Queen: The Game - 1980
This was where it all started to go wrong for Queen, for me. The half-heavy, half-skittishly inventive band I loved so much in the mid-seventies had now become anything but that.
Despite the presence of two excellent funk rock experiments in the superb, innovative hit single Another One Bites The Dust and the equally impressive Dragon Attack, and two mid 70s throwback big Queen rock ballads in Play The Game and Save Me, this album really is a low point in Queen’s career. Having been a huge fan in my teenage years, the band's 1973-1977 period, I now left Queen behind.
Released at the height of punk-new wave, apart from catching on to the disco-funk thing and diversifying a little, Queen really looked thoroughly out of place by now, despite an image change that saw Freddie Mercury cutting his hair, growing a big moustache and the band donning leather jackets and trying to look “hard”, as opposed to wearing flouncy blouses and singing about fairies and white queens. The music media at the time largely slated it, and rightly so, I'm afraid.
Despite Mercury's moustachioed look having become iconic for many, I found it ludicrous at the time and still do, unfortunately. For me he was always sporting long black hair and wearing a white blouse - far more sensible.
Only the excellent funk tracks really showed any contemporary credibility, to be honest. The big production rock just seemed like something from 1974-75 that should be left there. Play The Game would have taken the charts apart in 1974. Not now. People were listening to new wave, ska and post punk. Save Me was mid-seventies throwback of a grandiose, piano-driven rock ballad, with an archetypal Queen big, harmonised chorus. For me, in 1980, this very much had the feel of scraping the retro barrel.
A quick re-shout out for Another One Bites The Dust - John Deacon must have made thousands in royalties from that bassline, musn't he? It was Queen's most convincing foray into funk-rock and its underpinning riff is quite irresistible, and speaker-poundingly deep too. Just listen to that big throbbing bass....Kudos to Dragon Attack for the same reasons too.
Crazy Little Thing Called Love was a huge hit, mind you, a fifties throwback that caught on with many non-Queen listeners. Not for me. I hated it then and I hate it now. Sorry. I was so pissed off when they included it as part of their Live Aid set.
Tracks like Need Your Love Tonight, Rock It (Prime Jive) and the totally execrable candidate for the unenviable title of “Queen’s worst song ever”, Don't Try Suicide, offer nothing whatsoever. Sail Away Sweet Sister and Coming Soon were so unremarkable that I can't even tell you what they sound like.
This was a total anachronism of an album. Even the cover is uninspiring and seems cheaply done. The next album would be similarly dull and questionable in quality-credibility. Again - apologies. I don't like writing negative reviews, but sometimes albums have to be measured up against a band's other, far superior, works. This is definitely one of those.
Brian May has subsequently offered a detailed insight into the band's thinking when recording the album -
"....Yeah, that was when we started trying to get outside what was normal for us. Plus we had a new engineer in Mack and a new environment in Munich. Everything was different. We turned our whole studio technique around in a sense, because Mack had come from a different background from us. We thought there was only one way of doing things, like doing a backing tracks: We would just do it until we got it right. If there were some bits where it speeded up or slowed down, then we would do it again until it was right. We had done some of our old backing tracks so many times, they were too stiff. Mack's first contribution was to say, "Well you don't have to do that. I can drop the whole thing in. If it breaks down after half a minute, then we can edit in and carry on if you just play along with the tempo". We laughed and said "Don't be silly. You can't do that". But in fact, you can. What you gain is the freshness, because often a lot of the backing tracks is first time though. It really helped a lot. There was less guitar on that album, but that's really not going to be the same forever; that was just an experiment....."
Ok, Brian, I get all that, but unfortunately it doesn't make it a better album. It sounds far more tired than fresh to me.
Non-album track
The 'b' side to Play The Game was A Human Body, a strange, clunking Roger Taylor song beginning, bizarrely, about Antarctic explorer Captain Scott. It is completely inessential and, let's be honest, not very impressive - par for the course for this album then.
