Queen: Sheer Heart Attack - 1974
1974's Queen II had been a most impressive, but not particularly noticed album. The chart single from that collection, the jaunty Seven Seas Of Rhye saw more people paying attention to this interesting band. Later that year, the huge hit single Killer Queen started the era of Queen dominance. Now I'm Here followed as another hit, making Sheer Heart Attack a popular album purchase.
Toning down the "fairies and elves" lyrics by now, concentrating on rockier themes and music, this was probably their purest "rock" album. The album's opener, the sprawling Brighton Rock, with its extended Brian May guitar noodling in the middle, on to the classily flamboyant Killer Queen, through Roger Taylor's dense rock in Tenement Funster! to the mighty, grandiose, catchy but also heavy Flick Of The Wrist, the old "side one" was a already proving to be an absolute corker.
Finishing off with the melodic mini-song Lily Of The Valley and the huge heavy rock punch of Now I'm Here, Queen were laying down some serious credentials now.
The old "side two" was another breathless romp through several shorter songs, similar to side two of Queen II, bookended by the anthemic, singalong pair of Lap Of The Gods songs. Stone Cold Crazy was a couple of minutes of almost punky breakneck thrash and Bring Back That Leroy Brown saw the first unfortunate signs of Freddie Mercury's obsession with 1920s vaudeville. She Makes Me was an underrated Brian May "heavy" track and the short, unremarkable but melodic Misfire was the first of quite a few, and latterly much better, John Deacon songs.
I will briefly include more expansive comments on the album's two singles -
Classically flamboyant, Killer Queen was possibly the wider world's first encounter with Freddie Mercury's grandiose foppery. It was to become typical of Queen in the way they merged rock with baroque. There was something proggy about that, for sure, but Queen also had an ear for a concise pop song. No proggy meandering here, this made for a perfect single and gave the group their first really big hit, rightly so, it was great. I loved some of the lines and phrasing - "To avoid complications, she never kept the same address, in conversation, she spoke just like a baroness". Very much archetypal Mercury. The song is jam-packed with characterisation and images, and melodically it is just as overflowing with effortless hooks that the killer queen would have approved of, I think.
With the huge heavy rock punch of Now I'm Here, Queen were, as I said earlier, laying down some serious credentials. The song also name-checks 1973-74 touring mates Mott The Hoople on the "down in the city just Hoople and me" line.
Back to the album. The whole feel of the thing was very Abbey Road-ish in its concept, but, despite that, it still retains a considerable amount of originality. The whole "chocolate box"/cornucopia of different styles approach was unique to Queen, in many ways.
Along with Queen II, this was Queen's finest work committed to album including the multi-million selling follow up A Night At The Opera. This was a more enjoyable work, in my opinion.
Freddie Mercury subsequently had this to say about the album -
"....The album is very varied, we took it to extreme I suppose, but we are very interested in studio techniques and wanted to use what was available. We learnt a lot about technique while we were making the first two albums. Of course there has been some criticism, and the constructive criticism has been very good for us. But to be frank I'm not that keen on the British music press, and they've been pretty unfair to us. I feel that up and coming journalists, by the large, put themselves above the artists. They've certainly been under a misconception about us. We've been called a supermarket hype. But if you see us up on a stage, that's what we're all about. We are basically a rock band...."
Mercury was certainly right about the "rock band" thing, because at the time, 1974-75, they rocked, as their Live At The Rainbow release, featuring two shows from 1974 and A Night At The Odeon, from 1975 prove. He kept confounding it, however, by the composing of many vaudeville-style whimsical songs that made the "rock band" quote somewhat questionable. Would Led Zeppelin have come up with Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon?
Non-album tracks
BBC session performances of Flick Of The Wrist and Tenement Funster! are included on the extended release of the album. Both are performed authentically to their studio counterparts. Also present is an a capella recording of the vocal track for Bring Back That Leroy Brown. It contains a bit of percussion, piano and guitar.
