The song Freddie Mercury wrote as a tribute to Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley had already been dead for over two years by the time Queen released ‘A Crazy Little Thing Called Love’.
That might seem like a banal statement of fact, but there was no denying the sense that the 1979 tune was blatantly inspired by the ‘King of Rock and Roll’, paying homage to the 1950s sounds of the genre’s emergence over 20 years down the line. It was a song that Presley would have been all too happy to cover, if only he had lived to hear it.
Of course, in the schemes of rock stars that have ever existed, Presley and Freddie Mercury were about as polar opposite as you could possibly get. They existed in plainly different worlds and artistic universes, but their shared goal was simple: to take over the world and become one of the biggest stars on the planet. In that sense, they really weren’t so different.
As such, when it came to ‘A Crazy Little Thing Called Love’, it was absolutely clear from the get-go that the song definitely was “Freddie’s tribute to Elvis”, as confirmed later by Brian May. After a troubled history in the States, it was also no surprise that it became Queen’s first number one there, as they were simply handing the Americans back what they knew and loved.
“Freddie wrote it very quickly, and rushed in and put it down with the boys,” May recalled, with more than a hint of disregard for his own input. “By the time I got there, it was almost done,” he added, creating the sense that the ghost of Presley had somehow come to his bandmate in a flash of apparition and forced him to write without any hesitation.
Yet the key to the timelessness of the song was, perhaps surprisingly, not to throw the kitchen sink at it. In a rare turn of events for Mercury, he had decided to write it on the guitar, which he openly admitted at the time, “I can’t play for nuts”. Certainly, if he was looking for a ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’-esque operatic riff, May would have been the guy to call – but his services simply weren’t needed at that moment.
Of course, this is not to say that Presley’s sound was in any way straightforward. Yet when it came down to it, Mercury realised what he needed to capture a true nostalgic essence was not any frills, but just the heart of what he wanted. In many ways, once you stripped back the coats of pomp and regalia, that’s all Queen really were.
Indeed, it did speak volumes that after years of toiling away, ‘A Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ marked the band’s first major dose of success in the US, as they went back to basics and delivered a standard of rock music that the masses were already well-accustomed to. Mercury was no Presley, but equally, Presley was no match for his posthumous counterpart, either.
You can rhyme off legions of artists and songs that have been inspired by different sounds and eras, but what stands out the most here is the fact that the influence of Presley effectively gave Queen a new commercial lease of life. In truth, the ‘King of Rock and Roll’ never quite left the building.
