and Daughter put on the B-side. The song was performed 563 by Queen throughout Freddie Mercury's life. The song was performed the most during the "A Day At The Races" tour in 1977. It was performed 86 times that year. It was performed the least in 1970-1972 only being performed 4 times. On 1 October 1973, Queen got together in St John's, UK & performed two songs, "Keep Yourself Alive", & "Liar". Keep Yourself Alive hit the stores in the United States on 9 October 1973. The single received mixed reviews from the British music press. New Musical Express praised the "cleanly recorded" song, as well as the "[g]ood singer", and quipped that if Queen "look half as good as they sound, they could be huge". The reviewer for Melody Maker felt that Queen "[made] an impressive debut with a heavily phased guitar intro and energetic vocal attack"; however, he thought the song to be unoriginal, and unlikely to become a hit. On the other hand, Disc magazine's critic believed the single "should do well". The review praised "Keep Yourself Alive"'s drum solo, as well as its "attractively stilted, vaguely Hendrix-y lead riff". The South Yorkshire Times rated the single as "good"; the newspaper predicted that "[i]f this debut sound from Queen is anything to go by, they should make very interesting listening in the future." In his album review of Queen for Rolling Stone, Gordon Fletcher hailed "Keep Yourself Alive" as "a truly awesome move for the jugular."