Queen’s drummer Roger Taylor founded a new band called The Cross during mid 1987 while Queen were on a break after their Magic Tour ended in August 1986. Unlike in Queen, Roger featured on lead vocals and rhythm guitar in the band. The other members, recruited through anonymous adverts, were Clayton Moss on guitar, Spike Edney on keyboards, Peter Noone on bass and Josh Macrae on drums. The Cross released three albums and nine singles between 1988 and 1991 and disbanded in 1993 after lukewarm reactions and success throughout their short career.

The band, from left to right: Clayton Moss, Roger Taylor, Josh Macrae, Peter Noone, Spike Edney

Mad: Bad: And Dangerous To Know

In March 1990, the band’s second album called Mad: Bad: And Dangerous To Know was released. It features 11 tracks on vinyl and cassette and 12 on CD. The extra song on CD, track 8, is a cover song of Hendrix’s Foxy Lady. The artwork features a great drawn image by Richard Gray and Stephen Bliss on the front and a band photo with the track listing on the back.

There are no known variants available of this album in terms of different artwork or track listings, making it less attractive for collectors. It also had a fairly limited pressing: it was released on vinyl in the UK, Germany, Italy and France and on cassette in the UK, Germany, Italy and Canada. This of course makes it arguably a bit easier for completists 🙂

The LP and CD releases from Italy and Switzerland respectively

The album was released (or at least manufactured) on CD in the UK, Switzerland, Canada and Japan. Each edition comes with the aforementioned Foxy Lady bonus track and the biggest differences are, just as with the vinyl and cassette editions, mainly related to the catalogue number and copyright credits. The Japanese edition comes with the usual obi though, unlike with most Japanese CD releases, not with an extra track in comparison to its Western counterparts. A promotional or so-called sample copy exists of this Japanese edition as well.

You will see all four variants outlined below where one photo shows all back sleeves and the second the spines.

The four known CD editions. From the top left, clockwise: UK, Switzerland, Japan and Canada – Photo credit: Román Varady

The four known CD editions. From the top: Japan,, UK, Switzerland and Canada – Photo credit: Román Varady

The German record company however released a lovely promotional box set which features the band’s name and album title on the front lid through a cross-shaped sticker. Its contents are a unique four-track promo CD (also available separately), a VHS with one promo video, a band photo, biography and a sticker. This set is rumored to be limited to just 50 copies, making it a desirable collectable.

Besides the aforementioned box, a number of singles were released in order to promote the album. The first one was released four weeks after the album was released, called Power To Love.

Power To Love

In April 1990, a month after the album’s release, Power To Love was released as a single in the UK, Germany and Italy. The single was released on the 7″, 12″ and CD formats in the UK and Germany and just on 7″ and 12″ in Italy.

The 7″ contains an edited version (3:27 vs 4:02) of the main song on the A-side. If you know the full-length album version, you may feel that the edit sounds rather rough. The B-side is the standard album version of the song Passion For Trash, a nice little rocker.

German copies of the 12″ and CD-single

Both the 12″ and CD-singles contain the same two tracks from the 7″ single plus a nice extended version of Power To Love which has a running time of 5:19.

The single unfortunately only managed to scratch the lower regions of the UK Top 100 and did not chart in any of the other two countries. The album did not do well in the UK either and this may have thus been a reason to not release any further singles in the UK or Italy. The Cross did have a slightly bigger profile in Germany, so a follow-up single was planned.

Liar

In August 1990, about 13 weeks after Power To Love, The Cross released the second single from the album being Liar. This song is not to be confused with Queen’s 1973 Mercury-penned song (and US single) Liar. The Cross’s Liar was written by Peter Noone. It was only released in Germany as a 7″, 12″ and CD-single.

For an unknown reason, but probably to make it radio friendly, the main song was remixed and shortened from 4:33 to 3:18. To make the single even more attractive, the B-side on the 7″ single contains a non-album track called In Charge Of My Heart. This song, as well as the remixed A-side, was only available in Germany until 2013 when it was released worldwide on Roger’s CD box set The Lot.

The 7″ and CD-single releases

Just as with Power To Love, the 12″ and CD-single feature an extended version or, as it is called on this release, a 12″ mix of Liar which extends the song to 6:32. Oddly enough, In Charge Of My Heart has also been extended on both the 12″ and CD and the regular version was therefore unique to the 7″ format and never digitally available until the aforementioned 2013 box set.

This single has become fairly hard to find these days and especially the CD-single is steadily climbing in value (€200+ at the time of writing).

A special mention to the 12″ as a counterfeit exists which can mainly be spotted by looking at the spine: if the catalogue number is missing, it is the counterfeit. A photocopied crack on the spine near the left of the character ‘H’ in ‘CHARGE’ is another identifier for the non-official edition.

Final Destination

Moving forward to November 1990 and the song Final Destination was released as the last single from the album.

This is arguably an odd release as it was only released as a CD-single in Germany and, for an unknown reason, as a promotional 7″ in France. No 12″ format is known to exist and one has to wonder why: was it withdrawn or simply never planned due to the poor performance of the previous singles? Same for the 7″ format which never saw a commercial release.

The 7″ and CD-single releases

This is arguably the rarest European CD-single released by the band (and thus excluding the Japanese 1988 CD-single Heaven For Everyone as their overall rarest CD-single), even topping the withdrawn German 1991 CD-single Life Changes which tends to come up for sale more often. Its additional tracks are the album song Penetration Guru and a live version of Roger’s 1984 solo song Man On Fire. Oddly enough, a slightly edited version of this live rendition was released nine months later on the debut single pulled from their third and final album. Does this maybe imply that the Final Destination CD-single was ultimately withdrawn, warranting a reason to release the live version of Man On Fire again to the public? Due to its scarcity, this CD-single can fetch prices of €400 or more these days.

This brings us to the 7″ edition for this song which is the band’s rarest 7″ single and arguably also their rarest and most valuable release overall. It was recognized as the #1 rarity by Record Collector in February 2000. As previously mentioned, it was only ever released as a promotional single in France. The sleeve has an embossed promotional mark in the top left corner on the front. I do not understand why this was released in France since none of the previous Mad: Bad: singles were released in this country. Due to its rarity and very limited release, collectors are willing to dig deep in their wallets. The most recent registered sale, from the 6th of November 2024, went for nearly €2700!

Its B-side is the song Penetration Guru, just as one of the extra tracks on the German CD-single.

Unreleased single

In early 2004 two unique 10″ acetate discs surfaced on eBay for an unreleased single. In 2013, The Lot box set featured an unreleased extended version of the song Top Of The World Ma. This more or less confirmed that Top Of The World Ma would have been the lead track for a proposed single on at least 7″ and 12″ formats.

I purchased these two 10″ acetates off eBay but regrettably sold them again a few years later. The B-side would have been Closer To You, although Spike Edney mentioned in 2004 that this song was proposed as a US single at the time.

Even though the discs are 10″ in size, the playable part is just as a regular 7″ single. Both songs on these discs are the standard album versions and one can argue that, since they are on the Town House label, this could have been planned as a UK single release.

It is interesting to see that, the further we go into this 1990’s album life cycle, the less optimistic and less hope the record company had in good album and single sales. It went pretty quickly downhill from the start: starting with a release in the UK and selected European countries and ending with an obscure promotional release in a country where the band had little to no activity. To top it off, a planned single was cancelled after a lacquer was cut and before it went into production, making this arguably a failed release for a band member from a successful top charting band!