Queen: Queen - 1973

A bit of a Queen intro first of all....

As a teenage visitor to the many record shops that existed in the early-mid seventies, I had flipped past the sleeve of Queen's debut album, so I was familiar with it. I also saw the posters for their appearance at my local rock club, Friars in Aylesbury in early 1974. I was too young to attend. I was also aware when they supported my favourite band, Mott The Hoople, in 1974. 

They burst into my sphere with the Seven Seas Of Rhye single and then with Killer Queen. It was the era of glam and, while Freddie Mercury fitted the bill for a glam rocker, with his long, dark hair, black nail varnish and flouncy white blouses, there were still several bands/artists I preferred - Mott, Bowie, Roxy Music, and Cockney Rebel. Queen, at that point, came in the second section. I knew they were credible in comparison to say, out and out glammers like Sweet, but in many ways I saw them as imitators as opposed to innovators. Some have accused them of being run-of-the-mill chancers, but that is somewhat harsh. 

After a good heavy rock single in Now I'm Here, everything changed with the release of the remarkable behemoth that was Bohemian Rhapsody. Until then, believe me, Queen were nothing special in anyone's minds. Yes, Sheer Heart Attack had proved to be their breakthrough album, but they were still not rock royalty by any stretch of the imagination. The huge success of the single found everyone liking them and, for a few brief years, they became my favourite band, as Mott and Roxy had split up and punk had not yet arrived. 

I went to see them in concert at Earl's Court in 1977 when they were still long-haired and be-bloused. Much as I loved the excitement of that show, punk and new wave soon took over my thoughts and my brief obsession with Queen became something I wanted to put behind me. Freddie went moustachioed, leather-clad and short-haired and, by 1979-80, they were a band to be dismissed. Part of the indulgent, preposterous old guard. 

By 1984-85, they had a renaissance, rubber-stamped by the triumphant appearance at Live Aid that found me feeling affectionately proud of my faves from nine years earlier. They then garnered a whole host of new fans who knew little of Now I'm Here, Ogre Battle or The Fairy-Feller's Master-Stroke. They wanted to clap in unison to Radio GaGa, and they did, in their thousands. 

National treasurehood beckoned, the hits came thick and fast, then Freddie died and the whole world grieved, including old fans like me. The current craze for Queen nostalgia inspired by the Mercury biopic leaves me a bit cold, particularly with the movie's many inaccuracies, but every now and again I play the old "side two" of Queen II. That, for me, was Queen at their very best.

Anyway, this, Queen's debut album, went under the radar somewhat in 1973, overshadowed by Aladdin Sane, Goats Head Soup, Band On The Run, Mott, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Billion Dollar Babies, Heartbreaker, even Cockney Rebel's Human Menagerie. I was "into" all those albums at the time. This one passed me by. 

I didn't latch on to Queen until the follow up, Queen II, the following year. They did not seem to fit into any pigeonhole, Queen - long haired, at times heavy, but with a singer in black nail varnish and flowing blouses who carried a strangely laddish "chutzpah" for one so effete. This would carry him a long way. His "lads" audience stayed with him to the realms of super stardom. Musically influenced by Led Zeppelin, Free and Hendrix at the outset, but with a bit of acoustic delicacy appearing too, Queen were certainly interesting. 

The lyrics here were all about fairies, kings, queens and rats, sort of Tolkeinesque with a nod to madcap artist Richard Dadd. Throw in a bit of quasi-religious stuff in there (seventies groups often felt compelled to do this) in tracks like the grinding Jesus, with its choral bombast, the seriously rocking Catholic guilt/confessional hang-up fare of the bloated, all guns blazing rocker Liar and a bit of proper seventies misogyny in the chunky, heavy rock of Son And Daughter ("I want you......to be.....a woman") and you had a strange hotch-potch. 

The group's fondness for heavy rock is clearly there in the monumental and afore-mentioned Liar and Son And Daughter as well as on the drum and riff-driven and powerful prog/folk Freddie Mercury number Great King Rat and the frenetic Roger Taylor-penned, almost punky thrash of Modern Times Rock 'n' Roll. Roger had a penchant for punky rockers, didn't he? I'm thinking of Sheer Heart Attack (the track, not the album) as well. 

The lively single, Keep Yourself Alive, was a catchy and singalong number, but it still rocked. It was not quite typical Queen in the way that subsequent singles were, but it certainly had something. Not enough to make it a hit, though. Queen hadn't quite got "it" yet. Whatever "it" was they would get there with The Seven Seas Of Rhye and Killer Queen a year later. 

The lighter, poetic lilt can be found in the underrated, dreamy but very much of its time The Night Comes Down, the thoroughly beautiful and mainly acoustic Doing All Right (which does have an excellent "heavy" bit in it, showing that Queen were intrinsically heavy rockers) and the ethereal, poetic Mercury song My Fairy King, with its "mother mercury" reference.

Incidentally, the underrated Doing All Right dates back to the group's former pre-Mercury days as 'Smile' and was co-written by Tim Staffell, a member of that group. It is a really good song too, one of the album's best, in my opinion. Maybe I have heard A Night At The Opera just too many times, but, to be honest, I play this one more than I do that one these days. There is more than just curiosity in listening to this, there is some good material there, that's for sure.