Queen was a band with a lot of closeness between its members. Specially at the end, where we can hardly find a song completely written by just one of them. In John's particular case, he always was very close of Freddie, who collaborated a lot with him. Now it's time to analyse them chronologically:

Misfire is a very little piece, I do think John arranged it 100%. Of course it has one trademark from Brian, which is the three-part guitar harmony, and one from Freddie, which is a four-part vocal harmonies which appears during the guitar solo (listen also to It's A Hard Life, Bohemian Rhapsody, Fairy Feller's Master Stroke, also a couple of Brian's songs but those are probably Fred's contributions). But I think as it was John's first song that he used the trademarks from the best musicians he had around, his own style wasn't defined yet. John himself played all the guitar, including both harmonies and solo, except the very last ones which are clearly the Red Special

Then it comes to You're My Best Friend. The piano uses a very simple pattern, again there is not a defined style yet because he just had got started into keyboard instruments. John's arrangements started to see their own way: economical but detailed. That's a contrast of what Freddie (The March Of The Black Queen) and Brian (Good Company) made on the early days. John added very nice details to the song, like handclaps and bell-like tones, which made it a lot more easy listening, without getting into complexity. Roger's and Brian's work was most likely suggested by him, he must have gave them an idea of what they'd play. About the guitar solo itself, Brian used a nice arrangement of playing a three-part in just one guitar, but it is unsure if he wrote the solo after an idea by John or if John wrote the solo and taught it to Brian. The vocal harmonies sound very weird, they sang like a barbershop quartet. Roger's voice always is very notorious, because it uses to be on the top, while on this song we can find a very locked bounce. Then I would say that probably Freddie or Brian sang the top line on falsetto (Brian didn't use falsettos so much, then it would be a nice change of voice colors). The arrangement of the vocals is pretty simple, again it could be John. It's just a two-part with parallel octaves.

One of his best songs is You And I. Now that one I think has a lot of input from the band. It wasn't quite finished at first. Basic track was bass, drums and piano, and I think John gave Roger and Freddie more freedom to do their parts with their own style. Freddie's piano playing seems to be Elton John influenced, and that was a very allegro era for him, a lot of the pianos he played were rather fast, it seems like he was just messing around, of course he's a wonderful player and his "messing around" stuff turns out very professional too. Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy, Bring Back That Leroy Brown and Bicycle Race are further examples. Roger's drumming is just his 1976 trademark. Some of the vocals are the combination of them, but mostly they are just Freddie, which shows that probably he arranged them (on that album he even got the "choir master" credit). On this song the harmonies are more complex than they use to be on John's songs. Brian's solo is again a very fresh one, either John wrote it or Brian, it would fit for any of the options. One of Brian's trademarks was that his solos weren't similar to other solos, this could be one of those. John's bass is his typical melodic one, just like on Best Friend and a lot of songs not written by him but where he most likely arranged his own part. Talking about that, after Freddie done the vocals, John added his acoustic guitar, and changed the mood. That's a proof of his great musical ears and his right decisions.

The credits of 'News Of The World' are not right. They don't mention Brian played piano on All Dead, which he did (he told me), they don't put Freddie on backing vocals, which he did (We Are The Champions for example), and they don't put John on the acoustic of Spread Your Wings. That track was an overdub. About the basic framework of the song, as it is not very hard to do, John could have easily take a revenge for Sheer Heart Attack and Fight From The Inside and play all the instruments by himself, but he was very intelligent and new that the song needed a very fresh sentiment, so it needed a mixture of different styles and ways of playing. Piano, bass and drums used to be recorded live, then it shows that Freddie played it. Besides at the end of the song there are some very obvious licks from him. There's a very John element on the guitars: they enter late in the song doing simple harmonies very softly, like on You're My Best Friend. The solo seems more like Brian's improvisations.

Who Needs You is a style John didn't use before, I'm very confused about the credits to both Brian and John on acoustic. My guess is that the backing track was a guitar duet between them both on Spanish guitars. The harmonics sound more like Brian's idea, or else it would be the only time John had harmonics on a song of his own. I really think John played the solos, of course Brian could also do them, but, also Roger could have sung Radio Ga Ga, which he didn't, or John could play the bass or guitar of Fight From The Inside as well... It's just that it would be so hard to believe that all John did for his song was playing a strummed acoustic guitar, while Brian played another one, and solos, and harmonics, and electric choruses, and maracas, and Freddie played cowbell and made five vocal layers. No, John must have done the solos, then it would be much more balanced. Again the Red Special arrangement is a very John thing.

In Only Seven Days is a reformed version of Spread Your Wings, they are both piano-driven, have the same kind of guitar arrangement and solo, they don't feature vocal harmonies, and they have acoustic guitar played by John. Then it would be another completely John song, although Freddie's and Roger's backing track inputs must have had more freedom again

On If You Can't Beat Them we find John's heaviest number, as it is his first effort on that kinds of songs I guess he either "borrowed" trademarks from Brian's and Freddie's rock pieces or that he was supported by them when building the song. It was on the Jazz-Game sessions that John said he didn't like the kind of guitars Brian did on his songs, and there are particular parts of the solo that sound very much like Brian-written. His later work on that mood was Need Your Loving Tonight, which again has some very Brianish feelings. The acoustic guitar and electric rhythm must have been played by John. The building of the harmony is very Freddie, we find it as the root of series of collaborations between those two.

Another One Bites The Dust is totally the opposite to Spread Your Wings, John does it in a "do it yourself" way. He played piano, bass, handclaps, synthesisers and made the guitar solos. If it were written on 1982 I'm sure that he would have programmed drums on a Linn machine instead of asking Roger to do a loop and made noises with the Jupiter 8 instead of having Brian playing through and harmoniser. Freddie sings and collaborated on the keyboards as well, but on this one it seems that all the arrangements were by the quiet one.

Both tracks he wrote for Flash Gordon weren't his usual kind of music, but that's understandable because it was specifically written for the film. Howard Blake was in charge of the orchestral arrangements. Cool Cat is credited to John and Freddie, but it's much more John, musically at least. It has a lot of shades of Who Needs You in terms of beat and rhythm. We find Freddie contributing to the lead melody, and also he must have arranged the synth-part, and played it. The rest of the instruments are by John, guitars, bass and drum-machines.

Back Chat is quite in the same mood, a "do it yourself" thing, although it's one of the more Queen songs in the album. Roger played a wonderful e-drum solo, Brian made another solo on the Red Special to which Freddie had made a nice synth prelude, but the rest (guitars, bass, drum-machines, handclaps, synthesisers) were by John. Vocals were all by Freddie, I don't think he put much effort on them. The keyboard John used was the Jupiter 8, which has the unison mode, on which 16 different voices are divided into the numbers of keys he played, i.e. if he played 4 keys, each one had 4 different sounds. That's a wonderful keyboard.

The other song with contributions from John was Under Pressure, to which he wrote the bass-line, but both Brian and himself abandoned the idea after few days, while Roger, Freddie, Mack and David (Richards and Bowie) kept working on it for a while.

The only John's song the band recorded for 'The Works' was I Want To Break Free, as for the basic framework we find it 100% John, he played guitars, bass, keyboards and programmed drum-machines, but on the overdubs I think each one had his own ideas. The synthesiser solo is done by Fred Mandel, it's possible that Freddie also played synths, however, it's possible that John told Brian and Roger how did he like their parts to be done. Vocals have no further arrangement, just some three-part harmonies to which anyone could have come up with.

John's first serious classical-influenced ballad was One Year Of Love. As he had not so much experience he brought three wonderful musicians to help him to build the arrangement: Steve Gregory, Lynton Naiff and Freddie Mercury. Freddie also did the piano version of the track, specially for the film. John's arrangements are mainly on the bass and drums and some of the keyboards, they were quite simple but very powerful and a good demonstration of what he would do later.

Pain Is So Close To Pleasure is in the same vein as Cool Cat, but much more clever. Freddie helped a lot on the arrangements of the piano, vocals and keyboards, while Brian added some ideas of himself (in fact, he was the one who started off the theme of the song), and John played most of guitars, and also programmed the drum-lines

My Life Has Been Saved features Freddie on the piano (it's clearly his style), David Richards helped him with some keyboard parts as well, but most of the arrangement is by John himself, including the guitar lines. It's a great show of his abilities writing those sweet ballads like he made 11 years before with Spread Your Wings. But now they were far more complex.

John's songs on the 'Miracle' album, Rain Must Fall and My Baby Does Me, are a la Guns N' Roses, i.e. each one writes his own lines, but again, most of the lines were made by John (keyboards, drum-machines, bass and most of the guitars).