XX-XX-1993 – High Voltage
Queen: A Look Back At Hard Rock’s Royal Family
By: Aimee Kristi
“The thing about Queen is that they’re really normal. They have no airs or graces-they’re very approachable people. You’ve got this very trendy, good looking drummer (Roger Taylor). Then there’s this singer with a most amazing voice (Freddie Mercury), a classic bass player who’s quiet and into this music (John Deacon), and a hippie guy with long hair and white gloves (should read clogs?) who plays guitar (Brian May). These four guys would seem to be the most unlikely to be one of the biggest rock bands on the planet…yet, they are!”…Bob Geldoff
“If I didn’t do this well, I just wouldn’t have anything to do…I can’t cook, and I’d be a terrible housewife.”-Freddie Mercury
Queen: Four brilliant musicians and friends who stayed together and played together for the better part of twenty years to become one of rock’s greatest bands EVER. Experimental musicians, they sold more than 100 million albums. Untouchable showman live, they played for record-setting audiences all over the world. And when the music video age dawned, they were one of its early pioneers. Most important, Queen was the band that elevated rock and roll to an authentic and important form of musical expression for many rock fans. Which I should know-I was one of them.
I first heard of Queen back in 1974 when I was barely a teenager. Upon hearing the song Killer Queen, I was struck with a feeling that remains a vivid memory to this day-a feeling that I was listening to something poetic, artistic, and legitimate. I felt this so strongly, in fact, that I played the album for my mother. I’m not sure she was convinced, but she did say something about how Freddie “had the talent of a classically trained opera singer.” But when she looked at the album cover, she asked, “Why does he look like a woman?”
The Seventies: Is This The Real Life? Is This Just Fantasy?
Killer Queen was from the band’s third album Sheer Heart Attack, which stormed up the charts to #2. (Ironically in this era of such light-weight pop as The Bay City Rollers, Killer Queen was kept out of the #1 by David Essex’s Rock On!)
“Back then, I think we had very little idea of what was going on,” Brian May remembers. “We had a few dreams, a few ambitions. The biggest thing was to just make an album, to have it on a piece of plastic so perhaps people would buy it. Or perhaps our children and grandchildren would like a copy of it. Also, a thing with us was to play some concert situations like The Rainbow (club). I can’t remember realizing where we were going, except that we were going up, and that it seemed like the world was endlessly new.”
In 1975, the Sheer Hear Attack tour was interrupted by a throat injury to Freddie Mercury, but a later tour of Japan proved to be overwhelmingly successful. Crowds of fans would mob the train stations when they arrived. And at a gig at the prestigious Budoken venue in Tokyo, sumo wrestlers were used as security guards, but not even they could hold back the tidal wave of fans who rushed the barricades.
This response rejuvenated the band so much, they headed right back into the studio and recorded A Night At The Opera. This album was highlighted by the extraordinary Bohemian Rhapsody, which, of course, proved to be their permanent breakthrough into the big leagues. Producer Roy Thomas Bake recalls, “I phoned up the record company to tell them we had the first single ready to go. They said, ‘Oh great-what’s it called?’ We said ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ and they said, ‘Oh, how lovely.’ Then we told them that the song was about seven and a half minutes long, and they said, ‘Forget it-we can’t have a single that long!’ We said they hadn’t even heard it yet, and they said, ‘It doesn’t matter. It won’t get airplay because the radio will refuse to play it-it’s just too long.'” Obviously, its length didn’t matter to the fans-the initially unloved Bohemian Rhapsody topped the charts for a “length” of nine consecutive weeks! Thus Queen’s career was officially propelled into orbit.
The mid-70’s also marked the beginning of a genre that was soon to dominate popular music: the making of music videos. Much effort went into developing Queen as video artists. The road to success was long and tough, as video and music were an underutilized combination at the time. But as Roger Taylor says, “I think our music is quite visual and lends itself to visual things. Our sound is quite big, quite a large screen.” And Brian May laughs, “The We Will Rock You video was done in three days for about $10,000…that could NEVER be done now!”
The release of the next LP News Of The World occurred at the same time as the emerging punk movement. Queen ignored the trend and continued to be their usual extravagant, gallant selves. They paired the singles We Will Rock You and We Are The Champions, which became instant hits that went platinum in the US.
Despite the ever-changing musical trends of the late ’70’s , Queen continue to rule as one of rock’s best. It’s a title they solidify with their Elvis-y Crazy Little Thing Called Love which became their first #1 single in the US. Their second one was Another One Bites The Dust which was also adopted as the theme song for the Detroit Lions football team. Three more singles followed: Under Pressure, Radio Ga Ga, and Body Language.
It was at this time that Freddie changed his look, cutting his hair and growing a mustache. “People began to suspect he was gay,” says an insider, “and they turned on him somewhat.” Some people took to throwing razor blades onstage at Queen gigs, and the band responded to this backlash by doing their video for I Want To Break Free in drag. Also, Freddie contested press reports that he was a homosexual by commenting, “People will yawn and say, ‘Freddie’s only saying he’s gay because it’s very trendy right now.'”
The Eighties: Fifteen Minutes-And Years Of Fame
In the early ’80’s, members of Queen found some diversion from their “fall from grace” from Top 40 by spearheading their entry into film. They recorded the musical score for the motion picture Flash Gordon, but by 1984, they were all but gone from the US airwaves. Still the band mounted a massive world tour which included the first ever stadium tour in South America.
In 1985, Queen made a triumphant return to the US via the Live Aid super benefit concert to help fight the famine in Ethiopia. Against the likes of Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, and even a Led Zeppelin reunion, Queen captured the entire day with a shattering 15 minute performance. Brian May was quoted as saying, “I seldom get nervous–in fact never. But I think Live Aid was the greatest day of our lives even though we played a very small part in it. It’s what I’ll remember most of all of everything we’ve done. It was an amazing day.”
From there Queen launched what would become their final tour through Europe, where they broke many attendance records in the course of playing for more than a million people. Into the late ’80’s Queen continued to write and record together. There was work on outside projects too, such as Brian May’s solo album and Mercury’s performing a duet with Spanish opera singer Montserrat Caballe-you were right, mom!
The Nineties: These Days Are All Gone Now, But Some Things Remain
Queen found themselves on a new label in 1990-Hollywood Records. Early in the following year they released Innuendo, and album that had been in the works for some time. Unfortunately, something else that had been in the works for a while were rumors that Freddie Mercury was stricken with the AIDS virus.
The band and those close to them stubbornly refused to confirm or deny the stories. Then on November 24, 1991, Freddie died of AIDS at his home in London. His two closest friends were by his side and an Aretha Franklin record was playing. He’d officially announced his illness only the day before-as a friend explained, he just wanted “to be ill in peace.”
By reading some of the lyrics from Innuendo, it seems clear that Freddie accepted his shortened future with the same grace and gallantry with which he lived his life. This is from the song Days Of Our Lives:
These are the days of our lives They’ve flown in the swiftness of time These days are all gone now but some things remain When I look and I find no change Those are the days of our lives The bad things in life were so few Those days are all gone now but one thing’s still true When I look and I find I still love you.
With the utmost bravery, Freddie faced his end but his music and his memory still live on. At England’s Wembley Stadium last fall, 72,000 spectators and a television audience of millions more saw a tribute to Freddie with the proceeds going to AIDS organizations worldwide. Performers from all corners of the music world participated, ranging from Queen contemporaries like Robert Plant and Elton John to a new generation of hero worshippers like Metallica and Extreme. The following year, Bohemian Rhapsody once again topped the charts, thanks to the hit movie Wayne’s World, completing the resurgence of interest in Queen. An entirely new generation of fans bought a pair of tribute albums, Classic Queen and Queen’s Greatest Hits, pushing both of them beyond platinum status.
Queen’s legacy is that they brought dignity, intelligence, righteousness, and inspiration to rock music. They proved that genres like opera and even jazz could be integrated into it. As a result they were instrumental in ensuring that rock and pop are valid musical styles that will never fade away. Queen will persevere in the hearts, minds, and stereo systems of many rock fans for decades to follow…and long may they reign!
