Queen: Greatest Hits
This collection was one of the best-selling "Greatest Hits" albums of all time. First released in 1981, it became one of the first big-selling compilations on CD when the format took off in the mid-late eighties. For many, this is what they know of Queen. Not interested in their albums, they suck this up voraciously. Maybe you can't blame them.
How could this collection start with anything else but the titanic, ground-breaking Bohemian Rhapsody, the band's bountiful, burgeoning behemoth that really needs no introduction to anyone. Yes, everyone has heard it so many times but that doesn't stop it being a work of creative genius, the effect of which, upon release, was simply seismic. After that, six minute singles became de rigeur for a while. It is amazing to hear the rest of the group subsequently tell how they wanted to bin it but Freddie insisted he had something. Boy was he right. However many times I hear it, the feeling of November 1975 and the moment when I first heard it is brought back, without fail. While in many ways it is a totally preposterous song, it is undoubtedly one of the greatest singles of all time. No further comment is needed, really other than to reiterate that when it came out everyone was talking about it, even my Dad, who hated rock music. I bought the single and played it again and again and again....
Ah, 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....
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.
The Jazz album in 1978 was the one that finally saw much of the music media of the time turn on Queen, led by Dave Marsh in Rolling Stone, who, incredibly unfairly, denounced them as "sexist" and "fascist". To me, there wasn't much sexist in openly gay Freddie Mercury singing with tongue firmly in cheek about the stomping rock of Fat Bottomed Girls. The song was simply grossly silly, not remotely offensive. The same applies to the inner sleeve picture of lots of naked girls on bikes. All jolly good seventies fun. The song, though, always strangely mastered in that the beginning is really quiet and then the chorus is much louder. No amount of remastering changes this. Quite what possessed Queen to record in this fashion is unclear. We Are The Champions on the previous album was the same. Guess that was just how they wanted them to sound. For me, it just doesn't work at all. Anyway, while Fat Bottomed Girls was a ludicrously-titled and lyricked (is that a word?) song, it was an admittedly powerful and anthemic rocker. That chorus is a great singalong one and the riffs are chunky as hell. I still can't help but love it.
Bicycle Race was even more preposterous than Fat Bottomed Girls as Mercury frittered on about riding his bicycle. I have never really liked it, and, as a Queen fan from 1974 onwards, I also found it embarrassing. This wasn't my Queen as I wanted them to rock. It was redeemed by a great May guitar solo, though. I have to also admit that it is infuriatingly catchy.
John Deacon's summery, Beach Boys-esque You're My Best Friend had a catchy singalong appeal. It made for an absolutely perfect choice for a summer single and duly populated the airwaves during the long hot summer of 1976. Roger Taylor's drum parts are big and powerful but overall the song is lightweight and poppy. I can fully understand its appeal, though, as it is just so damn radio-friendly.
Yes, I know, I know....Don't Stop Me Now is now up there as one Queen's most timelessly popular songs. Everyone seems to love it, but actually, in 1978, although a hit, it wasn't as universally popular as it is now. Not nearly. I loved it as soon as I heard it, I have to say. These days, though, it is sung on endless karaoke nights out and is beloved of "call me Mr. Fahrenheit" microphone stand-twirling Freddie Mercury impersonators and partygoers everywhere. However, I challenge anyone not to feel just a little bit upbeat when they hear it. "Hey hey hey" indeed. You tell 'em Freddie. That's why it's made my top ten. I just find it totally irresistible. Even now. I say that shamelessly too. What the hell - tonight I'm gonna have myself a real good time....
The lead-off huge hit single from 1976's A Day At the Races album, the gospel-influenced, and gloriously anthemic Somebody To Love, although not quite matching the sheer creative majesty of Bohemian Rhapsody, was a not half bad follow up. You know, it almost made it. Many thought they could not possibly come up with another killer, but they did with this one and it has deservedly gone down in history as a true Queen classic. It has made it to the number one spot in my top ten - over Rhapsody - so there you go. Regarding its recording, Mercury and Taylor overdubbed their vocals so much to make them sound like a huge gospel choir. They succeeded too, magnificently. I have loved it since buying the single back in the autumn of 1976. I loved the picture sleeve too - they still weren't that common then.
With the huge heavy rock punch of Now I'm Here, Queen were 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.
The admittedly extremely catchy Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy was one of those Mercury-penned camp and whimsical Queen tracks. These additions were never my favourites but I guess they were part of the collective DNA of the band. If you like Queen you have to accept them as being part of what Queen were about, don't you? I must admit, though, it was odd, when I saw saw Queen live in 1977 at Earl's Court in London, to witness big groups of "lads" singing along to this piece of high camp foppery!
Similar to Save Me, the big production rock of 1980's Play The Game just seemed like something from 1974-75 that should be left there. It would have taken the charts apart in 1974. Not now. People were listening to new wave, ska and post punk.
The theme song to the Flash Gordon movie soundtrack, Flash, was strange and quirkily appealing. We all narrated along to the vocal interjections at the time -"what do you mean? Flash Gordon approaching? Dispatch war weapon Ajax and bring back his body!" etc - and indeed many still do! Guilty.
Seven Seas Of Rhye was Queen's first hit single and, for many, the introductory starting point for their Queen appreciation. It was for me. After this I bought Queen II and the debut album, Queen. It was a mixture of rock and glam with a touch of progginess about the quasi-mythological lyrics. It also boasted that grandiosity that would be somewhat unique to Queen as the years progressed. Yes they rocked, but they did it with class and élan. Their singer was theatrical and foppish but he attracted a following of regular, heterosexual young men, such as myself. We didn't really think about the possibility that he may be gay, not at all, he was just another strutting, preening peacock, of which glam rock produced so many. Those were odd years, those glam rock ones of 1973-75, weren't they?
We Will Rock You - powered by Roger Taylor's three-beat continual drum backing, this quite unique and minimalist semi-chant semi-song also caught on with the public, big time. Incidentally, Taylor said that delivering that insistent, never-changing drum beat was agony on the arms. Also, you can't beat Brian May's closing guitar solo, can you?
The double 'A' side lead-off single from the News Of The World album, We Are The Champions, with its terrace chant chorus and the unusual, quirky, metronomic We Will Rock You (see above) went to number two, as I recall. Brian May said of the group's approach at the time - “....we'd already made a decision that after "A Night At The Opera" and "A Day At The Races", we wanted to go back to basics for "News Of The World". But it was very timely because the world was looking at punk and things being very stripped down. So in a sense we were conscious, but it was part of our evolution anyway....”. The band, though, despite May's insistence that they were wilfully stripping things down and going back to basics, had also become a "stadium rock" band. With that in mind, they decided to write two "audience participation" songs. May said he envisaged a crowd clapping along in unison. Well, he certainly got his wish, didn't he? What a pair of tub-thumpers he and Mercury came up with. We Are the Champions is clearly the Mercury song of the two. As someone whose Queen fan-dom was coming under severe threat from punk, I was delighted by what this single gave me. I was still hanging in there with them.
