In an album rock era, Queen’s eclecticism made them a great singles band, the successors to Three Dog Night. But the combination of three straight instrumentalists with high IQs (guitar god Dr. Brian May earned his astrophysics Ph.D. in 2007), the English equivalent of Rush, and one gay pianist/genius singer did not make for a cohesive artistic identity. Compare May’s hockey-arena stomper “We Will Rock You” with Mercury’s Studio 54 ode to cocaine and sodomy “Don’t Stop Me Now.”
That's right. Freddie made Queen. Without him they have succeeded, they may even have been an arena-rock band-like Styx* or Journey or god forbid Rush, which is what Sailer calls them pre-Freddie.
In Queen you've got a guitar god and thundering drums, but with a fabulous gay man preening up front, which is how you get songs like Millionaire's Waltz.
*Interesting in their own right, but not as talented as Queen. In fact they're kinda annoying.
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