The Preening Front Man

In his review of Bohemian Rhapsody Steve Sailer notes:

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.

Monday Queen

It looks like Bohemian Rhapsody cleaned up last weekend, taking in 151 million world wide.

Alert readers may recall we like Queen.

With that in mind here is our list of favorite Queen songs:

One Vision (A Kind of Magic): A stirring call to arms.
Fat Bottomed Girls (Jazz): Just a wonderful riff, great chorus, a celebration of guitars.
Someone to Love (A Day at the Races): A thunderous chorus.
Bohemian Rhapsody (A Night at the Opera): Do we really need to go through this again?
Gimmie the Prize (A Kind of Magic): Queen's heavy metal bash.
Keep Yourself Alive (Queen): Their first song. All the elements are there. Fun.
Innuendo (Innuendo): A dying man's plea.
Invisible Man (The Miracle): Great beat, see Brian May's cascading guitar.

Tomorrow we'll be going into some deep tracks.

Lazy on a Sunday Afternon

Kurt Loder reviews Bohemian Rhapsody. Nut graph: a paint by numbers biopic well executed. Loder liked the film.

For Gen Xrs that's a hell of an endorsement.

This Sunday we recall a day in 2006. Back then we were a more or less everyday sub at Bernards high. A student we liked very much recommended Queen's A Night at the Opera. We knew Bohemian Rhapsody of course, but had never listened to the album on which it came. That student assured us the album was a tour-de-force.

We can't believe we waited 33 years to listen to A Night at the Opera.

The album is a brilliant musical statement, opening up with the savage Death on Two Legs, and following with an old fashioned British pub song, then a sweet love letter to bassist John Duncan's wife (Your my Best Friend), I'm in love with my Car, and finally a science fiction folk song, '49. That's  just the first twelve minutes or so.

Each song stands out from those around it in style and substance. They are completely different from one another, yet somehow fit together to make a coherent narrative.

A Night at the Opera is the album that made Queen, separating them from the rest of the 70's era hard-rock pack.

Queen A Kind of Metal

Queen began as a 70's era hard-rock band but gradually evolved as musicians and with the times.

By the late 70's Queen did songs that had a Disco feel, like Another One Bites the Dust. This would have been the first Queen song we ever heard. It was cool when you were eight.

By the Mid-80's, as Heavy Metal grew in prominence, Queen returned to it's hard-rock roots and even sounded kind of metal. 

Which is why when we were a teenager we kind of thought of Queen as a hard-rock/metal band. 

Queen did three songs which stood out to us as  not only metal, but have parts that border on thrash.

The first is 1989's I want it all, (lead starts at 2:20) Here the drums thunder in 3/4 time and May shreds.

The next, going back to the Iron Eagle/Highlander soundtrack is Gimmie the Prize. May opens with an ascending riff, then pounding power-chords. The lead (3:10) sounds a bit like the Flash Gordon soundtrack and brings images to mind of the cavalry coming to the rescue.

For us, the best of these metal tracks is 1991's Innuendo. The lead starts at (4:40). Drums and guitar combine to make the band sound almost like Metallica.

Note the importance of Roger Taylor's drumming, he just hammers at the listener.

Dad, Why is this Scene Funny?

With the coming release of Bohemian Rhapsody we can expect the actual song to be on the air more or less permanently this fall.

Younger reader(s) should understand something about Bohemian Rhapsody. The song benefited from absolutely perfect timing. Freddy Mercury died in the fall of 1991 and Wayne's World came out the winter of 1992. You want to talk about convergence? Well there it is. 

The rest is music history.

Behold:

Younger reader(s) are probably thinking, 'Ok, Wayne and Garth are driving and listening to Bohemian Rhapsody.'

Yes, but there is so much more to this scene.

Now, we were 18 in 1992 and we liked Queen. But we liked the Queen of Iron Eagle and Highlander, the 1980's hard rock Queen. 70's era Queen might as well have been another century. We had heard Bohemian Rhapsody but the song was not yet a 'thing' as it is today.  It was niche, even obscure, and that is what makes the above scene so funny. To put it another way, if one were making a Queen biopic in 1992, one would not have called it Bohemian Rhapsody.

In 1992 one watched this scene and thought, 'Why are these metal nerds driving around, in a Pacer no less, listening to Bohemian Rhapsody? Is that opera?....and the head banging.'

In 1992 the scene was ridiculous. That's why it was funny.

Metal Monday

Post 9/11 kicking Muslim Butt edition:

People of Earth, I give you:

Ahhhh Iron Eagle. Yeah, yeah, I know. Still its a lot of fun and God Bless Queen.

Twenty Five years ago I was listening to this sound track everyday. Queen does a song here for Iron Eagle, but also Highlander.

Check out Brian May's solo at about 3:00. It has a heroic feel, an almost operatic feel to it. Then he just hammers the listener.

Back then, when I was 18 mind you, I was writing about galactic alliances and such. I've held on to a few of the ideas I had and got them in print. Anywho with the One Vision opening I used to see helicopters rising out from a hill, the morning sun behind them. Very Apocalypse Now, I know. That massive sword fight in the middle, well that used to make me think of space dreadnoughts trading fire, one volley after another.

The interesting thing about Queen was their ability to adapt. In the early 70's they sound like a guitar driven classic rock band. By the end of the decade they're heavily influenced by Disco. By the mid-80s they sound kind of metal. Which was no fluke. Brian May is on my top ten guitar players list. Heavy was always in them, oh stop snickering.

Queen also has a special place in my generation's heart. Well, you know:

Before Wayne's World one only heard Bohemian Rhapsody on the musty classic rock stations, 92.3 and 102.7 in the NY metro area. As it happened Freddie Mercury died a few months before this came out, so this was kind of his swan song cum tribute. Yes, my friends and I drove around in my 86 Celica doing this. Heck, we do it when DJ's play the song at weddings.

Fuck yeah, who says the gays can't rock?