03-02-1991 – Billboard – 20th Anniversary
Never a band to do things half-heartedly, Queen is celebrating its 20th anniversary in an unusually regal manner.
The long-lived group has released “Innuendo,” its 18th album overall and its first for the Walt Disney Company’s new Hollywood Records label. Entering the Top Pop Albums chart at No. 53 last week, it was Queen’s highest debut in a decade. The album clearly won’t be Queen’s last for Hollywood in 1991 either: Part of the group’s highly trumpeted deal – said to be in the $10 million range – includes which Hollywood will reissue on CD throughout the year.
The North American distribution of Queen’s back catalog is no small matter – and in some ways may signify the end of an era in these CD-conscious times. When indie label Rykodisc picked up the rights to distribute David Bowie’s RCA back catalog in the U.S. a while back, most in the industry held Queen’s work – previously on Elektra and Capitol – to be the only remaining deep-demand catalog yet to see complete transfer to CD.
Thus Hollywood, which has remained relatively low-key since bowing last year, aims to make 1991 very Queen’s year here.
“The attraction is just obvious,” says Wes Hein, executive VP at Hollywood. “We can make a major production out of rolling [the catalog CDs] out, and we think we can sell an awful lot. Plus, in signing Queen as a new act – we just felt that it’s much more than just putting out 10- and 15-year-old CDs. They’re a viable band that can do very well. So we thought, ~Wouldn’t it be great to benefit not only from the selling of a million “Innuendo” records, but selling several million of their catalog records as well?”
Queen guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor, in L.A. recently to launch “Innuendo,” acknowledge that they have placed themselves in a unique position by retaining rights to their back catalog.
“It just seemed like common sense, really,” says Taylor. “Seeing what the Beatles had done, and never owned what they wrote. I think for Paul McCartney it must have been very hard when Michael Jackson actually outbid him for his own work. I don’t think we ever wanted to be in that kind of position.”
Hollywood plans to launch the Queen catalog in four separate flights this year, beginning this month with the reissue of “Sheer Heart Attack,” “A Day At The Races,” “News Of The World,” and “Hot Space.” To coincide with the first tier of reissues, the label has already sent radio “Queen Rocks Vol. 1,” a promo CD containing newly remastered versions of a half-dozen hits.
Hollywood also promises that all Queen’s back-catalog CDs will contain some special surprises. Hein says the company was “a little bit inspired” by Rockodisc’s superb treatment of the Bowie catalog, especially its efforts to include bonus tracks.
“We want each record to have something a little bit special,” says Hein. “Some of these records have been made available on import. Comparing the sound, if nothing else, the previously available Queens CDs have been inferior to ours. We felt that we wanted to even go a step further and give people a reason, if they picked up imports, to go back.”
Among those reasons will be deluxe artwork and liner notes, he says, and special remixes of certain Queen tracks by such mix-masters as producers Rick Rubin and Michael Wagener, among others.
As far as “Innuendo” goes, both May and Taylor point out that although Hollywood’s track record at this point may be unproven, the fact that, as Taylor says, the label “had everything to prove, and that’s what we felt we needed” helped the label seal its deal.
“We didn’t have a lot to lose in this country, that’s what we felt,” says May. “In most other territories of the world, it’s great and we can do very little wrong. Wonderful. But in this country for the last few years – maybe be five or six years – it was definitely harder to get airplay and sales.”
Like the group’s last album, 1989’s “The Miracle” on Capitol Records, the new disc features a body of work credited entirely to Queen, rather than individual band members. That’s done for two reasons, notes Taylor. “We found that we were contributing approximately equally to the last few albums,” he says. And the other reason? “To avoid what you might say is ego or possessiveness about your own tracks, and I suppose even maybe thinking about publishing – all those things where there’s problems about possible inequality. Arguing about what should be the single and what gets on the album would be removed at one stroke if we split everything equally.”
“Headlong,” the album’s first track to be released to radio, last week sat at the No. 3 slot on the Album Rock Tracks chart. Up next, says Hollywood’s Hein, will be the album’s title track, boosted by what he calls “one of the best videos I’ve ever seen in my life, and that’s an opinion shared by many.” And the quality of Queen’s new video is of no small importance to the label; Hollywood knew the chance existed that Queen might not be willing to tour.
Why? Largely because of Queen vocalist Freddie Mercury, apparently. “He has his own reasons,” says May, “but from what I can see, it’s really that he finds it hard physically and mentally to be on tour. It’s easier for the rest of us, because the front man bears a lot of the pressure.”
“He hates the idea of being an older rocker on stage, I think,” says Taylor.
Both band members and label, however, stress that the group has not entirely ruled out a tour.
May and Taylor are both polite regarding the subject of Vanilla Ice, whose heavy borrowing of the Queen/David Bowie track “Under Pressure” for his own “Ice Ice Baby” they call “flattering” and “a laugh.” Adds Taylor: “It’s a laugh when you see however many million copies he’s sold.” According to May, though Queen and Bowie received no compensation at first for the track, “I think they’ll settle in some way.”
May adds that the sampling trend is, to him, “a fashion that will find its own place. I think it’ll be in the minority after a while, this sampling – because talent will out, and there will make that stuff not worth doing.”
