Queen: Queen - 1973
"We like some of the stuff on it, but we sometimes fell into the trap of over-arrangement" - Brian May
This, Queen's debut album, went under the radar somewhat in 1973, overshadowed by Aladdin Sane, Goats Head Soup, Band On The Run, Mott, House Of The Holy, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, 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.
Queen did not seem to fit into any pigeonhole - long haired, but with a singer in black nail varnish, 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.
The lyrics 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 in tracks like Jesus and the rocking Liar, a bit of 70s misogyny in Son And Daughter and you had a strange hotch-potch.
Musically influenced by Zeppelin, Free and Hendrix at the outset, but with a bit of acoustic delicacy appearing too, Queen were certainly interesting. Their heavy fondness is there in the monumental and afore-mentioned Liar, Son And Daughter, Great King Rat and the frenetic Roger Taylor-penned Modern Times Rock 'n' Roll.
The single, Keep Yourself Alive, was a catchy and singalong number, but it still rocked. The lighter, poetic lilt can be found in The Night Comes Down, the beautiful Doing All Right (which does have an excellent "heavy" bit in it) and the ethereal My Fairy King. Incidentally, 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.
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.
What the band said......
I came across this interesting appraisal of the album from the three remaining members of the band, so here it is -
"....We like some of the stuff on it, but we sometimes fell into the trap of over-arrangement. You know, the songs changed over the years and some of them probably evolved too much. You can get so far into something that you forget what the song originally was. On a personal level, it was frustrating for me to take so long to get to this point. I wanted to record things with, for instance, tape echoes and multiple guitars five years ago. Now I've finally done it, but in the meantime so have other people! Which is a bit disappointing. But you have to get away from the idea that playing music is a competition. You should just keep on doing what you think is an interesting thing to do...." - Brian May
"....There are a lot of things on the first album I don't like, though, for example the drum sound. There are parts of it which may sound contrived but it is very varied and it has lots of energy ... but then I think one of the best albums last year was the “Mott” album from Mott The Hoople and that had loads of inconsistencies and rough bits...." - Roger Taylor
"....And quite a lot of the songs on that first album were songs that we had had for a long while, and songs that we just used to play together, songs like “Keep Yourself Alive”, “Liar”, “Great King Rat”, and other numbers. They're songs that we just used to play. And we just went in and recorded them. And there were one or two numbers on that first album which were more sort of that first sort of sign of getting interested in doing things in the studio. “My Fairy King” was a number Freddie wrote when we only wrote while we were in the studio and it was built up in the studio. Whereas, you know as I said, there's other numbers where essentially live songs, basically just the track and then just a few ... backing vocals and guitar solos over the top and that was it...." - John Deacon
Non-album tracks
A track that survived from the sessions but remained unused was Mad The Swine that was supposed to come between Great King Rat and My Fairy King. Producer Roy Thomas Baker canned it because he didn't like the bongo-ish percussion. It is a mix of rock and dreamt acoustic backing, a bit like Doing All Right with some vaguely Beach Boys-esque harmonies on the chorus. Quite what it is about is unclear.
An early demo from the end of 1971 of Liar exists too and is an interesting listen as it is one of the very first of the band's available recordings. It is a pretty convincing version, if a bit hissy, but those great early Queen heavy rocks bits are all there. There is also a "long lost" version of Keep Yourself Alive that doesn't sound too much different to the original album version, to be honest. If anything, though, it is a bit more stompy and it contains a few mistakes too.
