Queen: Queen - 1973

"We like some of the stuff on it, but we sometimes fell into the trap of over-arrangement" - Brian May

 

  

A bit of a Queen intro for you....

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, 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, almost punky 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

A track that survived from the June 1972 sessions but remained unused was the oddly-titled Mad The Swine, a track that was supposed to come between Great King Rat and My Fairy King in the album's running order. Producer Roy Thomas Baker canned it because he didn't like the bongo-ish percussion. It is a mix of rock and dreamy 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. Something relating to Jesus, I think, once again.

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.

 

In 2024, the album was remixed and remastered and I have to say that the sound is a revelation. If only all the band's albums could be given the same treatment, particularly the seventies ones.