Song's chords D, Gm, A♯, A, Dm, G, F♯m, E, Em, Bm, F♯, C
Album A Day at the Races
Info about song
"Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together)" (also sometimes seen as "Teo Toriatte (Let Us Cling Together)" or "手をとりあって (Let Us Cling Together)") is a song from the 1976 Queen album A Day at the Races, written by guitarist Brian May. It is the tenth and final track on the album (excluding bonus tracks on several re-releases). The song is notable for having two verses sung in Japanese; it is one of four Queen songs in which an entire verse is sung in a language other than English. The song features a piano, a plastic piano, and a harmonium, all played by Brian May. It is the only point in the album in which Freddie Mercury does not play piano. The album's closing guitar melody is also its opening melody; the sequence was attached to the beginning of "Tie Your Mother Down", the first track on the album. May described it as "a never-ending staircase", otherwise commonly known, musically, as a Shepard tone. The song was released as a single exclusively in Japan, and only as a 7” single; it reached #49 on the Japanese charts. The B-side was the song "Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy". The closing Shepard tone was edited off the song. During the Queen + Paul Rodgers tour in 2005, Brian May performed the song during a set in Japan. A new, remixed edition of the song was released in 2011 as part of Queen's 40th Anniversary remasters collection. The insert booklet that comes with the 2011 remaster of A Day at the Races says the following of this particular version: "This High Definition digital mix of Teo Torriatte was first included on the Japanese-only compilation album Jewels II in 2005. This is the first time it has featured on a CD outside of Japan. Brian has said that although he loves the original mix, he always knew that it suffered from the limitations of the existing equipment, and that's why this mix was undertaken at a time when he perceived the technology had finally caught up. 'It will sound just as you perhaps thought the old mix sounded, but comparing the two, it will be as if a veil had been lifted!'" Japanese text and romanisation: The song's title uses an outdated form of romanisation by applying the particle を ("wo"/"o") to the word before it. Under modern conventions, "手をとりあって" would be romanised either as "Te o Toriatte" or "Te wo toriatte." Additionally, the Japanese single's cover gave the romanised version of the title as "Teo Toriatte (Let Us Cling Together)", but the back cover of A Day at the Races misspells this as "Teo Torriatte" (adding an extraneous "r"). The song's title with Japanese script is "手をとりあって (Let Us Cling Together)". The chorus part sung in Japanese goes as follows: "手を取り合って このまま行こう (Te o toriatte konomama ikou/Let's go hand in hand) 愛する人よ (Aisuruhito yo/my beloved.) 静かな宵に (Shizukana yoi ni/In a quiet evening) 光を灯し (Hikari o tomoshi/Light the light) 愛しき教えを抱き (Itoshiki oshie o idaki/Embracing loving teachings)" The chorus part sung in English is a rough translation: "Let us cling together as the years go by, Oh my love, my love, In the quiet of the night Let our candle always burn, Let us never lose the lessons we have learned." * Musicians: Freddie Mercury - lead and backing vocals Brian May - guitars (including outro), piano, harmonium, plastic piano, backing vocals John Deacon - bass guitar Roger Taylor - drums, tambourine, backing vocals References to the song: * Yasumi Matsuno is a fan of Queen, and named Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together as a tribute to this song. * Queen later referenced "Teo Torriatte" in a line ("we'll sing to you in Japanese") from the song "Let Me Entertain You", featured on their 1978 album Jazz. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.