John Deacon Quotes

“Because our records sell all around the world, everybody should be financially secure for the rest of their lives”

“In England we live in a semi-detached Victorian house, ‘cos we like Victorian houses you know”

“Oh…. I’m terribly shy and nervous”

“If I could sing it would be lovely”

“Freddie’s got a nasty temper…. I remember one time he lost it, he smashed a very large ornate mirror over someone’s head”

“I’ve got a nice house, a loving wife and a couple of kids- that’ll do me!”

“I don’t want to be nasty!”

“Arguments are healthy. They clean air”

“If I could tell the future life would be boring.”

“Lots of marriages don’t last as long as Queen’s been together”

“I’ll probably make loads of plans, and then just sit around on my bottom all day and do nothing.”

"Brian and I were both science students. You know, science sort of math physics side, you know."

"Brian's very quiet and a really good gardener... Roger likes to laugh and joke"

"But I've always been accused of being a bit tight with money, so it hasn't particularily changed my lifestyle."

"
But now working in the studio is an art in itself, because you can come up with sounds that you could never reproduce onstage"

"But we actually have bought a house in America as well, which is mainly at the moment a holiday home."

"For me it wasn't any big decision, they already had all the ideas and all the songs, I just came in and played bass"

"Four personalities are bound to clash"

"Freddie and Brian tend to write the majority of the material"

"Freddie can never be replaced-- an certainly not by him"

"I didn't actually realize what apartheid meant. I'm probably a bit naive, but I thought it was more of a vague segregation, like on the beaches and buses"

"I don't know you know, because, we are perhaps insular in a way as a group, we're just hopefully involved in our own thing"

"I have a few personal ambitions for the band"

"I like touring, I like being in the studio, a bit of both. I like to have a bit of time at home as well"

"I mean basically I was the newest member in a way, because the band was formed for 6 months with a few other bass players when I came along"

"I mean the only thing that is hopefully good about us is after the arguments we can actually still face each other the next day or the day after and talk about something else and sort of get over it."

"I must say American radio is good in a way because for new groups, especially like English groups that's how the interest picked up on us over here"

"I played in bands all through school and when I was 18 I came down to university in London and gave it up for a bit"

"I was too shy to go and meet Princess Diana"

"I went along and basically learned a few of the songs they were doing at the time, which were quite a few of the songs we ended up doing on our first album"

"I wouldn't go to another band"

"In a way it costs thousands dollars before you could actually go out to put the show on because you'll need equipments, all the lights you know, and that's more just going out and playing you know."

"Live Aid turned our world upside down"

"Money is not the drive so much now"

"No, I mean we'd all definitely involved in the music business someway or another, because we're all living with it, and in it, and also we've got all sorts of things we would like to do."

"No, we have our ups and downs, but we're all very up at the moment"

"None of us want Queen to split up."

"Our albums just tend to be collections of songs really, because we all write in the group, all four of us."

"Queen has taken the all of our time for last four or five years, you know"

"That first bass I had was an Eko, a very old thing with a thin neck, I had that for quite a while."

"The band was rejuvenated by that wonderful day. It breathed new life into us."

"Then we did what we called basically I suppose a club tour in England, which was the time I think that our second album came out, we club toured around the whole country where the venues were hold to five hundreds upwards to that sort of thing you know."

"There was always a lot of American music in England until, obviously when the Beatles came around, then there was a shift towards English music, but before then American music was the main thing."

"We didn't have a lot of success with that first album but we sold a few thousand and we'd done a John Peel session which got some plays."

"We've always decided ourselves what we wanted to put out as our singles and that sort of things."

"When we finished the album, the Night at the Opera album, that was the track on it that we thought we were gonna release as a single in England first."

"When we recorded our first album sixteen track machines were the thing"

"When you start out without a record nobody knows you, but if you have a record it's a lot easier."

"Yes, it is a rehearsed show, yes, it was analogy of going to see a play at the theatre, where everything has to be in place and whole things, everything being works, all works together to get the best effect you know it's more like an actor learning a part"

"You know, my children go to a local, local catholic school just down the road"

I listened to a lot of soul music when I was in school and I've always been interested in that sort of music. I'd been wanting to do a track like "Another One Bites The Dust" for a while, but originally all I had was the line and the bass riff. Gradually I filled it in and the band added idea. I could hear it as a song for dancing but had no idea it would become as big a hit as it did.

We wanted to experiment with all that new studio equipment. We had always been keen to try out anything new of different whilst recording. The synthesizers then were so good, they were very advanced compared to the early Moogs, which did little more than make a series of weird noises. The ones we were using could duplicate all sorts of sounds and instruments - you could get an entire orchestra out of them at the touch of a button. Amazing.


“It was the one day (Live Aid) that I was proud to be involved in the music business. A lot of days you certainly don't feel that!”

“When you start out without a record nobody knows you, but if you have a record it's a lot easier.”

“When we did Live Aid I was too nervous of meeting Princess Di, so Spider, our roadie, met her in my place - shook hands with her and everything!”

“There was always a lot of American music in England until, obviously when the Beatles came around, then there was a shift towards English music, but before then American music was the main thing.”

 [on Queen II] "Sounds very boring doesn't it, but we couldn't find a title we all agreed on. Our first LP didn't do too badly because it sold about 15 thousand copies. One of the tracks written for this LP by Freddie was an inspiration he got from a painting he saw in the Tate Gallery, which was a gathering of fairies bundled together in a wood" (1974)
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