Sheer Heart Attack was the first real Queen album, in that it was the first one that sounded like all of the records would sound from then on: whipsaw mood shifts during side-long medleys, and several songs that–while wonderful–make no fucking sense at all.
This is what they looked like:
Freddie enjoyed showing his penis to crowds. That’s what it comes down to; you can dress it up any way you’d like, but among the questions Freddie Mercury asked of his trousers was, “Can everyone see the detailed outline of my cock?” Also, Brian stole his cape from Little Red Riding Hood, and the only defense John Deacon has is that Saturday Night Fever wouldn’t come out for two years when this picture was taken, so he wasn’t stealing the look.
You will also note that Freddie’s shirt did not have a front to it. Just as Freddie Mercury asked questions of his trousers, he queried his tops: “Do you have a front?” And if the answer was “Yes, of course: a front is inherent to a shirt; I think you want a vest,” then Freddie would say something witty, and not buy that shirt.
If both questions were answered to his satisfaction: voila, an outfit. Don’t believe me? Look:
See? Chest, cock. Cock, chest. Add the teeth and you got Freddie Mercury. STILL don’t believe me?
Let’s just not talk about this one.
But we were talking about Sheer Heart Attack: it’s lighter than the previous two albums, with the big hit Killer Queen right up front, and a music hall number prominently featuring Brian on the ukulele.
There’s also this, maybe the prettiest melody they ever wrote–Brian wrote this one–and one of Freddie’s sweetest vocals. Don’t worry about the whole album (or go listen to it, do what you want) but give this a chance:
If you can’t play live, then you’re not a band. Hear that, The Beatles? You’re not a band. Get out of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and take Ringo with you. Go, feh.
Stop being weird.
I’m just telling the nice people what they already know: part of being a Rock Star was your Rock Show. In fact, for some bands I won’t name who appear in the title of this blog, it was the entirety of their legend. Now, Queen’s records are brilliant and more importantly they are intentioned: the 40-or-so minutes on the two sides of the album were seen, a priori, as the medium (album), and not an adjunct to another medium (songs). Queen’s albums aren’t–the first bunch, at least–just a series of songs: it’s the difference between chapters in a novel and stories in a collection.
And–God help us all–I’m listening through all the damn records, and I plan on bothering you about them all, and I don’t care what anyone says. (I will not spend too much time bothering you about Hot Space. There are a whole mess of interesting socioculturological topics surrounding Hot Space, but it is their disco album. I know, I know: the Dead went disco, and so did the Stones and Blondie and everybody else, but only for a song or two; Queen went Full Disco.)
But, still: could they fucking play live? You know, plaaaaay, man?
And someone asking that question would be one of those noobs or casuals I mentioned earlier, the ones we should be nice to, and it is here that I realize that I was wrong, and these people should be mocked and possibly struck.
Could Queen play live? Yeah, a little bit.
This was them in ’74, touring the first two albums, at the Rainbow in London: it was their homecoming show after a successful world tour
That’s only some of it. The whole thing’s here, but I can’t figure out how to embed videos from DailyMotion. We’ll get to Queen’s show–tonight or tomorrow, who knows?–because while they sound great here, they don’t have the money to really be Queen. (Freddie is Freddie, don’t worry: Freddie could be Freddie when he was naked, and he often was.) It’s all the material from the first two records, mean and crunchy heavy rock, and it is all about fairies and dragons. (I don’t believe they do the Jesus numbers at this show.)
They looked like this:
And you can’t fool me: those are drapes. Someone has sewn lace onto the drapes they stole from Roger Taylor’s nan’s house, and now Brian May is wearing it.
There was no money yet. The records hadn’t sold very well (understandably so: they’re weird) and the band had signed a disastrous management contract with thieving criminals.
Bingo!
Ooh, did I hear Bingo? This early, wow.
Five in a row, I got ’em. Look: “Magic Guitar,” “Drummer found via classified ad,” and “Free space.”
Yeah, you have the free space.
And then “Boring bass player,” and “Disastrous management contract.”
Yup, that’s Bingo.
What do I win?
Duffel bag full of furious raccoons.
What? I don’t want–
RACCOON TOSS!
AAAAAAAHHHHHH!
Protect your eyes!
Anyway, like I said: no money. And being Queen took cash: that massive and iconic red and green robot light truss was stupidly expensive and temperamental, and fancy custom stages–and the trucks to move them–can’t be stitched together by the drummer’s girlfriend. They looked like this:
Taking over the world–always Queen’s stated intention–requires firepower, and pyro costs money. That dinky sign at the back wouldn’t cut it in Madison Square Garden.
Enthusiasts, you know that I despise gatekeeping, or fan snobbery of any sort. Just because you’re obsessive about something utterly pointless that someone else has the temerity to only mildly enjoy doesn’t give you the right to be a dick, and absolutely nothing warrants assholishness towards those just getting into the subject. We were all noobs once.
That said: if Queen II isn’t your favorite album, then you’re not a real Queen fan. I will accept no arguments about this: Night at the Opera is a masterpiece, and Jazz has its defenders, but this is the pure stuff: grand and silly and loud as hell, and damnably optimistic, and thoroughly British with harmonies–HARMONIES FUCKING EVERYWHERE–and no fucking synthesizers.
(That’s not me saying that: Queen put the phrase on their album covers, up until the 80’s, when they could legally no longer make the statement.)
Queen II came out in 1974, and this is what Queen looked like at the time, with their shirts off for some reason:
Look how angry and ashamed John Deacon is. Dammit, Freddie Mercury: don’t make John Deacon take his shirt off for a photo session. John Deacon wants to be fiddling with gadgets in his shed while he smokes a pipe, not trying to be sexy. Someone get a John Deacon a damn shirt.
TotD is a John Deacon fan, let’s just get that straight up front. I played bass, terribly, in a band in high school and he was the guy I wanted to sound like. Even as a young moron, I thought that bass players should shut the fuck up and play the song, and John Deacon does that really well: his lines are melodic without ever being flashy, and he locks in with the drums and plays the bass part. Every other bass player in my high school wanted to do that slapping bullshit, but I liked Deacy and James Jamerson.
That said: at no point during Queen’s career did John Deacon ever not have the worst haircut. And it was close at times, as these men have had some legendarily awful haircuts, but John always won.
This is Live Aid, which is not happening now–we’re in 1974, stay with me–but will surely be mentioned as Queen’s Live Aid show is worth talking about, now and forever, but this is what John Deacon’s hair looked like:
I’m not even going to mention the jeans. That’s how amazing that haircut is.
But I was talking about Queen II. Which you should listen to. Here is it:
This is the
…
Buddy?
…
Yo?
I’m back, I’m back.
Where’d you go?
March of the Black Queen came on.
Oh, yeah. You gotta listen hard to that shit.
Demands your attention, the tune does.
Get back to work.
Okay, so this is the album where Queen begins to sound like Queen: the harmonies are in place, and the ridiculous dynamic swoops and curves on the songs, plus there was a hit single–Seven Seas of Rhye–and Queen would become exceptionally good at writing hit singles. (Which is one of the many reasons the Important Rock Critics despised them so.)
It’s also the most cohesive of their albums. Each side (the White Side and the Black Side: nothing as pedestrian as Side A and Side B for Freddie, darling) is a mini-suite, and it may in fact be the siliest of all Silly Rock tropes: the Concept Album.
We’re getting into dangerous waters, here, Enthusiasts, ontologically speaking: what constitutes a Concept Album? Does it require a coherent throughline–The Wall or Tommy–or can the songs attend to the dreary workings of the plot in a more oblique fashion? Because Queen II has a concept.
“There’s a white queen, darling, and she looks just spectacular, and there’s also a black queen, who is fabulous. Just fabulous. A boy, a village, leaving home, blah blah blah–Roger, you can write that one–and then an ogre gets battled, and then there’s a wedding at the end. Where’s my champagne?”
(I am assuming that Freddie came up with the concept, obviously.)
But there’s no actual story.
What there is, is their best record, although if you poked at me like the Pillsbury Dough Pervert*, then I might be biased in favor of the more obscure Queen stuff. It’s more authentic, man.
*That fucker loves being poked: he gets off on it. That sound he makes? “TEE-hee?” That’s him cumming.**
Christ, no. And don’t bring up Lester Bangs. No one cares about that dead snotbag, either. No one cared, cares, or will ever care about what Important Rock Critics think about Queen. If it were up to the IRC’s, then we’d all be force-fed Captain Beefheart until out-of-tune saxophones dripped from our nipples, and the only words we’d be able to say are “authentic” and “authentic.”
You said “authentic” twice.
Authenticity was very important to the Important. Still is: google “Cheef Keef + VICE” if you don’t believe me.
…
Where’d you go?
I was looking through the Rolling Stone archives at some of Dave Marsh’s other contemporaneous reviews
And?
He gave Cheap Trick’s Dream Police 0 stars.
And?
Fuck Dave Marsh.
Dunno why you doubt me. Now talk about Queen.
Well, they’re not Post-Colonial fascists, I can tell you that!
…
You got nothing, do you? Just started typing with the hopes that something would come?
In my defense, that almost always works.
Start from the beginning.
Farrokh Bulsara was born September 5th, 1946, in Tanzania Zanzibar.
Not that early.
Freddie Mercury died on November 24th, 1991, in London.
Not that late. Some time in between Freddie being born and dying.
Well, I could just post the whole first album.
Oh, that would be great. WAIT, NO.
What!?
Can’t skip over the Origin Stories. You must recite the liturgy when writing about Great Bands. We need the Origin Stories.
I’d rather throw myself off the moon.
How about we do Lightning Round?
OOH! YES! Let’s do Lightning Round!
Okay. Johnny, put 30 seconds on the timer. TotD, this is for the Chevy Cruze with California Emissions, the all-inclusive trip to Puerto Vallarta, and the duffel bag of furious raccoons.
I don’t want the last thing.
Have to take the raccoons if you want the car.
I kinda also don’t want that car.
…
You wanna play the fucking Lightning Round, or what?
Sorry.
Johnny? 30 seconds, please.
Thank you, Johnny. All right, TotD: 30 seconds on the clock, and the category is “Queen’s Origin Stories.” GO!
Okay, okay: uh, Brian built his own guitar out of a fireplace; Freddie went to boarding school, and then moved to London and worked at a clothes shop; Smile; astronomy; note on the college bulletin board looking for a drummer; John Deacon arrived at his audition at the scheduled time, and then played well.
…
That’s it?
As far as Origin Stories, there’s very little destiny or myth about it. They were all upper-middle-class students in London.
No books leaping off the shelves, glowing with esoteric fundibundulosity and IMPORT, man?
Nah.
Boo. Just post the album.
Do I win the raccoons?
No. No one wins this one. Freddie dies at the end. Van Halen and KISS just dissolved into hilarious and shitty old men yelling at one another, but Queen has a genuinely tragic ending.
Dude, spoilers.
Just post the album.
This is the first one–came out in ’73–and if you only know Queen from the dozen songs they still play on the radio, then check this out; it’s nothing like their later albums, missing the essential trademark harmonies. (They recorded the whole thing in six days or something.) Goofy and clumsy, the record’s like a puppy with enormous paws: soon, it’ll be a behemoth, but right now it can’t walk stairs all that well.
Brian May–already sounding like himself on their debut–would forever call this mode of Queen “Heavy Rock,” and I think Brian nailed it: this is certainly not metal, and–though it teeters on the brink on occasion–not prog. It’s good time rock and roll, is what it is.
(WARNING: many of these songs are about fairies and dragons and Jesus. Queen’s lyrics could be a crapshoot–sometimes you got Bicycle Race and sometimes you got Don’t Try Sucide–and while these lines aren’t clunky or particularly egregious, they are about fairies and dragons and Jesus; some people are just allergic to that kind of bullshit, and I wanted to warn you upfront.)
What are you watching? Football? Fuck football. Haven’t you watched enough football? Watch this. Live at Earl’s Court in ’77, end of the Day at the Races Tour.
And we’ll meet back here in a few to compare notes.
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